oh the media

strandinthewind · #1 01-20-2005, 12:01 PM

Well, this certainly supports Dissention's point that the American media were (and still are) cowardly dilettantes when it came to their interest in serious journalism as it pertained to reporting the war and the events leading up to it.

I still maintain, however, that although the American media could have done a better job of reporting the facts, enough facts were out there that most people would see what was going on - to wit: the pictures of the prisoner abuse were on the cover of every major weekly mag. and every major newspaper in the country - and I know of no one who did not know about it

Yet, most Americans seemingly outraged for a moment - could really care a less because IMO they would just as soon see all people in the Middle East dead and/or tortured; they equate all people in that region to terrorists.

And, Rich is correct when he notes that Fox News was and is a diaphanous puppet for the Bush Administration in that it blindly supports the Administration's subterfuge and the cipher we have for a President. Moreover, people like Rush "pill popper" Limbaugh dismissed the torture as something like a lark reminiscent of a fraternity prank.

Thus, the sad state of America.

For once, I wish we had listened to the Pope and avoided this unholy war. But, like most "Cafeteria Catholics" and indeed IMO Christians - humans like to pick and choose the word of God and the head of The Church (for Catholics) they want to be bound by and eschew the rest based on some drummed and tricked up excuse to obtain their sinful goals (fornication, death penalty, birth control, etc.) I certainly am guilty of it - I think everyone is; but at least I can admit it

Anyway - here is the article
_________________________________________________________________

January 23, 2005

FRANK RICH

On Television, Torture Takes a Holiday

IN the day that the defense rested in the military trial of Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, American television news had a much better story to tell: "The Trouble With Harry," as Brian Williams called it on NBC. The British prince had attended a fancy dress costume party in Wiltshire (theme: "native and colonial") wearing a uniform from Rommel's Afrika Korps complete with swastika armband. Even by the standards of this particular royal family, here was idiocy above and beyond the call of duty.

For those of us across the pond, it was heartening to feel morally superior to a world-class twit. But if you stood back for just a second and thought about what was happening in that courtroom in Fort Hood, Tex. - a task that could be accomplished only by reading newspapers, which provided the detailed coverage network TV didn't even attempt - you had to wonder if we had any more moral sense than Britain's widely reviled "clown prince." The lad had apparently managed to reach the age of 20 in blissful ignorance about World War II. Yet here we were in America, in the midst of a war that is going on right now, choosing to look the other way rather than confront the evil committed in our name in a prison we "liberated" from Saddam Hussein in Iraq. What happened in the Fort Hood courtroom this month was surely worthy of as much attention as Harry's re-enactment of "Springtime for Hitler": it was the latest installment in our government's cover up of war crimes.

But a not-so-funny thing happened to the Graner case on its way to trial. Since the early bombshells from Abu Ghraib last year, the torture story has all but vanished from television, even as there have been continued revelations in the major newspapers and magazines like The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and Vanity Fair. If a story isn't on TV in America, it doesn't exist in our culture.

The latest chapter unfolding in Texas during that pre-inaugural week in January was broadcast on the evening news almost exclusively in brief, mechanical summary, when it was broadcast at all. But it's not as if it lacked drama; it was "Judgment at Nuremberg" turned upside down. Specialist Graner's defense lawyer, Guy Womack, explained it this way in his closing courtroom statement: "In Nuremberg, it was the generals being prosecuted. We were going after the order-givers. Here the government is going after the order-takers." As T. R. Reid reported in The Washington Post, the trial's judge, Col. James L. Pohl of the Army, "refused to allow witnesses to discuss which officers were aware of events in cellblock One-Alpha, or what orders they had given." While Mr. Womack's client, the ringleader of the abuses seen in the Abu Ghraib photographs, deserved everything that was coming to him and then some, there have yet to be any criminal charges leveled against any of the prison's officers, let alone anyone higher up in the chain of command.

Nor are there likely to be any, given how little information about this story makes it to the truly mass commercial media and therefore to a public that, according to polls, disapproves of the prison abuses by a majority that hovers around 80 percent. What information does surface is usually so incomplete or perfunctorily presented that it leaves unchallenged the administration's line that, in President Bush's words, the story involves just "a few American troops" on the night shift.

The minimizing - and in some cases outright elimination - of Abu Ghraib and its aftermath from network news coverage is in part (but only in part) political. Fox News, needless to say, has trivialized the story from the get-go, as hallmarked by Bill O'Reilly's proud refusal to run the photos of Graner & Company after they first surfaced at CBS. (This is in keeping with the agenda of the entire Murdoch empire, whose flagship American paper, The New York Post, twice ran Prince Harry's Nazi costume as a Page 1 banner while relegating Specialist Graner's conviction a day later to the bottom of Page 9.) During the presidential campaign, John Kerry barely mentioned Abu Ghraib, giving TV another reason to let snarling dogs lie. Senator John Warner's initially vigilant Congressional hearings - which threatened to elevate the craggy Virginia Republican to a TV stardom akin to Sam Ervin's during Watergate - mysteriously petered out.

Since the election, some news operations, most conspicuously NBC, have seemed eager to rally around the winner and avoid discouraging words of any kind. A database search of network transcripts finds that NBC's various news operations, in conscious or unconscious emulation of Fox, dug deeper into the Prince Harry scandal than Specialist Graner's trial. "NBC Nightly News" was frequently turned over to a journalism-free "Road to the Inauguration" tour that allowed the new anchor to pose in a series of jus'-folks settings.

But not all explanations for the torture story's downsizing have to do with ideological positioning and craven branding at the networks. The role of pictures in TV news remains paramount, and there has been no fresh visual meat from the scene of the crime (or the others like it) in eight months. The advances in the story since then, many of which involve revelations of indisputably genuine Washington memos, are not telegenic. Meanwhile, the recycling of the original Abu Ghraib snapshots, complemented by the perp walks at Fort Hood, only hammers in the erroneous notion that the story ended there, with the uncovering of a few bad apples at the bottom of the Army's barrel.

There were no cameras at Specialist Graner's trial itself. What happened in the courtroom would thus have to be explained with words - possibly more than a few sentences of words - and that doesn't cut it on commercial television. It takes a televised judicial circus in the grand O. J. Simpson tradition or a huge crew of supporting players eager (or available) for their 15 minutes of TV fame to create a mediathon. When future historians try to figure out why a punk like Scott Peterson became the monster that gobbled up a mother lode of television time in a wartime election year, their roads of inquiry will all lead to Amber Frey.

A more sub rosa deterrent to TV coverage of torture is the chilling effect of this administration's campaign against "indecency" through its proxy, Michael Powell, at the Federal Communications Commission. If stations are fearful of airing "Saving Private Ryan" on Veterans Day, they are unlikely to go into much depth about war stories involving forced group masturbation, electric shock, rape committed with a phosphorescent stick, the burning of cigarettes in prisoners' ears, involuntary enemas and beatings that end in death. (At least 30 prisoner deaths have been under criminal investigation.) When one detainee witness at the Graner trial testified in a taped deposition that he had been forced to eat out of a toilet, that abuse was routinely cited in newspaper accounts but left unreported on network TV newscasts. It might, after all, upset viewers nearly as much as Bono's expletive at the 2003 Golden Globes.

Even so, and despite the dereliction of network news and the subterfuge of the Bush administration, the information is all there in black and white, if not in video or color, for those who want to read it, whether in the daily press or in books like Seymour Hersh's "Chain of Command" and Mark Danner's "Torture and Truth." The operative word, however, may be "want."

Maybe we don't want to know that the abuses were widespread and systematic, stretching from Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to unknown locales where "ghost detainees" are held. Or that they started a year before the incidents at Abu Ghraib. Or that they have been carried out by many branches of the war effort, not just Army grunts. Or that lawyers working for Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales gave these acts a legal rationale that is far more menacing to encounter in cold type than the photo of Prince Harry's costume-shop armband.

As Mr. Danner shows in his book, all this and more can be discerned from a close reading of the government's dense investigative reports and the documents that have been reluctantly released (or leaked). Read the record, and the Fort Hood charade is unmasked for what it was: the latest attempt to strictly quarantine the criminality to a few Abu Ghraib guards and, as Mr. Danner writes, to keep their actions "carefully insulated from any charge that they represent, or derived from, U.S. policy - a policy that permits torture."

The abuses may well be going on still. Even as the Graner trial unfolded, The New York Times reported that a secret August 2002 Justice Department memo authorized the use of some 20 specific interrogation practices, including "waterboarding," a form of simulated drowning that was a torture of choice for military regimes in Argentina and Uruguay in the 1970's. This revelation did not make it to network news.

"Nobody seems to be listening," Mr. Danner said last week, as he prepared to return to Iraq to continue reporting on the war for The New York Review. That so few want to listen may in part be a reflection of the country's growing disenchantment with the war as a whole. (In an inauguration-eve Washington Post-ABC News poll, only 44 percent said the war was worth fighting.) The practice of torture by Americans is not only ugly in itself. It conjures up the specter of defeat. We can't "win" the war in Iraq if we lose the battle for public opinion in the Middle East. At the gut level, Americans know that the revelations of Abu Ghraib coincided with - and very likely spurred - the ruthlessness of an insurgency that has since taken the lives of many brave United States troops who would never commit the lawless acts of a Charles Graner or seek some ruling out of Washington that might countenance them.

History tells us that in these cases a reckoning always arrives, and Mr. Danner imagines that "in five years, or maybe sooner, there will be a TV news special called 'Torture: How Did It Happen?' " Even though much of the script can be written now, we will all be sure to express great shock.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/ar...ich.html?8hpib

gldstwmn · #2 01-20-2005, 12:37 PM

The BBC published photos of an Iraqi family yesterday. The five children were in the backseat of the car and the two parents were in the front. They ran a checkpoint apparently and the parents were blown away in front of the childrens eyes. The last photo is a child covered in her parents blood. One of the photos is of one of the children being administered first aid by an American soldier who had moments earlier killed her parnets.
This is what the rest of the world sees.
We see a 40 million dollar party.

Here is the link to the BBC photos I was talking about: *WARNING* This isn't pretty:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/h...far/html/2.stm

SuzeQuze · #3 01-20-2005, 12:38 PM

Listening to Air America I have heard far more details about that abuse than I have seen anywhere. Thanks for posting that article. I wonder if people equate the insurgency with the abuse as the author of the article does? I think that may be a leap for some to understand.

dissention · #4 01-20-2005, 12:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

The BBC published photos of an Iraqi family yesterday. The five children were in the backseat and the two parents were in the front. They ran a checkpoint apparently and the parents were blown away in front of the childrens eyes. The last photo is a child covered in her parents blood. One of the photos is of one of the children being administered first aid by an American soldier who had moments earlier killed her parnets.
This is what the rest of the world sees.
We see a 40 million dollar party.

Very well put, Chris.

gldstwmn · #5 01-20-2005, 12:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dissention

Very well put, Chris.

Thank you darling. I had to take a phone call in the middle of that post and forgot to include my rant on magnetic yellow ribbon bumper stickers. Those god damn things are ridiculous America. Get real!

dissention · #6 01-20-2005, 01:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Thank you darling. I had to take a phone call in the middle of that post and forgot to include my rant on magnetic yellow ribbon bumper stickers. Those god damn things are ridiculous America. Get real!

My apartment manager passed those bastards out to the whole building once. I wouldn't accept one. Empty gestures don't win wars and the prospect of being an armchair warrior turns me off big time.

Another thing that I find patently offensive about them is the fact that big business makes money off of them. Shouldn't that money be going to the troops that we're saying we support? Shouldn't the profits be used for medical care or, dare I say, getting the troops the proper protection instead of sending them to the front lines wearing Vietnam-era flak jackets? They pulled the same **** with American flags after 9/11. That stuff makes me nauseous.

Have you seen that commercial where they show an American neighborhood and the voiceover says "The terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks thought they could change America forever..." Then the screen goes black and they show the same neighborhood again, only this time it shows American flags waving from each house and the voiceover says "They did."

That commercial is the pits. It's so hollow and empty, my word.

estranged4life · #7 01-20-2005, 01:05 PM

the tune "9-1-1 is a joke" (By Public Enemy) :

"The US media is joke
The US media is joke..."

DrummerDeanna · #8 01-20-2005, 01:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lux

I wanted to use an emoticon. I thought there was a vomitting one. Oh well.

There's a fantastic sketch by my favourite comedian down here, Shaun Micallef (see my sig). It's just a quick one about some redneck factory workers in the US who make American flags, very patriotically. With the anthem playing stirring in the background:"They will work overtime for no extra pay just to make shipment. Bud himself will drive them to the airport where they are then shipped to Bahrain and sold to various Muslim countries where they are burned in mass demonstration. And as growing hatred for America spreads across the world, this can only mean good business for Bud."

They should show that on the American networks, it's a joke but it's actually completely accurate.

that's funny...and you're right - pretty damn accurate...

Also correct in your previous post about the outrage that would ensue if the roles were reversed in that car situation...

dissention · #9 01-20-2005, 01:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lux

I wanted to use an emoticon. I thought there was a vomitting one. Oh well.

There's a fantastic sketch by my favourite comedian down here, Shaun Micallef (see my sig). It's just a quick one about some redneck factory workers in the US who make American flags, very patriotically. With the anthem playing stirring in the background:"They will work overtime for no extra pay just to make shipment. Bud himself will drive them to the airport where they are then shipped to Bahrain and sold to various Muslim countries where they are burned in mass demonstration. And as growing hatred for America spreads across the world, this can only mean good business for Bud."

They should show that on the American networks, it's a joke but it's actually completely accurate.

It is accurate. I'd pay to see some of the sketches they came up with when the Department of Homeland Security told everyone to go out and buy plastic and duct tape for their windows in case of a biological attack.

They failed to mention, however, that the leading manufacturer for duct tape in America was also one of the companies that donated the most to Bush's 2000 campaign.

strandinthewind · #10 01-20-2005, 02:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dissention

Very well put, Chris.

Hey now - no kudos to moi for giving you props

dissention · #11 01-20-2005, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Hey now - no kudos to moi for giving you props

I thought I had, but my browser crashed, so it must not have been posted. Figures, eh?

strandinthewind · #12 01-20-2005, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lux

Can you even begin to image the outrage if those roles were reversed, if those were American civilians? We wouldn't hear the end of it plus we'd be bombarded with messages from God (Murdoch) giving us permission to kill. I remember after Sept 11 people realised that Princess Diana's death really wasn't the worldwide catastrophy it was portrayed as. I don't sense the same realisation with the knowledge that even more Iraqi's have died since the invasion, than Americans did on Sept 11 (and that's Iraqi alone). I would say the cause of that lacking is a combination of limited media coverage (I know Jason says they've done they job but nobody try to tell me the Iraqi people have ever been portrayed as being worthy of as much sympathy as the victims of Sept 11) and a kind of apathy. Not complete apathy, but definately a degree of it.

(emphasis supplied)

I think the media could have done a better job. My point was Americans had the facts and chose not to care enough to do anything about it. They IMO think all Middle Easterners are terrorists and we need to get them (all of them) before they get us

Moreover, I agree with your post