BBC correspondent John Simpson isn’t a neophyte, nor is he an American political hack, grinding away on a dogma. That’s a good start for any actual news.
His article has some solid information, unlike many, which have been positively ghoulish or hopelessly biased to the point of wrecking their own credibility.
Historically, the bias is pretty normal. World War Two newsreels were frequently misleading, in terms of historical facts. The Allies’ own monumental blunders were rarely mentioned until the new school of historians, and some first hand biographies, started to come out in the 1950s.
Not that the accurate reporting got much thanks. When
Life Magazine published the pictures of dead Marines on a Pacific beach, there was an outcry about the pictures, not the casualties on places like Tarawa.
Spin has always been part of war reportage. The Korean and Vietnam wars were little different, until in Vietnam the sheer number of horrors, like the famous girl running down a road with napalm burns, were globally published. The media took up the baton, belatedly, and political opinion shifted drastically.
You could call that “Backspin”, reversal of the original spin.
The world’s media hasn’t done too good a job in its own handling of the Iraq war.
Iraq has been a goldmine for finding markets for articles supporting and opposing the war.
Fox News was pilloried in the movie OutFoxed for its editorial position, an accusation made much more credible by outspoken rightwing chat show hosts. The Bush administration did nothing for its own cause by mishandling its original motive for the invasion, and rather pitiful attempts at spin.
The anti-war approach wasn’t too stunningly impressive, either. Some correspondents were grinding out stories about being “bogged down in Afghanistan” before the Taliban were even evicted from Kabul. I would have been a lot more impressed if I hadn't heard practically every cliche from Vietnam endlessly recycled.
This is just playing to different audiences, not to be confused with providing actual information.
"Stealth brown nosing" would be one description.
The facts haven't been lucky in their choice of company, either. Other correspondents have dwelt on casualties, without knowing how to analyze them. Well, OK, most people aren’t familiar with the methods, and a body count is the simple way of approaching the subject.
This is just a brief example of technical reportage in a war:
The actual figures for Iraq casualties are 4000 dead, and about 30-40,000 wounded.
*** Note: These are very rough, abstracted figures. The figure for wounded is an estimate based on previous figures for 2007.
In point of fact, for the same period in Vietnam, most of the 50,000 fatalities were incurred. The number of wounded was stated to be approximately 250,000.
The number of troops deployed in the two wars were different. Vietnam rotations had roughly 3-4 the number of troops deployed on all rotations in Iraq. So by Vietnam’s standards, Iraq’s casualties equate proportionately to 3-4 times their actual numbers.
Actual casualty rate, for fatalities: 2-3%.
The rate for wounded in Iraq, obviously much higher, is more grounds for concern. If the same rate of wounded casualties had applied for Vietnam, the number of wounded would have quadrupled.
So, in fact, casualties, while high, are lower than previous wars, with the exception of the Gulf War.
A few other categories of subject aren't as forgivable.
In the "Not spinnable, not reported" category.
Then there's the other casualties, those coming home after service to a new hell, hasn’t exactly been getting much interest from the political shills on either side…unless it serves a political purpose.
The Iraq war casualties received the usual ex-service bum's rush outside the actual medical treatment, and even that took a bit of doing. The refurbishing of the miracle-working Johns Hopkins took a virtual Watergate to get anything done about the rundown buildings wounded personnel had to endure.
“Our brave boys” became homeless, families endured horrible domestic suffering, and all that proved to media coverage was that someone was right about something related to their position on the war.
Right about
what, for God's sake? I would suggest to anyone that if "We're right" equates to human misery, "We" need to review our priorities, and pretty damn quickly.
Or, more often, the coverage was a self congratulatory piece about someone finally doing something about the totally unnecessary destruction of their lives by pure incompetence.
When did anyone get around to doing anything about their actual situation? Eventually, years later in many cases, and only after a lot of denial was overcome the hard way, and there's still a lot left to do.
Nor did the other inevitable aftermath of combat get a lot of sympathy, for quite a while. Combat is high stress, and it affects everyone who experiences it.
Just not those reporting on it from the Elephants Graveyard Top Floor Penthouse Suite, apparently.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is a deadly medical condition, never to be underestimated as a form of misery, just wasn’t fashionable in the right places.
But it did ultimately get some attention, even from the
Department of Defense. As news, it was normally only covered when it suited the purposes of media coverage and editorial policy. It took years for some major mainstream media to even look at it.
(The DoD link is included as a sort of thematic balance to this opinion piece. This is the
official news.)
See any particular devotion to the facts, so far?
Where, exactly, is the moral high ground here?
Whose principles are being upheld?
In the unlikely event that global media is claiming to have any principles, can anyone describe them? At all?
In terms of actual reports of military activity, the normal freak show of imagery and innuendo tends to be more soundtrack to the spin.
Military facts were generally as much of an inconvenience to media as they were to politicians.
Servicemen tried to do their job did as much as they could, to try and explain the situation on the ground to their superiors. Some of their superiors tried to make their own points about Iraq to those who needed to know, but the policy makers were as usual hypnotized by media coverage.
The media, pro and anti war, has made as many negative contributions to Iraq as half-baked policies and ignorant administrators with its incessant biases and spin.
Again, the media didn’t really report a lot beyond basics.
It just took sides.
The actual military perspective rarely got a mention. Those servicemen were doing their jobs, telling their bosses what was wrong, which is what soldiers are trained to do, regardless of the risks. (It's called "professionalism", an old word some people may remember from before everything became a networking exercise.)
They were virtually accused of treason by one side, after having been called war criminals by the other.
Abu Ghraib got a lot of coverage, a lot of outrage, and absolutely nothing in terms of operational policies. The media proved itself quite toothless when dealing with a propaganda catastrophe.
You can report it, you can give it endless airtime, and what actually gets done about it winds up on the sports pages under the Little League Pizzas for Strikes scandal. What happens to detainees now? Any theories, because there's been nothing reported for years.
The media has somehow managed to turn itself into a process without a product on Iraq, like a noisy weather report. Politicians are now avoiding being cornered on policies, having learned from Vietnam what to expect. The threat is now public opinion, based on coverage, and it's much less of a threat because of the low standard of information and shallowness of inputs.
Backspin against media is now almost a reflex, for the public, which has learned to distrust media tactics and emphases. Really, you have to wonder how long the old edifice can stand up.
Then there were the contracts scandals, and the billions of dollars involved, received coverage like a passing comet. No follow ups, no further research, not much in-depth analysis beyond “There’s a big problem, folks”.
The dinosaurs may have mentioned that strange thing in the sky just before it hit, too. Massive indictment of the biggest budget in US history, serious issues, just not a lot of attention span.
The BBC article is actually OK, in many ways, even if there's quite a bit I don't agree about.
But it also does what so many reports on wars have done, it draws conclusions before there’s a conclusion.
This is supposed to be a nice clean role playing war. The West are the good guys, as usual.
Therefore:
All media are spotless, flawless, reporters of everything, even when they contradict themselves with every consecutive sentence.
Objectivity is whatever the media says it is, and every report means what they say it means, which is an exact quote from Humpty Dumpty.
The right is right because it’s the right.
The left is right because the right is the right.
Net contribution from both, precious little of any substance. Neither really seems to have gone looking for any facts. The facts had to go and find them.
By the ridiculous criteria of self righteousness, everybody else is always wrong.
Instant history is produced, because a country full of people with double degrees isn’t supposed to be able to understand instant history.
Here’s an opinion:
There are 4000 dead service people as a result of this war, and thousands of maimed service people. There are an unknown number of dead and maimed Iraqis.
Every single lie, distortion, biased analysis, fraudulent denial, self-serving bit of media parasitism, or any other sniveling facile bit of garbage ever produced by media about this war is a direct insult to them, and their families.
It’s also an insult to the entire human race.
Listen
Print
Social Comments ()
Digital Journal Comments (17)
Email this
Share on Facebook
