A Question to my Fellow Bloggers...
The story of Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt has been headline news for all of the major networks. Each of the stories were written in a way that highlight the risks that the reporters and crews take so regularly so they can show us what is really going on in Iraq (as well as other conflicts and wars).
"Bob and Doug were in Iraq doing what reporters do, trying to find out what's happening there up-close and firsthand. All of us are mindful of the risks and the dangers," Vargas said Sunday night in a closing note. Dozens of journalists have been injured, killed or kidnapped in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein -CBS
Woodruff and Vogt suffered in their efforts to give the Iraqi military's perspective - escpecially because their lives are in just as much danger, if not more so than the American troops, because the insurgents see them as collaborating with the enemy. They undertook the type of embed that western media rarely set about doing - telling the Iraqi soldier's story. -MSNBC Blogging Baghdad
We all know that what we see on the news is not the truth that the reporters are out there in the trenches trying to expose, but the viewpoints of the network on which they are aired, carefully edited to represent the story they want to present. Keeping that in mind, is it possible that the network media is exploiting this tragic incident (as well others like it) to highlight their own quest to get us the truth, and to help persuade us to trust them because of the lengths their crews go to so we can be informed?
posted by Anonymous at 2:56 PM
3 Comments:
your blog was very nice
I agree whole heartidly. It is a prime example of a "soft news" story. No real value to us *factually* but a story to, indeed, to build our trust. It is a huge (in it's use by many networks) Mass Media public relations campaign. Ever since the Dan Rather issue (CBS Anchor for the passed decade or more) the media has been on a unstoppable march to regain the public's trust.
To make a long comment short - This piece and others like it are indeed (in this Media student's opinion) progandist tactics to regain our trust in order to more easily persuade and guide us into whatever "truths" they (media) wants us to believe.
-R. O'Dell
The news media do go to great lengths to establish crediblity and trust with the televsion audience. And this is a soft story of sorts. At the same time it is important to note that more journalists have been killed covering this war story than in the entire Vietnam war. Attacks on the media do deserve publicity, even if it serves the commercial interests or public relations interests of the mainstream media. It is important that the public realizes the dangers faced by journalists covering these events. the amount of the coverage, the style of the coverage can be questioned, however, I would ask if these same networks gave as much airtime to the deaths of other non-american journalists. I would say that the amount of coverage devoted to this story is a natural reflection of the grief and anger caused by these injuries. If it can be spun for the benefit of the networks, it will be, but that's just standard operating procedure, not any kind of conspiracy.
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