Reporting on War for Broadcast

Last week we heard a number of though provoking speakers and between that and reading some of the last few bloggs a question is raised in my mind. What about the broadcast coverage of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan?

In studying history I have read that one of the biggest differences between the Vietnam War and previous wars was that the horrors of war were broadcast. Moving images of people being killed, screaming children and burning monks reached Americans in their living room chairs for the first time in history.

Many people attribute this visualization of the war as a factor in the “cultural revolution” that followed and the strong anti-war sentiment that permeated especially the younger citizens.

Helen Thomas said that the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have not been given a human face by the press. She said that the press has reported on numbers and failed to tell the story of the consequences of war to individual human beings. I don’t know if this is true or not? But it makes me question, should we be seeing cars actually being blown up, or a child in a burning building or the crowded Fallujah hospital after it was bombed by US missiles?

With all of the violence already on TV would putting all of these real life horrors up for everyone to see do anything positive for this country. No one wants to see such human brutality, unless you are watching an early Schwarzenegger movie, and he makes ironic quips after each kill. But then again don’t the American people have a right to know and see everything?

Congressman Cooper (D-Tenn.) told me that President Bush has not sufficiently called on the American people to contribute to the Iraq War, other than funding it through public dept that most citizens hardly know about. He told us to go shopping. In previous wars everyone was asked to chip in. Think about your grandparents if they lived in the US during World War II. The war wasn’t an abstract idea; even for those that didn’t serve it was often a determining factor in what it was that you did every day.

If we assume that every citizen has a right to contribute to American policy through their votes, don’t they have a right to know and see everything? We do pay for it.

Pictures evoke emotions, and often emotions make people react irresponsibly. US solders being dragged through Fallujah was a sickening sight, as was the Guantanamo prisoners lying in a pile, as was two massive towers falling. These images changed things more than anything that anyone wrote or said about them. Should we see everything? All of it, from the burning hospitals to US solders bleeding to kids running around with machine guns? I honestly don’t know. Would the clarity that Americans would gain be worth the intrusive sadness and emotion provoking reactions that might come from seeing everything?

War is not pretty. I haven’t been to war, but I feel pretty confident saying that. Should Americans be forced to watch it as it happens?

Of course most people would probably just change the channel.

-lagan