Patrick Twigg

Doctor Doug Bock

EIU 4142G-700
23 April 2006

Media and the War on Terror

The news media has some serious flaws when it comes to reporting the news in an

unbiased and balanced manner. They are extremely political, guilty of ‘agenda setting’,

misrepresent the facts, release information that should not be released, and focus on a few

small stories to extreme.

The news media tends to grab hold of a story and focus on it constantly until there

is a new ‘big story’ that they can focus on and profit from instead. This is true whether

we are considering political stories, such as Monica Lewinski, or whether it is a young

girl who happens to disappear from a high school trip, like Natalee Holloway. I mean

there are hundreds of affairs and missing persons cases in the United States every week,

why does the media focus on such a minority of them? Or for that matter, runaway

brides, sporting scandals, Nancy Kerrigan’s knee, or Baby Jessica down a well? It is fine

and wonderful that these stories made the national news, but was it necessary to focus on

them so much that we still remember the names after 20 years?

The news media in the United States refuses to show the September 11th, 2001

attacks on television again, because of concerns that young children will be

psychologically damaged, but the same news media has no problem in the slightest

showing every single night the IED’s which kill American soldiers, the pools of blood

from suicide bombers in Iraqi mosques, or images of the crazy Kansas church that feels it

is a good thing to protest homosexuals in the nation at the funerals of fallen U.S. soldiers.
 As far as someone could tell from the United States media, the war revolves

around one thing, and only one thing, the number of deceased soldiers since September

11th, 2001. That is the one thing that gets mentioned every single time that the media

talks about the war.

Why is it that when the coal miners died in the coal mine explosion a couple of

months ago, the news media didn’t start going into the number of coal miners killed on

the job since the date of the first coal mine? Every time a police officer is killed, how

come we don’t hear about the number of officers killed in America since July 4th, 1776?

Or every time a firefighter dies in a fire, why don’t we hear about the number of firemen

killed in the line of duty since the date that the first fire truck was built? The media

didn’t focus on the number 24 after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated so that we

would know that 6.8% of astronauts that have flown in space died on a mission. We

don’t hear those things because they are irrelevant! Why is it necessary to focus on the

number of US soldiers killed since the War on Terrorism started? The media has never

made a comparison between the number of soldiers killed in the three years since the

beginning of the war and the 3,000+ civilians that were killed in less than two hours on

the day of the worst terrorist attack on American soil. If they made that comparison, they

would announce to the world how good the war has been going. We have lost less people

in three years of combat, than we lost on a peaceful, blue skied, summer morning at

home.

The New York City Police Department has approximately 40,000 officers, and

has lost 37 (0.092%) of them since September 11th, 2001. The U.S. military has 1.5

million troops, and has lost approximately 2,400 soldiers (0.16%) since the beginning of
the Global War on Terrorism. If all was treated equally, one would expect that we would

hear about New York Police Department officers mortality rates half as many times as we

hear about the mortality rates of United States soldiers.

That does not seem to be the case. This is because of the media’s gate keeping

tactics. The media has had something against the current presidency from day one,

whether the accusations of drinking, the suggestions of winning the election by tampering

with ballots, or most recently the military responses to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The media seems more interested in creating the news, instead of reporting the

news. Maybe this is some sort of response to the modern day reality show. Perhaps it is

related somehow to the ‘news’ stories of America’s Most Wanted. It was probably the

first ‘reality’ show. It is based on real life, drew a large audience share, and allowed the

audience to ‘participate’ in and shape the ‘news’ on the next episode. The modern day

media conglomerates seem to have become interested in that method of doing business.

Instead of giving the people all of the news, and letting their audience make up their own

minds, the media instead uses agenda setting to spoon feed their version of the ‘news’ to

the general population, which typically is ignorant of the media’s methods.

My wife loves a particular song called, ‘You don’t speak for me’. In it, the song

speaks of many things from vandalism to hunting for sport. The song also includes a

couple of interesting lines about broadcasting, “…You stir up the hatred till something

explodes…” and “…You broadcast your bias and call it the news, you say that you speak

for the millions out there, and deny that you’re lighting a dangerous fuse…” (Small,

1988, Home Front) These statements are definitely as true, and maybe more pertinent

today, than they were 18 years ago when they were written. I personally hold the news
media responsible for the completion of some violence after news stories. Had

Columbine High School not gotten the coverage that it did, would we have recently had a

school a thousand miles away in Kansas copycatting them? Had the newspapers not

printed cartoons portraying a Muslim taboo, how many more people would still be alive?

Or had the news media shown the complete video of the Rodney King incident instead of

the severely edited version, how many less people would have rioted, burned buildings,

and destroyed vehicles? I don’t know for certain, but I would have to believe that the

media’s spot light on all of these events, only made these situations worse.

Why is it that every time that Osama bin Laden verbally flatulates, that the world

wide media must play the information over and over again? Perhaps if the media took

this self-proclaimed leader out of the limelight of television and radio broadcasting, then

he would lose favor with his disciples, lose his best advertising medium for getting new

terrorist recruits in his organization, and hopefully just completely disappear off of the

planet. Let the governments worry about Al Qaeda and Osama. Do not continually do

him the favor of broadcasting his nonsense to a worldwide audience!

This certainly seems to be what the media is interested in doing today, creating

the news. By giving us only the bad news, they can influence policy, elections, world

events, etc. We have confirmation that the system works as well. Just look at the low

presidential ratings now and the impeachment court proceedings against Clinton. Both

were basically given to us as gifts of the media’s agenda settings.

The media simply chooses to not include things like the following.

In a book about the Iraq war, a young soldier interviewed an Iraqi who was hired

by the United States Army to be an interpreter. When the Sergeant asked if Iraq was a
better place today, the man replied, “Before America came, I tried to feed my family

from the money I make from my teaching job. I teach English in high school. I am

anything but a wealthy man. For years now I have not been able to buy fruits at the

market place because all of the money goes to Saddam’s pockets. The people starve. I

cannot get medicine for my children. I had to spend two years of salary to buy a junk car

just to get to work. Money I did not have, so I had to borrow as a loan. I saw friends

who spoke out against Saddam or slandered his name out of desperation get tortured.

Saddam does not kill you just once. He kills you many times. I had a neighbor have his

wife taken from the home by soldiers and raped in the street while he was forced to

watch. This way they killed him once. They kill his heart. Then they take his children

away. No one knows where they go to. They kill him again by doing this. Finally they

put him in prison. Even after America liberated us, he was never found. They killed him

a final time like this. Only after they have destroyed the man and his existence do they

take away his life. What was all of this over? For a man saying Saddam was not doing

enough to feed the people. The walls have ears here. We are afraid to say anything

because someone will find out. I have seen children tell on parents. We lived under the

devil. America comes in and now look around. We go to work to build structures or

carry water or do things for them. They bring with them money to pay the workers. The

markets now have fresh fruit. I can pick from five fruits now and I can afford them. I

have a car that can get me to and from work without breaking down. I can tell the

Americans that they are not being fair with my payment if we have a disagreement, and I

don’t have to fear death. Is it better here? We lived in a land of hell before. There was

no life; there was only fear and terror. America brings with it hope. You tell the people
of America thank you for giving us a new life!” (Bernskoetter, 2005) The main stream

media would not put something like this on the air, because it is contradictory to the

picture of the Iraq War that they are trying to paint, and conflicting with the agenda

setting that they are attempting.

USA Today recently reported that the age-adjusted death rate for 2003 was 833

deaths per 100,000 Americans (USA Today, 4/19/2006). It would appear that the

mortality rate for soldiers in the Iraqi theater was comparable with the numbers of that of

ordinary citizens at home on American soil.

According to Department of Defense records, the number of soldiers killed during

the United States Civil War was 140,414 (6.3%), the American death toll for World War

I was 53,402 (1.1%) and World War II was 291,557 (1.8%). During Korea we lost

33,741 (0.59%) soldiers, and during Vietnam there were 47,424 (0.54%) deaths

(Department of Defense, attachment 1). During Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring

Freedom that number is approximately 1900 (0.42%). These numbers represent only

those that are deceased from combat related injuries. According to these numbers, the

ratio of soldiers that we lose, has been on a steady decline with each new conflict. Now,

don’t get me wrong, losing one soldier is bad, my unit losing five is heart wrenching, and

losing almost 2,000 people due to anger and war, is devastating. I would love for war to

be a thing of the past, but that is too idealistic for the human race. General Douglas

MacArthur once said, “No one hates war more than the soldier, for it is the soldier who

has so much to lose.”

It took the patriots that formed the United States eleven years to get a constitution

in place and 4,435 American soldiers lives. The Iraqi Government is just in its infancy,
yet the media is making it out to be a dismal failure. They are not giving the process a

chance to work out. I sincerely hope that the Iraqi’s can stabilize their new government.

It would be wonderful to have a peace loving democratic government in the Middle East.

It definitely couldn’t hurt to have an amiable people in the area which has been troubled

by war for centuries. A democratic Muslim country could be just what that area of the

world needs.

The media is also conveying information which is just completely inaccurate.

Since the beginning of the war they have expressed that President Bush started this war.

Are they completely ignorant of history? They seem to have forgotten about the

September 11th attacks which were sponsored by terrorists. They also apparently forgot

about the Persian Gulf War, the peace treaty signed by Saddam Hussein in 1991, the

following decade in which he starved his people, rebuilt his army against United Nations

resolutions (CIA, 2002), and continued with his tyranny against the famished, tortured,

under-privileged residents of ‘his’ country. We did not start this war! We sat back and

waited for twelve years for Saddam to keep his word, and when we finally got frustrated

enough, and after 3,000+ of our own citizens were killed by like-minded terrorists, we

finally decided to do something about the vicious, murderous dictator to put him out of

power.

As an individual in the United States, if you fail to report the presence of a known

criminal, you can be charged with harboring a fugitive or possibly even an accessory to a

crime. How could the United States as a country turn a blind eye to a fugitive, guilty of

rape, torture, murder and other heinous crimes? How could the government continue to

prosecute individual Americans for crimes of neglect that the country as a whole was
guilty of as well? By allowing Saddam Hussein to go on unchecked for a decade,

America was doing just that.

Sometimes the media releases information that should not be released. In October

of 2001, the media interviewed some geologists that had been contacted by the United

States government. The government had contacted the geologists because of a unique

rock formation behind Osama bin Laden in a video where he spoke in appreciation of the

9-11 attacks. The intelligence agencies were trying to find bin Laden based on that rock

formation. Once the news media broadcast this information to the world, bin Laden

never again was shown on camera without a blanket or tarp hanging behind him. Had the

media held off on this story for a couple of months, perhaps bin Laden would be out of

commission today. But instead, they wanted to get the jump on a story, and ended up

probably hurting our country’s cause in the process.

Much commentary has been made on the media outlets about the lack of finding

any Weapons of Mass Destruction. Let me pose a hypothetical question? If you had a

country, where all of the people lived on 25% of the land, were scared for their lives, and

you had billions of dollars to hide something the size of a few tractor trailers in an area

three times the size of the state of Illinois, and 11 years to accomplish the task, could you

do it?

In an optimistic world, perhaps the media conglomerates could be required to

showcase the same proportion of positive as well as negative airtime on stories. Much

like they are required to allow equal time for political parties. I know that this is

something that would never be allowed to happen, but the thought behind it has merit.
 If the American people, and the worldwide audience for that matter, could be fed

a well-balanced diet of real news, instead of the extremely pessimistic, “if it bleeds, it

leads”, negative views portrayed as factual by the main stream media, there would be

much less anger and hatred about the Iraq War. The world could see this for what it truly

is. A rescue mission to save millions of people from the torturous, despicable, horrific

dictatorship that was run by Saddam Hussein, and those that wish to reestablish that

system for a new generation.

References

Astronaut / Cosmonaut Deaths (2003, March 9) Retrieved from

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0114.shtml

Astronaut Fact Book (2005, January) Retrieved from

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenews/factsheets/pdfs/astro.pdf

Bernskoetter, S. (2005) Surviving twilight: Operation Iraqi Freedom II.

BookSurge, LLC.

Geology may give bin Laden away: Experts study recent video with hope of identifying
his location. (2001, October 15). Retrieved from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/15/MN232579.DTL

Illinois – Location, Size, and extent. Retrieved April 27, 2006 from
http://www.city-data.com/states/Illinois-Location-size-and-extent.html

Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. Retrieved April 27, 2006 from http://www.cia.gov/
cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm

Iraq Almanac. Retrieved April 27, 2006 from

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107644.html

LOD statistics. Retrieved from http://www.aphf.org/lodstats.html

Principle wars in which the United States participated: U.S. military personnel serving
and casualties. Retrieved April 23, 2006 from
http://www.dior.whs.mil/mmid/casualty/WCPRINCIPAL.pdf

September 11: Chronology of terror. (2001, September 12) Retrieved April 23, 2006
from http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/chronology.attack/

Small, J. (1988). You don’t speak for me. On Home front [CD]. Fairfield, Australia:
Crafty Maid Records.

United States casualties of war. (2006, April 18). Retrieved April 19, 2006 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_casualties_of_war

USA records largest drop in annual deaths in at least 60 years. (2006, April 19)
Retrieved April 19, 2006 from
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-04-19-death_x.htm?csp=24