Posted on 05/30/2004 8:17:58 AM PDT by ElkGroveDan
CHICAGO (AP) - It has been all but impossible to miss the widely circulated photos of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, which set off an all-out media blitz. And there are more images that have yet to be made public. But when is enough enough?
A recent CBS News poll found that while 55 percent of respondents said the prison abuse scandal is "very serious" problem, 61 percent felt the media has spent too much time on coverage, compared with 49 percent who said the same shortly after the news broke in late April.
Associated Press reporters in several regions of the country fanned out this week to talk to Americans about the issue, catching many people as they took time to sip coffee or settle down for a meal.
Several college students near Chicago bucked the national poll, fervently calling for more, or all, the photos to be made public.
They included Michaela DeSoucey, a 26-year-old graduate student in sociology at Northwestern University who thinks there should be more coverage of the scandal, not less.
"I think people are too afraid to confront what's going on beyond their coffee and muffin," DeSoucey said as she sat outside the Unicorn Cafe in Evanston, Ill., with her sheep dog, Mickey. "Maybe it's just the conspiracy theorist in me, but I think there's a reason they're being hidden."
Inside the cafe, Tom Graber, a 32-year-old math instructor at Northwestern, agreed that the coverage has been worthwhile. Because of it, he said, "my impression is that reporters have been more aggressive" about war coverage in general.
Others - no matter their opinion of the war - have had enough and are experiencing what you might call "abuse fatigue."
Leslie Johnson, a 27-year-old New Yorker who was stepping out of a Starbucks coffee house in Harlem on her day off, said she thinks it's "good for people to see the other side" of war.
But coverage of the prison abuse in Iraq has reminded her of the twin towers falling on Sept. 11, 2001.
"When 9/11 happened, they kept showing the buildings being hit," she said. In this case, too, she's "had enough of seeing it."
"You don't want to see people being humiliated," said Johnson, who works in publishing.
Jean Dorsainvil, a 52-year-old New Yorker who's originally from Haiti, said he's cut back on his consumption of stories about the prison abuse because he was starting to get upset at the United States.
"I started building hate in my heart," said Dorsainvil, a fire safety director for a Manhattan building.
He thinks it's important that people involved are punished but wants the media to stop showing the images. "If you keep showing the pictures, you inflame things," he said.
Even at the 35th Street Bistro in the Seattle neighborhood of Fremont - where it's difficult to find someone who supports the war - people were more than ready to stop seeing the images.
"I kind of just turn it off now. It's just kind of disappointing," said Jennifer Lim, a 35-year-old restaurant server who was dining at the bistro.
She also worries about its impact on the United States' image overseas - since she already found it to be low during her travels to southeast Asia and Mexico a few years ago.
Hal Abbott, a 50-year-old therapist from Seattle who sat nearby, agreed: "Politically it's hurt us a great deal in terms of our allies - and in terms of our enemies," he said.
Penny Walker, a 40-year-old from Houston who home schools her children, also is concerned about the impact on U.S. troops in Iraq.
"The media is how people get first impressions and by the media exploiting it so much - yes, I guess people need to know some of what's going on - but across the country and across other countries ... everybody's thinking all Americans are like that. And I don't think we are," said Walker as she ate eggs, bacon and toast at a hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas, with the youngest of her three daughters, 9-year-old Caitlin.
Steven Clegg, a 21-year-old mechanic from Cross Lanes, a suburb of Charleston, W. Va., agrees that there's been too much coverage. He's even found himself questioning the photos' authenticity.
But either way, he said the scandal was bound to affect people's thinking about the war, including his own.
"I still wonder what we're doing over there," Clegg said as he sat on a mall bench, watching his brother's two young children and feeding one of them with a bottle.
Still others say the coverage has had little impact on them.
Bobby Brevidence - a 33-year-old father of three serving up barbecue brisket, ribs and fixings at "Up in Smoke B-B-Q" in Hillsboro, Texas - said he hasn't had much time to dwell on the scandal.
He also said customers haven't brought it up much, either.
"Mostly, people come in here and you hear talk about gas prices," he said. Unleaded regular at the gas station next door was selling for just under $1.94.
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Associated Press writers Deepti Hajela in New York; Kristen Gelineau in Seattle; Bobby Ross in Dallas; and Erik Schelzig in Charleston, W. Va., contributed to this report.
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Press bias is often a slippery thing where pundits and experienced liberal debaters are able to argue away your complaints with semantics.
Only the AP though, would do an "average man on the street" story by visiting coffee shops in college towns, and talking to 26 year old grad students. I wonder why there is no interview of a 52 year old man leaving an auto parts store in Bakersfield, California, or a 70-year old woman on her way out of morning Mass at a cathedral in any major city.
Most importantly, the poll showed that people are sick of the stupid issue, yet they set out to put a story together full of people who want to see more. And they wonder why so many of us have abandoned so-called traditional news sources.
I personally am fed up with the over-kill in the major media. It's been going on for years. That's why I get my news HERE.
Yeh. What we need is a good half-day car chase on FoxNews. It has been a while.
The abuse of the Iraqi prisoners was carried out by a few bad apples who are going to be held accountable for their actions and punished severely. It is quite possible that those most directly involved will be locked up for life. On the other hand, the abuse of innocent (not prisoners) Iraqi people was carried out systematically and with the government's (Saddam) full approval.
Big difference there.
On another note, whatever happened to the captured Saddam Hussein? Since his capture in December, there has hardly been a peep made about him by the lamestream media. When will the trials begin? Public trials of Saddam Hussein will surely put things in perspective. I think the Bush Administration is making a big mistake by not putting Saddam front and center and making his trial a big priority. Will Saddam's trial begin soon? If not, why not?
"Most importantly, the poll showed that people are sick of the stupid issue..."
Your critique of this text book example of media bias is spot on. People are sick of this, and after the first three days it would have disappeared if not for media flogging.
Not ONE SINGLE PERSON has mentioned this to me, EVER. Even my lefty friend didn't bring it up, with her ususal disclaimer of "I know we're not to discuss controversial issues..." Nothing. My left-wing friend couldn't have resisted saying SOMETHING, if it was striking a chord at all. But my friend is a total hawk on 9/11 and the terrorists, and I can only surmise that she does not care if a few of them had panties on their heads.
Over a 28 day period the NY Times ran some 50 front page stories on the abuse scandal. The Berg story debuted on page 16.
Could it be because that's where AP reporters hang out to hook up with their choice of casual partners?
Hey, if the AP reporters, like Scheherezade-whatever, can make blanket generalizations about American soldiers, why can't I do the same with them?
Prison Abuse photos were over blown. There is prison abuse in the United States if anyone is interested in a cause.
I saw some from Arab nations acting like this was just all so bad, while in their own nations, they have what is called
"honor killings" of young girls and women by their own families, and the murderers escape with little or no punishment. These people are in total disgrace themselves.
I can not see anyone doing this as human.
The same people, who do NOT want to even consider a possibility of a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, are the ones who know in their hearts that W, Rummy, and Condi ordered that "torture" in Iraq.
Here's a question: if the photos show humiliation of the prisoners, doesn't plastering them all over the TV just make it worse for them?
So, the only time war coverage is good is when it casts our own country in a bad light. I bet he doesn't mind the lack aggressiveness of CNN, in reporting Saddam's torture of Iraqis, when he was still in power? How about Nick Berg? The U.N. Oil For Food Scandal? The innocents who were hung off of that bridge?
These people make me want to vomit.
Well, ya gotta break a few eggs, to make an omelet. The end justifies the means, ya know. /sarcasm
"...doesn't plastering them all over the TV just make it worse for them?"
The media isn't concerned about the "humiliation" of the prisoners. They want to humiliate the President, Rummy, and Condi Rice and the rest of the good men and women who are serve.
There is no question that there is culpability in the Army command for putting idiots in charge of prisoners and in effect setting up what resulted. No doubt some of the prisoners would kill every soldier in sight if someone handed one of them a gun. On the other hand most of the prisoners were probably vicitims of circumstance and for that reason it was inexcusable for what happened to them.
Mistakes are always made in the Army or anywhere else in life. Thats why we have laws and police to enforce the laws.
However, to keep spouting this disaster over and over helps no one, least of all our troops that are over there getting shot at around the clock.
The comments of the brainwashed college students who technically can be assumed to be intelligent just shows that we should reinstitute the draft and educate them in a little bit of discipline.
How about a show of hands as to how many Americans are sick to death of politicized news? Why won't the pollsters ever ask that question? (Rhetorical question.)
AP et al can ignore them, but they'll be voting November 2nd. And you can bet that the great majority will be giving the nod to Dubya.
"Mostly, people come in here and you hear talk about gas prices," he said. Unleaded regular at the gas station next door was selling for just under $1.94.
What does the price of gas have to do with the prison issue? Maybe someone at the Unicorn Cafe might know. Better rush back there and ask another sociology student.
"I think people are too afraid to confront what's going on beyond their coffee and muffin," DeSoucey said as she sat outside the Unicorn Cafe in Evanston, Ill., with her sheep dog, Mickey.
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Am I the only one who sees the unintended irony in this fatuous nitwit's statement? |
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