The Unseen War

"Shortly after the war, according to Peter Van Sant, a CBS correspondent in London, his network seriously considered showing some of it in a week-long series entitled "The Unseen War." The idea was dropped, however, because two days after the war there were not enough combat correspondents left in Saudi Arabia to put the program together." (Fialka p.6)

For as far back as can be remembered, for as long as governments have been interacting with the media, throughout the course of any international conflict, the pentagon and other organizations have been withholding facts from civilians in attempt to sway public opinion. It is always fascinating to hear that the government will keep its own peoples in the dark about hard data in order to maintain consistent support of a war effort. These ideas are only all too familiar to us as Americans; however, our county's management of dealing with the media makes sense.

While some want to be exposed to all the raw coverage of a war, many others would rather pass on the opportunity of experiencing more than they have to. Personally, I believe that programs like the ones mentioned in the quotation SHOULD be put on the air that way individuals may be in control of what they're exposed to, and not the government.

Are You A Couch Potatoe!?

" As Scholars of popular culture we spend a good deal of our time resisting the widespread assumption that perople are passive consumers ot the mass media"(Penley&Ross)

Is it safe to say that people who sit on their couch and watch television all day during their free time are persuded and influenced by the media they watch. In many the cases of the war I believe this to me true . The media plays a huge role in manupilating and altering their viewers opinions,basically brainwashing them. Forcing some individuals to support a war that they really know nothing about,but is it safe to say that it is the media or just the war itself. Of course the television plays a role in the war for those individuals who passively consume the media. The television can be used as a weapon during the war it is present in every home and most of the shows we watch define who we are as people.

Containment of War

Amy Waldman's New York Times article Bomb Remnants Increase War's Toll relays a symbolic message of the containment of war. Devastation meant for soldiers and the military are not always contained within the context or physical structure of a war. In Afghanistan, children were mistaking undetonated bomb parts for food rations and becoming severely injured. The most innocent of any nation or culture are its children who were being mauled by these weapons of war. Advocacy groups are taking a stand and begin to find the remnants before it falls into the hands of the unknowing youth,

"An explosion sounds every few minutes, the signal that one more threat has been neutralized."

The tactic of containing the potential devastation of militaristic weapons for civilian safety is similar to the anti- land mine movement once lead by the late Princess Diana. Symbolically, the message remains that all aspects of war are not limited to the battlefield nor solely felt by soldiers.

Are Americans still for the war?

"One of the uncomfortable realities of the war on terrorism is that we Americans have killed many more people in Afghanistan than died in the attack on the World Trade Center."

This quote shows how the war on terror is strong, it is believed that America has killed more people than Osama bin Laden. Why are we killing so many people? not only terrorists, but also many civilians are being murdered. Through so much fighting it seems that we might be pushing the issues to far. We are so used to being the positive that it is hard to believe that we could be involved in such murderous numbers. But it is for our own good we are told, by creating these numbers we are creating peace. Not everyone sees it as a good thing, we are killing civilians at an incredible rate and the only answer we have is that it is for our national security. At the end of the day America is not very well liked and by the end of the war who will stand by such a country if these numbers keep adding up

A Dead Soldiers Disrespect

" President Bush had seen that photographs of the coffins of service members killed in Iraq arriving at Dover Air Force Base that were made public on Thursday and agreed with the Pentagon that releasing the photographs was wrong."

" We must pay attention to the privacy and to the sensitvity of the families of the fallen," Mr. Duffy said. " And that's what the policy is based on and that has to be the utmost concern."


Understanding that the medias job is to get out information and release it in a timely fashion, the question we have to ask ourselves is, how far can the media go in terms of what is being released and should they have a limit as to what is being displayed? In this article, there are arguments suggesting that the media has taken their access to far. Some say that releasing coffins of dead soldiers is wrong and confidental. They also agree that the family should know about the deaths before seeing it on the 10 o'clock news. However, in the same respect, the media outlets feel like it is their duty to keep up with what is current and what is going on. So, who's right and who's wrong? It is wrong on the medias part to release pictures that aren't ready to be seen. And it is right to get full consent from the families of the soldiers that were killed.

Couch Potatoes Aren't Dupes

"War makes people stupid not tv." The writers were referring to the fact that during the Persian Gulf War, people were not as much protesting the war, but supporting it. The war or information reported about the war was always on tv. People were glued to the television sets to find out any new information. This was a war where the flow of information was controlled by the millitary. The military is not a democratic institution. So the average citizen who watched the news for updates on the war received what the military wanted them to see and not much else.

A Merciful War

"Yet these critics seemed less exercised by the much larger number of
preventable deaths in Afghanistan from routine ailments. I've sat in mud
with parents sobbing as their children died of diarrhea, and trust me: Their grief is every bit as crushing as that of parents who lose children to bombs." Nicholas D. Kristof

After the Vietnam war America became extremely delicate with the use of force against civilians. The media was portraying the American soldiers in a negative light. Yes they were over there killing the Afghan people, and yes during war time civilians are bound to die, but it was never without cause. A lot of people were dieing for even more people to be saved. America try to help Afghanistan so their pregnant mothers and babies wouldn't die over simple complications such as diarrhea. Get vaccinations over there so they could keep up with everyday health. What Kristof is trying to say is that death is death even if the children are dieing from disease or bombs they all count as one lost, so why not protect against the preventable ones.

ACCESS DENIED!

" Journalists have been denied access to American troops in the field in Afghanistan to a greater degree than in any previous war involving military U.S forces. Bush administration policy has kept reporters from combat units units in a fashion unimagined in Vietnam, and one that's more restrictive even than the burdensome constraints on media in the Persian Gulf." - Niel Hickey

The article "Access Denied", by Columbia Journalism Review editor Niel Hickey, is all about the grievances held by the press over their lack of access to information and footage of the war in Afghanistan. According to the writer the bush administration has been all too successful at shutting out the members of the press and providing them with even less information than provided during the pool system of the Gulf war. Much of what the author emphasizes has to do with the fact that the Pentagon and the press are two opposing forces trying to coexist with each other, but not quite seeing eye to eye about the sharing of information during war time. The author recounts many situations in which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush administration have completely limited the press access to critical news stories dealing with events in the war, such as air raids, attacks, and other such operations. In my opinion, the Bush administration is doing a smart thing for the war by limiting the press access. The government has learned from the mistakes of the Vietnam War and has taken the steps necessary not to make the same mistakes. Of course, this puts them directly at odds with the press, who's sole purpose during war time is to bring the people information about the events of that war. My message to the U.S government is this.If keeping the press out of the war means winning it , then by all means, keep them out!

Vietnam Syndrome, cornerstone of American foreign policy?

"What about withdrawal? Few Americans who have served in Vietnam can stomach this idea...Withdrawal...means that the United States' prestige will be lowered throughout the world, and it means the pressure of Communism on the rest of South East Asia will intensify. Lastly, withdrawal means that throughout the world the enemies of the West will be encouraged to try insurgencies like the one in Vietnam." David Halberstam, The Making of a Quagmire, 1965.



Mr. Halberstam could not possibly have known how widespread the sentiments expressed in the quote above were accepted as Gospel by the military, politicians, and the American public. Despite the near total debunking of 'The Domino Theory', the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rapprochement with China, and the new Global Economy (which makes war ever more ruinous for both combatants and noncombatants alike), American Foreign Policy in the post Vietnam era continues to be based on the manipulation of the populace by fear mongering and the threat of annihilation by enemies both real and imagined. This has the effect of greatly increasing the power of the Federal Government Vi's a Vi's State Governments in general, and enhances the position of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government in particular. The founding fathers would not be happy, especially the Jeffersonians. A practical result of this concentration of power in the hands of the President and his Cabinet is the need to perpetuate certain public perceptions regarding world events. A free and independent press makes this impossible, hence the antagonistic attitude of the Federal Government and the Military Industrial Complex towards the mass media. The book "Second Front-Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War", which goes to very great lengths to detail the strenuous efforts on the part of both the Feds and the Pentagon to disguise the truth of our foreign policy in the U.S., is as topical Today as it was in 1992.

Burned out U.S. ammunition vehicle, with dead soldiers, killed in a 'Friendly Fire incident, 1991

Cover it up!

"The U.S. military on Monday denied covering up evidence of air strikes against an Afghan village on July 1 which locals say killed dozens of people celebrating a wedding."

This quote talks about a cover up that might have taken place in Kakraka, Afghanistan on July 1st. According to the U.S. one of their gunships were under fire and no other choice but to return fire. And on the other hand Afghan locals say that there was no attack, but rather a celebration and was soon ended tragically by U.S. gunfire.

"It is not clear whether the Times story was referring to the preliminary U.N. report or a subsequent one, but the original U.N. findings make uncomfortable reading for the United States."

While there are two sides to the story it is hard to figure out which side is the truth. As U.S. citizens pertaining to war issues are only allowed to hear what the government wants us to hear. What is put out on the news is being filtered and we have no real clue what is true and what is false. In war there will always be a cover up or a lie here or there that is just how it is and how it will always be, because if we knew everything that went on we would protest every war.

Pentagon, media debate access

Mark Jurkowitz, a staff member of The Boston Globe, wrote in 2002 about how unhappy the news media were with the lack of cooperation they were recieving from military commanders in the field, and from officials at the Pentagon regarding access to people and casualty reports in the early days in the War in Afghanistan: "We continue to be frustrated with limited or lack of access on the ground and in the region", said Sandy Johnson, Washington bureau chief for The Associated Press."

The article goes on to describe how the press is stonewalled in it's attempts to gain any information beyond that which is packaged by the Pentagon for public consumption. At the end of the article, the author mentions that once reporters are allowed to travel with the troops, the natural distrust normally disappears:

"There's so much handwringging about secrecy and classified material, and once your inside, (military) people say, 'we like this" Unfortunately Mr. Jurkowitz has missed the point. The Pentagon has decided that from now on, the rules have changed. The U.S. military neither wants nor needs the cooperation of the news media when fighting modern wars, as the public has no stomach for the deaths of civilians, or of the death of U.S. soldiers. Ignorance is bliss, and too bad if that makes for a boring nightly news cast.

The Pentagon does not any more pictures like this one, taken during the Vietnam War, undermining public support for the war in Afghanistan.

SECOND FRONT:DESIGNING WAR

"Anti-war media critics have complained about network television's proclivity to "sanitize" the face of battle with video graphics. But this missed the point of good television design, which is meant to attract viewers as well as hide ugliness. Well done graphics, in theory, are supposed to help ratings."- JOHN R. MACARTHUR

The designing war chapter of the book Second Front, by John R. Macarthur is all about the how the news media aided the Pentagon in its goal of hiding the fact that people were being killed, by using only graphic images and not images of fighting and death to help explain what was going on in the gulf. The government had learned from the mistakes of the media coverage of the Vietnam war in which the news media had an open flow of violent war images to show to viewers, hence ending public support for the Vietnam war. because of the lack of prevalent images given to reporters and newscasters during the gulf war conflict they had to be innovative and use computer graphics and slick images to help the people at home understand the war. This did however allow for a , as described by Macarthur, "the coming of age for broadcast graphics". I believe that under great pressure comes my best work. This was the case for the graphic designers who worked for the news media during the gulf war. they were under pressure by their bosses to help explain a war with so few images provided. In such a situation they could not help , but rise to the occasion and put out some of their best work. They cannot be faulted because the Pentagon kept a tight lid on what was going on in the Gulf. They had a job to do, which was to deliver news about the war, without necessarily having access to all that much visual information. I think that in the end all parties got what they wanted. The pentagon kept support for the war because of the lack of images available concerning what was actually happening in the war. The designers and other news personnel got what they wanted, which were ratings. And the American people got a nice, clean, guilt free war.