Reporters have to face up to the fact that right now, if
we highlight the wrongs that Americans commit but not — out
of squeamishness — the far worse horrors committed by
others, we become propaganda tools for the other side.
<font size=4>
REPORTING FOR THE ENEMY
<font size=3>
By DEBORAH ORIN - NY Post
June 16, 2004 -- <font size=4>THE video only lasts four minutes or so — grue some scenes of torture from the days when Saddam Hussein's thugs ruled Abu Ghraib prison. I couldn't bear to watch, so I walked out until it was over.
Some who stayed wished they hadn't. They told of savage scenes of decapitation, fingers chopped off one by one, tongues hacked out with a razor blade — all while victims shriek in pain and the thugs chant Saddam's praises.
Saddam's henchmen took the videos as newsreels to document their deeds in honor of their leader.
But these awful images didn't show up on American TV news.
In fact, just four or five reporters showed up for the
screening at the American Enterprise Institute think tank,
which says it got the video via the Pentagon. Fewer wrote
about it.
No surprise, since no newscast would air the videos of Nick Berg and Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl getting decapitated, or of U.S. contractors in Fallujah getting torn limb from limb by al Qaeda operatives.
But every TV network has endlessly shown photos of the
humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops at Abu
Ghraib. Why?
"Because most [journalists] want Bush to lose," says AEI
scholar Michael Ledeen, who helped host the screening of
the Saddam video.
It's not just journalists. The Pentagon has lots of Saddam
atrocity footage — but is loathe to release it, possibly
for fear it would be taken as a crude attempt to blunt
criticism of Abu Ghraib.
So the world sees photos of U.S. interrogators using dogs
to scare prisoners at Abu Ghraib. But not the footage of
Saddam's prisoners getting fed — alive — to Doberman
pinschers on Saddam's watch. (That video's been described
by former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.)
Former Pentagon official Richard Perle raps "faint hearts in the administration," saying they've bought into the idea that it's "politically incorrect" to show the horrors of Saddam's regime.
But he also faults the media — after all, AEI's briefings on Iraq have been standing-room-only, but the room was half empty for the screening of the Saddam torture video.
But part of the issue is simply that Saddam's tortures, like al Qaedas tactics, are so awful that they're unbearable to watch.
If I couldn't watch them myself, I'm hardly arguing that others should have to. Yet it raises a very complex problem in the War on Terror. It's worse than creating moral equivalence between Saddam's tortures and prisoner abuse by U.S. troops. It's that we do far more to highlight our own wrongdoings precisely because they are less appalling.
In this era, a photo is everything. We highlight U.S.
prisoner abuse because the photos aren't too offensive to
show. We downplay Saddam's abuse precisely because it's far
worse — so we can't use the photos. And that sets the stage
for remarks like Sen. Ted Kennedy's claim that Saddam's
torture chambers have reopened under "U.S. management."
Terrorism is sometimes called asymmetric warfare — America
had to adjust to new tactics to deal with small bands of
terrorists who were able to turn our airplanes into weapons
against us. Now it turns out that we also face asymmetric
propaganda — where the terrorists gain a p.r. advantage
precisely because what they do is so horrific that our
media aren't able to deal with it.
The U.S. military hasn't figured out a strategic way to deal with this problem.
But neither has the press.
Media analysts like Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler admit it sounds "sanctimonious" to justify publishing prison abuse photos — but not al Qaeda beheading videos — in the name of showing "the reality of war." But that is just what he did.
<font size=5>
AEI spokeswoman Veronique Rodman, puzzled by the minimal
interest in the Saddam torture video, is sure that if it
was a video of equally horrific torture committed by U.S.
troops, the press would find ways to show or report it.
Reporters have to face up to the fact that right now, if we
highlight the wrongs that Americans commit but not — out of
squeamishness — the far worse horrors committed by others,
we become propaganda tools for the other side.
<font size=4>
This isn't to argue in any way against reporting the Abu Ghraib scandal. But reporters have to face up to the problems — and find ways to achieve a more balanced account.
Saddam's torture videos may be too awful to show, but it's hard to explain the low media interest in the story of seven Iraqi men who had their right hands chopped off by Saddam's thugs — and then got new prosthetic arms and new hope in America.
<font size=5>
They're eloquent, they're available, they're grateful for
the U.S. liberation of Iraq. No one can better talk about
Saddam's tortures — and no one is more eager to do so. Yet,
as of yesterday, the New York Times had written 177 stories
on Abu Ghraib — with over 40 on the front page. The self-
proclaimed "paper of record" hadn't written a single story
about those seven Iraqi men.
<font size=3>
Deborah Orin is The Post's Washington Bureau Chief |
