The New Republic Online
DAILY EXPRESS
See No Evil
by Adam B. Kushner
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 04.02.04
Perhaps the single most disturbing image from this week's riot in Fallujah--in which four American contractors were shot, burned, and dismembered by a joyous mob--was of an Iraqi twenty-something beating a smoldering torso with a long, lead pipe. He rained blow after blow on the charred corpse, which lay on the ground where it had fallen from a car. It was a profoundly wretched scene--and one that, because of editorial decisions made by newspapers and television stations, few Americans saw in full. Many medium- and small-market newspapers led with images of burning SUVs, while burying inside the paper the grislier photos of flesh strung up on telephone wires and bridges. Evening newscasts--those that broadcast the images at all--blurred parts out. Few if any television stations showed the enraged pipe-wielder or another harrowing sequence, in which a red sedan dragged an American's remains through the street, with cheering Iraqis running alongside.
News executives claimed they were protecting readers and viewers. "The images are too graphic in nature to put on the air and have the American public--i.e., children or others--flip through and see," said a Fox News Channel vice president. "We didn't think it was appropriate to show bodies on page one. We chose to convey the nature of the event by means of headlines and a photo that is not so distressing," said the editor of the Dallas Morning News. For its part, the Orlando Sentinel acknowledged "the sensitivity of the subject matter and the sensibilities of our audience" in explaining its coverage of the riots. (Full disclosure: I'm a frequent contributor to the Sentinel's op-ed page.)
But the duty of reporters, producers, and editors is not to soothe their consumers or protect them from cruelty. It is to convey facts--and the most important facts of this week happened to be hanging bits of blackened flesh and a man with a pipe. Often during wartime, the facts are disquieting; at times, they are revolting. None of this changes the U.S. public's need to know. Indeed, the Fallujah riots reveal something fundamentally amiss in American journalism--that an instinct to protect viewers is trumping an instinct to inform.
Explaining MSNBC's decision to choose images of the riots carefully, a network vice president told The Wall Street Journal, "We have standards and beliefs. ... We are gatekeepers." Actually, no. If readers and viewers are repelled by the images, it is not because the "gatekeepers" are being insufficiently cautious; it's because the subjects of the story are, well, repellant. And if viewers are disturbed by disturbing news, then editors have done their jobs. In the case of the Fallujah riots, there was no way to convey the extent of the subjects' moral depravity without showing their actions outright.
Dan Rather of CBS only pretended not to be a gatekeeper. He first told viewers (appropriately) that "some pictures in this report are not for children's eyes." The implication was that he at least trusted adults to see the images in full. But when they came on the air, they were blurred to distortion. What of the principle that, in a democracy, taste does not subordinate truth? If Americans are expected to take their opinions about Iraq into the voting booth, they must be equipped with the facts to make up their minds. The facts of Fallujah were unpleasant, but even in times of bad news, our political system is still dependent on informed decision makers.
The case for showing gruesome images is not merely democratic; it is strategic as well. The images from Fallujah will be seen by viewers all over the world. Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV replayed the scenes ad nauseam, including--in what will no doubt become a recruitment tool for suicide bombers--footage of a ten-year old boy grinding the heel of his shoe into a corpse's head. These images are shaping worldwide opinion about the American occupation of Iraq, and Americans are forbidden by their paternalistic "gatekeepers" from seeing them in full. How are American voters supposed to understand what people think of us--and make smart decisions about how to react--if we don't even see what they see?
Perhaps the best case for not showing the riots is that they were not authentic news, but rather an event conceived for film--and exacerbated by the very presence of those who were filming it. Surely it was no coincidence that cameramen were on the scene to capture the barbarism. And American news consumers probably should have been advised that the riot was possibly staged for the cameras. But everyday, far less consequential events that are, in whole or in part, designed for cameras--and profoundly influenced by their presence--find their way onto the evenings news. If the networks' true objection to showing the Fallujah images was on grounds of journalistic ethics, then they would hesitate before airing footage of peaceful protests, which are just as surely goaded on by the presence of press. They don't censor these images, of course, which is how we know that their decision in Fallujah was not based on journalistic ethics, but rather on the presumed sensibilities of the viewing public.
There is, finally, the problem of the political consequences of showing American voters gruesome images from Iraq. In 1993, images of a U.S. soldier's body being tied to a car and dragged through the streets of Mogadishu led directly to the American pullout from Somalia--which we now know was a monumental strategic mistake. It is true that the dissemination of disturbing images from Iraq could cause a groundswell of support for a similar (and similarly disastrous) pullout from that country. But only the most unscrupulous journalists craft the news with an eye toward political outcomes. Who knows what the effect of these images will be on the American public? It is not the place of journalists to care. After Fallujah, some voters will hate the war, and others will hate the enemy. That is their prerogative, and no one else's.
Adam B. Kushner is assistant to the editor.
The temptation to belt out some Bruce Springsteen notwithstanding, I thought about it a long time, and ended up talking about the different reasons for war, ending up with talking about America's war for independence. She was listening quite attentively throughout all of this, I kept it as simple as she could. She seemed satisfied, and then we moved on to other things.
