TV war reports show only one side. (Boo Hoo how dare the American's witness our Military success)

Milwaukee Journal-Semtinel ^ | 3/06/2003 | PHILIP SEIB

[UB355]

America's television networks have combined "reality TV" with patriotic war coverage. The public and the Bush administration seem to like it, but this is what America needs least from its news media.

Television's war is being presented with much self-congratulation by networks that have decided the Pentagon is their new best friend. Many of the embedded journalists apparently consider themselves "on the team," a role that reporters resisted during the Vietnam War and other conflicts. The resulting coverage is exciting but flawed. Much of it is closer to programs such as "Cops" than it is to journalism.

The pictures are dramatic; there's no doubt about that. Soldiers blast away at the enemy. Tanks careen across the desert. The exhilaration and fear and sadness of combat surge into viewers' living rooms.

The journalists reporting from the front lines are courageous and hard-working. But their bosses, who determine the overall content of the news product, should recognize that combat is only part of war.

Political conflict is more complex than the contest on the battlefield. It is less television-friendly than a firefight, but its strategies and possible consequences deserve much more air time than they have been receiving, even if that means cutting back on some of the bang-bang coverage from correspondents embedded in the desert.

A few weeks ago, much of the world seemed prepared to tolerate, even if not embrace, the American war. But now, Saddam Hussein is being acclaimed as a martyr who merits support from Arab brethren. Anti-American feeling on "the Arab street" is boiling. As a result, the Bush administration's postwar scenario of a Pax Americana in the Middle East looks ridiculous.

But in patriotic journalism, no government policy is deemed ridiculous. Although America's growing unpopularity will have ripple effects for years to come, the networks tiptoe around the issue. News executives read the polls just as politicians do, and they are wary of stories that might irritate the hawkish American public. As a political judgment, that makes sense. As journalism, it amounts to a betrayal of truth.

With relations between press and government particularly tense, the news media's own internal politics may attract scrutiny, as happened when NBC fired veteran war correspondent Peter Arnett last week for granting an interview to Iraqi television.

Arnett's dismissal was not a matter of the network wanting to be seen as patriotic. Rather, it was an appropriate response to his remarkably bad decision. Iraqi television is part of Saddam Hussein's government, and Arnett must have known - or certainly should have known - that the purpose of the interview was propaganda, not journalism. NBC executives rightly decided that they did not want someone with such bad judgment as one of their reporters.

The battlefield war will end long before the political war does, and yet American television news is providing its viewers with little of the intellectual ammunition they will need over the long haul.

One of the news media's most important duties in a democracy is to give the public the tools it needs to judge its government's competence. That is not happening.

As the American networks stumble, other news providers are emerging as important players in shaping global public opinion.

Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, for example, presents its 40 million viewers with an angrier view of the war than Americans are seeing. While an American network story about civilian casualties shows a pool of blood on a sidewalk, Al-Jazeera displays the ripped bodies of dead children. While U.S. newscasts spend a few seconds reporting demonstrations against the war, Al-Jazeera lets the protesters' contagious anger sweep across its audience.

The Bush administration criticizes Al-Jazeera for slanting its reports, but much of the world believes that the American networks, which so gingerly address the truth about war and so protectively depict U.S. policy, are the real sources of biased news.

Impassioned journalistic voices are being heard around the world, but not here. American television, comfortable and smug, continues to present the war as patriotic entertainment. The American public, oblivious to real reality, marches to its own isolated drummer.

Nothing good can come of this.

Philip Seib is the Lucius W. Nieman professor of journalism at Marquette University.

A version of this story appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on April 6, 2003.

[UB355]

I'm going to respond to this lefty American Hater. Your commments will be helpful.

[Sir Gawain]

Anti-American feeling on "the Arab street" is boiling.

And the sky is blue. Big deal.

[Zipporah]

This paper is parroting one I read earlier today.. they can't even come up with original work.

[ladyinred]

I will have my keyboard smokin' momentarily!

[BunnySlippers]

What's funny is that during WWII it would have been inconceivable to show "the German's side". What's wrong with rooting for America?

[Cedric]

"The American public, oblivious to real reality, marches to its own isolated drummer."


The "real reality"? I'm amazed by your dumb dumbness, Prof. Seib. Turn-in your drum sticks, you're out of the band!

[sinkspur]

If you can believe it, this little twerp (he measures 5'2") was actually a "media reporter" for WFAA- the Dallas ABC affiliate and the Dallas Morning News before he went back to academia.

He would have been hung if he had written these things in the DMN.

[najida]

bBasically,
He said the US public was too stupid to figure out a complex issue....
The media wasn't going in for emotional manipulation because it puts the wellbeing of our troops slightly above that of civilians...
That we aren't trembling in our boots because the Arab world is gettin' pissy (they are ALWAYS pissy, fercryin'outloud!)
Because of it being a "complex" issue it can only a negative outcome when weighed vs having a positive one...

I don't appreciate being called stupid. And I am not.

What a grump!
Yep, nothing good came come out of this (for him)...

[najida]

Basically,
He said the US public was too stupid to figure out a complex issue....
The media wasn't going in for emotional manipulation because it puts the wellbeing of our troops slightly above that of civilians...
That we aren't trembling in our boots because the Arab world is gettin' pissy (they are ALWAYS pissy, fercryin'outloud!)
Because of it being a "complex" issue it can only a negative outcome when weighed vs having a positive one...

I don't appreciate being called stupid. And I am not.

What a grump!
Yep, nothing good came come out of this (for him)...

[NorthGA]

At the first of the war, we had reports from a few journalists who were determined to go their own way, not be embedded journalists and tell us the "real" truth. Several were quickly killed and a few narrowly escaped to tell their story.

I vote for this guy to show some real manhood and report from iraq as a "not embedded" journalist and give us the real truth.

[Normal4me]

So this guys problem is that the US media isn't showing blown up people on the TV? I am sure with a few minutes of searching the web that I could find any and all of the gore I could stand. Do I choose to? No. Would it change my mind about this war? No

[vharlow]

I guess those Iraqi's should have embedded media in their Republican Guard divisions to show the real war!

[Bob J]

Translation ..."No one is listening to our propaganda".

[Cedric]

Take solace in knowing that this guy has to live in Milwaukee. That's karma, baby!

[sd-joe]

What I find scary is that this guy is a Professor of Journalism.

In other words, he is teaching this crap to students wanting to become journalists.

[Diddle E. Squat]

94-61

[lelio]

Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, for example, presents its 40 million viewers with an angrier view of the war than Americans are seeing.
And this is news? Who hasn't heard of Al-Jazeera? What does the dear professor have to say about Iraq kicking out two of their reporters as they didn't toe the Iraqi line?

[MCH]

Typical Bush-hating lefty. All people of his ilk want is gore and more gore - particularly Al Gore. More Gore won't help, you moron. American's don't need to see either Al or dead kids to catch on to reality. We're not like the mind-numbed "Arab street" who are lied to and emotionally manipulated every day. This twit no doubt wishes American media acted like Arab media, which exists merely to control the sheeple.

As for more Gore (pun intended) on TV... Bush won. Get over it.

[headsonpikes]

The real problem is an extreme shortage of intelligent, broadly-educated journalists. Hardly ever is their insightful, riveting, and illuminating television or mass print journalism.

The media is stupid, not the public. It's the media who ask the witless questions at press conferences. It's the empty-headed journalists who are ahistorical airheads, not the public.

And yes, this 'Professor' is warring on the integrity of young minds.

[My back yard]

LOl, I know what you mean. If I am reading garbage, I don't mind so much if it has some measure of originality or cleverness about it.