In a phone conversation with Dan Darling the other day, he mentioned an AEI event where they showed some torture videos from Abu Ghraib* - under Saddam's rule. Reporters were invited, of course.
* = MP4 file, may not play in Windows Media. If so, Apple's QuickTime will work. Warning, these videos are very unpleasant, definitely R-Rated and beyond. View at your own discretion.
LGF (who has now implemented registration for commenters, a development I'm watching with interest) notes that very few reporters showed up. But then, this is not unexpected. One is entitled to ask why some stories seem to receive endless front-page treatment, while others are being thrown down the memory-hole. Accuracy in Media does:
"But a strange double standard seems at work. The pictures of abused Iraqis and the accused soldiers are plastered all over the media, yet the horrific pictures of Americans dying in the 9/11 attacks have been buried as too "inflammatory." Gone are the pictures of those leaping from the World Trade Center to avoid death in the inferno. Also absent from the media are the pictures of celebration in the Middle East of our 9/11 tragedy. So to you American journalists, who lost one of your brethren, Daniel Pearl, to these vermin, where is your outrage at this?
About one year ago a CNN executive admitted that while assigned to Baghdad before the war he covered up Saddam's atrocities. The reason was that he did not want the regime to close CNN's news bureau and wanted access to Saddam. Yet there was no outrage over this... The stories of Saddam's massive atrocities, and the murder and abuse of American POW's in Iraqi custody, have received scant attention.
We proved through the President's apology and our open investigation our difference from the totalitarian regime we toppled. We received no apology from those who perpetrated 9/11, or those in Iraq who mistreat our people they capture. I saw no equivalent outrage at the capture, torture and burning of our citizens in Fallujah. Nor did the media ask persistent questions of how we would retaliate against this brutality. Only Senators Joseph Lieberman, D-CT, and James Inhofe, R-OK, mentioned that point during the televised hearing. The remainder conveniently ignored it.
In the Fallujah incident, Iraqi insurgents murdered and mutilated the bodies of American civilian contract workers before hanging them from a bridge. A few days later they murdered an Italian national, Fabrizio Quattrocchi, and publicly beheaded an American civilian, Nick Berg. The fate of others captured, including Americans, remains uncertain. Where is the outrage of not only our news media, but the Int'l Red Cross and the human rights organizations as well?
Since the outrage of this allegation is so selective, it tells me that it is not genuine. For the politicians, the outrage is for the benefit of the camera, and in order to further their political agendas.
I am not asking for a cover-up of this incident, but I am asking for at least the same level of outrage expressed against our enemies for their atrocities. During World War II, the American public was made aware of the brutality suffered by American POWs. The media also produced the images which led to our intervention in Somalia, Haiti and the Balkans during the 1990s.
Enemy Brutality
However, the news media seem reluctant to show the brutality exhibited by our current enemies, while sensationalizing this prison abuse..."
These all strike me as good and valid points. Is it partisan political bias? I don't know. There are many other kinds of bias and filters that could be at work here.
I do know that the discrepancy described above is real, that it's being questioned by more and more people, and that blogs are playing a role. To my surprise, the Nick Berg beheading video was a turning point for many. I'm sure that the troops being rotated home from Iraq, and talking about the discrepancy between the reported war and the one they lived, are also having an effect.
This kind of questioning needs to spread until it becomes real and sustained pressure, however, before the mainstream media will even begin to examine their behaviour in a serious way.
That's a goal worth working for, and an examination that would benefit us all.
The internet is interpreting the news media as damage and routing around it.
The media is still working diligently to expose enemy brutality. Indeed, it runs on the front page of nearly every paper nearly every day.
The only difference is that today, journalists consider their own country the enemy.
Don't worry yourselves about this. At the rate things are going, soon it will be considered no more newsworthy when the United States tortures people than when mobs of fanatical terrorists do.
The lack of interest in non-US atrocities by the left media and left in general is indicative of the larger leftist (marxist-derived) worldview that is morally schizophrenic. The anti-war left simultaneously holds 2 incompatible views: (1) there is no (moral) truth (a misinterpretation of philosophical post-modernism), therefore it is morally wrong to judge other cultures (e.g.: Arab torture and suicide bombing is acceptable), and impossible to establish a general moral theory, nonetheless (2) all, or most, American conduct is morally unacceptable.
This incoherence is most notable when similar events occur closely in time. For example: when killing innocent Iraqis and Coalition soldiers, anti-democratic terrorists in Iraq are freedom fighters or resistance members for the BBC and other leftists outlets, but, when killing BBC journalists, they become terrorists. Also, the anti-war left can't explain how mass torture of Iraqis under Saddam was acceptable but lesser torture at Abu Ghraid was unaccaptable. Note that, for the left, there used to be an ability to denounce fascist genocide (although marxist genocide was acceptable). However, with the advent of its pathological anti-Americanism, the left is now unable to effectively condemn or agitate against fascist genocide.
I expect this incoherence will infect leftist thought at least until a new generation of less conflicted academics displace the current generation.
"...the pictures of abused Iraqis and the accused soldiers are plastered all over the media, yet the horrific pictures of Americans dying in the 9/11 attacks have been buried as too 'inflammatory.'"
Is there a cite for someone authoritative in the press saying pictures from September 11th shouldn't be republished, posted, broadcast for being "too inflammatory"?
Is there one among us who does not have them burned in her or his brain?
Has anyone forgotten?
Does anyone lack ability to call up the pictures on the Internet, or, if they cared, by stored videotape, or by memory?
Is there a lack of access to these pictures?
Is there a lack of websites that have these pictures on their front page?
"... yet the horrific pictures of Americans dying in the 9/11 attacks have been buried as too 'inflammatory.'"
This should be easy to support, since it would appear every major tv network and newspaper is in on the deal. Can you say more clearly, please, what "buried" means in this context? I would assume it means deliberate suppression? Who is suppressing these pictures, and how, and why?
A rather different case, that having a policy that rebroadcasting the video or audio of people leaping to their death, should be done with discrimination, and is widespread, is incontestable. Is that controversial, or something that should be rejected?
"One is entitled to ask why some stories seem to receive endless front-page treatment, while others are being thrown down the memory-hole."
Absolutely, and I couldn't agree more. But I find it pays most to look at specifics, rather than vague generalities, in this.
There are those, for instance, who assert that examining the responsibility for U.S. torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the war on terror, is getting somehow undeserved attention, as if the moral roots of our policies, the facts of our practices, and the examination of who is responsible, should not be major news, but is "played out." They further suggest that each day's new news is not, actually, new news, but mere repetition. Is that supportable?
Others assert that despite there being no new news about the horrific murderous execution of Nicholas Berg, it is revealing of -- something -- that his death is not replayed each day. Or something like that. Yet what would the purpose of such rebroadcasts be? Nicolas Berg still horrifically murdered?
"News" isn't based upon what is or isn't inflammatory. It's based upon what is new information.
"The only difference is that today, journalists consider their own country the enemy."
This is simply silly extremist stuff. Are there journalists who are assholes and fools? Of course. Are most journalists loyal patriots? Of course. Is it the job of journalists to questiona and challenge authority? Of course. And thank goodness. Would that more do so (yes, competently and knowledgeably, of course -- you know, like people on blogs, posters and commenters alike). Who wants to live where the role of journalists is simply to Support Authority?
Gary,
Do a search. There were and are quite a few media outlets who have consciously and deliberately refrained from showing many of the 9/11 pictures and videos. It was noticeable as soon as a year after the event, when the specials came out and many had been sanitized. It's a legitimate beef.
As for new information, that doesn't seem to hold up re: Abu Ghraib. And Berg's execution was new information. So are ongoing revelations re: Iraq's mass graves etc. Somehow, they're covered very differently. Again, 'why' is a legitimate question for people to be asking.
The point - and here's where my emphasis differs from AIM's - is not to diminish incidents like Abu Ghraib (though one could report on this in a nmore informed way, given that investigations and prosecution was proceding before the media showed up), but to ask for coverage of our enemies that adheres to similar standards and treats brutality by those enemies as equally newsworthy. Because it is.
Right now, that doesn't seem to be happening.
karl has it right, I think - although the blogosphere also conducts 'failure mode and damage assessments' of the major media, in real time - a devastating exercise.
I expect the next 20+ years or so to be rocky ones for us all. Condi Rice was correct when she said we face a generational challenge WRT Islamacism. But in a broader and deeper sense, there is a massive set of cultural tectonic shifts happening all around the world, shifts that bear on basic values and attitudes. The positivist intellectual approach that has dominated much Western intellectual thought for over a century does not play in Africa, China, the Middle East or the old Silk Road - people in these areas assume that sprituality of one sort or another is a basic and meaningful part of life and they tend not to think all approaches are equally valid. [understatement]
Meanwhile, technological change will fast outstrip our public or private debates about what we should do as humans and how to live, given substantially new opportunities and challenges made possible by those technologies. If you think the Internet poses major cultural challenges, just wait for nanobots that can extend health and life, or cloning, or direct neural interfaces to local or remote equipment (including remote sensors).
Buckle your seatbelts - it's going to be quite a ride for a while I think.
and in the midst of all this, citizens and national leaders are going to be making big decisions with very incomplete information, and the stakes will be high. The legal memos discussing possible stances regarding coercion of prisoners is just one small instance of the fine line people will be walking.
The biggest risks will be taken by those who are blind to the fact that much is at stake ....
And the media will increasingly be challenged to evolve or wither away, because the assumptions that the post-Vietnam / post-Watergate media bring to current events fail to recognize or deal with the inherent difficulties of our time. It's one thing to dig at an entrenched military / industrial complex when things are relatively stable ... Eisenhower's critique was precisely that that entrenchment was going on when it wasn't needed.
But today, when the government can be bitterly criticized for not preventing 9/11 and when people are just beginning to appreciate the dangers of a potential nexus between WMD proliferation and terror groups who have no commitment to stabiility ... well, today, those media attitudes shaped in the 60s and 70s are not so much totally wrong as they miss the things that are most central in our own ambiguous and rapidly changing time.
You can't learn something you already know. And the press already knows who the villain in is: why the United States, of course!
And if Saddam were to have ordered Iraq TV to show even worse film from Auschwitz more often, would this have justified his actions vis-a-vis the West?
Leaving aside the fact we haven't seen the worst of our homegrown sadists' videos, I'm having a hard time understanding why you think actions of someone else have equal importance with actions of our own agents. For example, it appears this November will turn into a referendum on returning to office an Administration that stands for "legalization" of torture at Executive whim. I think that imposes upon us as US citizens (Joe K catches a break here) an obligation top understand what we, as the electorate of a democracy, are responsible for.
I do, however, appreciate that you are willing to open the torture video market to free-market competition.
Gary,
You want a cite?
I'll pull a quote from the last paragraph:
They're [7 Saddam torture victims] eloquent, they're available, they're grateful for the U.S. liberation of Iraq. No one can better talk about Saddam's tortures — and no one is more eager to do so. Yet, as of yesterday, the New York Times had written 177 stories on Abu Ghraib — with over 40 on the front page. The self-proclaimed "paper of record" hadn't written a single story about those seven Iraqi men.
[Clarification added is mine]
Absolutely devastating. The media should be ashamed. How can they live with themselves over such unbalanced coverage?
Shame. Shame.
--Fred
"There were and are quite a few media outlets who have consciously and deliberately refrained from showing many of the 9/11 pictures and videos. It was noticeable as soon as a year after the event, when the specials came out and many had been sanitized. It's a legitimate beef"
I can easily believe that. Three URLs to prove it will prove it. What are they? I'm sure it's not an ideological echo chamber, but a fact, so who did this in a way that kept the facts from North America? Was North America, in fact, kept unaware of the horror by a media conspiracy?
"And Berg's execution was new information."
It was. Once. Which date are you referring to, Joe?
"As for new information, that doesn't seem to hold up re: Abu Ghraib."
I'm not following you there.
"And Berg's execution was new information.
It was. Once. It was also on every news channel in creation. So?
"So are ongoing revelations re: Iraq's mass graves etc. Somehow, they're covered very differently."
Fair enough. How? When was Berg's execution "new information"? When should repetitions of announcing it have ceased being news? Three days later? Seven? A week? Two weeks? A month?
On what dates were the revelations of mass graves revealed, and not reported upon?
How many people don't know of Saddam's crimes? Do many people defend Saddam?
"...to ask for coverage of our enemies that adheres to similar standards and treats brutality by those enemies as equally newsworthy. Because it is."
But it seems to suggest that everyone in our world doesn't know that Canada, Australia, Britain, and the US isn't complacently cutting off people's heads because them folks said things against the Queen/President. That seems a bit inaccurate, doesn't it?
I mean, do we need to repeat in every paragraph that we know from human rights? I'm not clear why.
Who doesn't think we are the good guys, and Saddam was a bad guy, beyond a smattering of flakes we can all agree are insane idiots? (Yeah, ANSWER, and some morons in Britain -- as I was saying....)
"Absolutely devastating. The media should be ashamed. How can they live with themselves over such unbalanced coverage?"
Hint: we went to war to stop Saddam's torture.
Absent time travel, we cannot stop it.
We have, yet, power over our own policies, and can punish our own people who have authorized torture, and engaged in torture.
Which deserves more attention, having learned all we can about Saddam's torture, and not accusing the American people of being idiots who are unaware of Saddam's torture -- something we can change, or something we can't?
It's terribly "unbalanced" to address the future, and ourselves, rather than the past, and someone else, to be sure.
Just one is all it takes, Gary. From Esquire's "The Falling Man", which discusses the issue and also notes that in this case, the unwillingness to show the images went beyond major media. Though one could note it on the CNN & CBS documentaries as well:
"And so it went. In 9/11, the documentary extracted from videotape shot by French brothers Jules and Gedeon Naudet, the filmmakers included a sonic sampling of the booming, rattling explosions the jumpers made upon impact but edited out the most disturbing thing about the sounds: the sheer frequency with which they occurred. In Rudy, the docudrama starring James Woods in the role of Mayor Giuliani, archival footage of the jumpers was first included, then cut out. In Here Is New York, an extensive exhibition of 9/11 images culled from the work of photographers both amateur and professional, there was, in the section titled "Victims," but one picture of the jumpers, taken at a respectful distance; attached to it, on the Here Is New York Web site, a visitor offers this commentary: "This image is what made me glad for censuring [sic] in the endless pursuant media coverage." More and more, the jumpers—and their images—were relegated to the Internet underbelly, where they became the provenance of the shock sites that also traffic in the autopsy photos of Nicole Brown Simpson and the videotape of Daniel Pearl's execution, and where it is impossible to look at them without attendant feelings of shame and guilt. In a nation of voyeurs, the desire to face the most disturbing aspects of our most disturbing day was somehow ascribed to voyeurism, as though the jumpers' experience, instead of being central to the horror, was tangential to it, a sideshow best forgotten. It was no sideshow."
Oddly, these feelings do not seem to surface around, say, Abu Ghraib photos. And yet, to really understand this war and conduct it properly, one needs to understand both.
If Abu Ghraib is hidden from us, we won't conduct this war properly. But if photos like The Falling Man, Saddam's toture videos, the ongoing reveleations of mass graves, and the Berg video are made, by choice, into non-stories that sit on the back pages and get little to no sustained coverage... then we will not understand this war. Constant repetition of allied ills and downgrading of much more frequent enemy atrocities has an effect, and it is neither truthful nor positive.
If you want the ANSWER viewpoint on the war to begin to go mainstream, accepting that imalance is a good way to get us there.
It may be instructive to look at media selectivity in past conflicts, notably the debate over whether to show American war dead in WWII media. The picture of three dead GIs on a beach in New Guinea, published in LIFE, was something of an event, coming as it did in 1943. It's also interesting that accounts of the Bataan death march didn't get published until quite late in the war. Major stories on the Nazi death camps don't seem to have gotten front-page till the end of the war, upon the actual liberation.
All this in the context of a war in which vilification of the enemy was popular, with less ambiguity about the war effort.
The press may have held off on atrocity coverage simply because they remembered the atrocity propaganda from WWI. Or it simply may have been whether the coverage was, in the editors' minds, sufficiently of interest. Herman Wouk makes the point in "Winds of War" that the 1939 Poland invasion slid off the front pages by mid-September because of the National League pennant race.
Point here is that the reasons for selective editing may be other than simple anti-US bias. It may be ignorance. Or entertainment value, which is why Congo, Zimbabwe and Darfur are being largely ignored. Nasty to say, but it could be the editors' view of the American public's fickle tastes. I wonder if even half the US public, or half the editors for that matter, could find Iraq on a world map. Even now.
Comparisons to WWI and WWII are somewhat misleading, I think. Part of the ambiguity of our current world situation is precisely that the war that has been declared on the US, on western civilization and ultimately on all "infidels" is not the provance of a well-defined government with uniformed troops executing clearcut military actions.
And yet, war has indeed been declared and continues to be declared -- and those declarations are being acted upon in ways that are deliberately difficult to trace.
In this environment, it's critically important that all pertinent details be publicized with as much even handedness as possible. Jay Rosen's 6/9 article about Leslie Stahl and the received (but incorrect) media wisdom about Reagan as communicator is relevant here. Rosen can scarcely be dubbed a conservative or a dupe, but as a professional analyst of the media (ensconced in NYU's journalism school) he is deeply concerned that the media are blinded by some assumptions and biases - to the point that the Press in its best functions are being compromised. I think he's right.
A good case study in media editing would be for us to look at coverage of today's bombing in Iraq. Will the evening news programs show any footage from the scene? Will the fact that US troops weren't involved affect their coverage? Will anybody remark on the strategy behind it? (The main attack was against a crowd at a recruiting station for (our) Iraqi Army.)
Maybe this would be a good QED for this thread.
Has Joe K considered the possibility that our media are self-censoring re Abu Ghraib? It seems to be an open secret that much worse videos were available to Congress, than what is publically available. Rape and murder seem to be included. Are you so sure that our media tried diligently to obtain this material and failed? Why?
They did self-censor on the "highway of death" in the first Gulf War, or at least I remember little or none of the photographs except, maybe, in retrospectives like "Shooting Under Fire: World of the War Photographer." The Iraqi sitting in the cab of a burnt-out truck was censored by AP, not Schwarzkopf's PIO.
Wasn't pretty, but that still doesn't explain the editors' decision.
Apparently one of the men who was being tortured in the video was actually there at the AEI press conference but reporters were not interested in interviewing him.
http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_06_13_corner-archive.asp#034157
This says something to me.
Are you guys even aware that the Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, an estimated 80% of whom were innocent of all charges (according to the Red Cross), HAD ABSOLUTELY FUCK-ALL TO DO WITH THE SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENT AMERICANS ON 9/11? And would it make the rape, torture, and murder of civilians an acceptable practice to you even if Saddam HAD collaborated with Al Queda? The feeling that our principles have been trampled does not belong to partisan Democrats. We all should be feeling it right now, or it's hard to see how we're better than them.