========================= INVERTED MEDIA & THE WAR ========================= By Norman Solomon - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --> [Send the 1-line message GET GULF-WAR ORWELL ACTIV-L to ] [LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET for a copy of this file. ] --> [Send GET ACTIV-L ARCHIVE ACTIV-L to above address for a ] [listing with brief descriptions of other files available] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - As soon as the war began, Time magazine defined "collateral damage" this way -- "a term meaning dead or wounded civilians who should have picked a safer neighborhood." In U.S. news media, the rare mention of civilian casualties is routinely followed by immediate denial of responsibility. "We must point out again and again that it is Saddam Hussein who put these innocents in harm's way," Tom Brokaw declared on NBC, a network owned by one of the nation's largest military contractors, General Electric. The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour -- one of TV's leading war boosters -- aired a few moments of civilian casualty footage from Iraq, only to debunk it as "heavy-handed manipulation." On CBS, reporter Ron Allen said that "Iraq is trying to gain sympathy" by showing grisly film of bombed civilian sites. Connie Chung chimed in that Saddam is "trying to break the resolve of the United States and its allies." And what a resolve it is. News accounts routinely refer to "the enemy" without a hint of human identity. One TV network newscast has described Iraqi soldiers as resembling "cockroaches" from the air. At the start of February, the New York Times published an unusually large cartoon across the top of the op-ed page. Titled "The Descent of Man," it showed a man in suit-and-tie, a gorilla, a monkey, a snake, and finally Saddam Hussein. Avuncular CBS journalist Charles Osgood called the bombing of Iraq "a marvel." His colleague Jim Stewart extolled "two days of almost picture-perfect assaults." On ABC, Peter Jennings exulted in the "brilliance of laser- guided bombs" set off by the U.S. military. But the next day he labeled an Iraqi missile "a horrifying killer." With the United States at war, the U.S. mass media's inversion is automatic. Despite the savage and continuous bombings of populated areas in Iraq, it is the U.S. that must be portrayed as the mistreated party. Thus the swollen face of a captured American pilot on the cover of Newsweek. He was dropping bombs, but he is the victim. Denial is key to the psychological and political structures that support this war. The very magnitude of its brutality -- gratuitous and unmerciful -- requires heightened care to turn the meaning of events upside down. Those who massacre are the aggrieved; those being slaughtered with high-tech cruelty are depicted as subhumans, or "civilians who should have picked a safer neighborhood." The fault for the carnage must always be pegged away from home. "There is in Baghdad the feeling of a huge new Jonestown, with another demented preacher leading his flock to death," Time magazine reported at the start of the war. On a day when thousands of bombs struck Iraq, CBS correspondent Allen Pizzey called Saddam Hussein "psychologically deformed." But U.S. mainstream media cast no aspersions on the mental health of the man who ordered the carpet bombing. As with the brutality of warfare, so too the geopolitical analysis. Inversion is to denial what jet fuel is to an air war. Since last summer we have heard endless insistence that Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government must be stopped, for the sake of world peace and human security. But by now, a few weeks into the war, there is ample evidence that this timeworn propaganda line has masked a starkly different truth: George Bush and the U.S. government must be stopped, for the sake of world peace and human security. Mass media, functioning as key mechanisms of denial, keep distorting lurid events. The "terrorism" most massively unleashed in the Middle East is being inflicted by the USA. This truth is so overwhelming that it must be denied at every turn. Wide areas of Iraq and Kuwait are incessantly shattered by bombs that destroy life with the same terroristic finality -- and with no more justification -- than the occasional Scud missiles landing in Israel. The few Israeli victims of Iraq's attacks have gotten extensive and empathetic news coverage in the United States; the many Iraqi victims of U.S. attacks get only avoidance. In Israel, a few innocents have been harmed. In Iraq, a huge number have already been massacred. The anguish of Jewish Americans, about the random missiles falling on Israel, has been a hot topic in U.S. mass media. The anguish of Iraqi-Americans and others of Arab descent has gotten little attention. Yet Iraqis, not Israelis, are being slaughtered en masse. In the inverted world of newspeak, the double standards and duplicities must be enormous and never-ending. Moral outrage is carefully aimed away from home. So it was natural, in a sick kind of way, for New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal to demand that Saddam Hussein be held responsible for "war crimes against Kuwait, Israel and coalition prisoners" -- while editors never allow the suggestion that George Bush and other U.S. government officials should be held responsible for their war crimes. All the while, "sorties" continue to "pound" areas where millions of Iraqi civilians live. Prevailing media biases include the insistence on draining life from discussions of life-and-death subjects. What those who dominate the airwaves and print media keep conveying, with their flat tones and euphemistic language, is that the Pentagon's wholesale destruction of human life should be discussed without emotion; they want to anesthetize us to the horrors that this war entails at every moment. To resist this media anesthesia, we need to be able to feel our sadness and anger. And we need to track the techniques of unidentified flying propaganda, so that we can develop effective countermeasures. Among the pro-war biases that must be fought are the numerous ways that news media seek to objectify "the enemy," and justify the air war that continues -- mass murder, by any other name. Norman Solomon is co-author of "Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media." ------------------------------------------------------------------ From PeaceNet article: ** Topic: Media inversion & the war ** ** Written 11:07 am Feb 4, 1991 by fair in cdp:udc.media ** ------------------------------------------------------------------ Phone: (408) 338-4341 PeaceNet address: fair Internet: cdp!fair@labrea.stanford.edu Bitnet: cdp!fair%labrea@stanford UUCP: uunet!pyramid!cdp!fair ------------------------------------------------------------------ FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) 130 W. 25th Street New York, NY 10001 (212)633-6700 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Norman Solomon is an author, investigative journalist, board member (and former D.C. coordinator) of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), one of this country's most successful and articulate, media-bias watchdog groups. He has visited Moscow eight times in the Gorbachev era, written articles that have appeared in numerous publications both in this country and abroad (including: "The Nation," "Newsday," and "The Progressive"). He has appeared on national media such as: "ABC's Good Morning America," "CNN's Crossfire" program. He is co-author of "Killing Our Own: The disaster of America's experience with Atomic Radiation." ############################################################### # Harel Barzilai for Activists Mailing List (AML) # ################################################################ { For more info about ACTIV-L or PeaceNet's brochure send } { inquiries to harel@dartmouth.edu / mathrich@umcvmb.bitnet } To join AML, just send the 1-line message "SUB ACTIV-L " to: LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET; you should receive a confirmation message within 2 days. Alternate address: LISTSERV@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU Qs/problems: Rich Winkel, MATHRICH@UMCVMB.["MISSOURI.EDU" or "BITNET"]