What Nightline Wrought
By Cori Dauber
Rantingprofs
via Instapundit, a fascinating piece from the Chicago Trib looks back at the origins of Nightline, and ponders some implications.
The show, of course, began as a daily roundup focused on the Iranian hostage crisis. (And the piece, by the way, is quite positive towards Koppel overall.) The reporters covering the crisis knew they were being played by the students holding our embassy, but needed the footage. The students needed the footage to be aired. It was a relationship of mutual use and the only ones not in on the joke were the audience members.
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Were the editorial decisions made by the network news executives in 1979 to 1980 in the public interest?
This remains a contested question. In their study of the Tehran hostage crisis, veteran journalists Robert Donovan and Ray Schererdetailed the manner in which the students surrounding the American embassy in Tehran exploited television's power during the crisis. The atmosphere around the embassy resembled a carnival when the TV cameras were absent, but as soon as a camera crew arrived, the crowd chanted "Death to Carter!" and "Death to America!" while waving fists and burning flags.
The mob's media savvy was so sophisticated that chants would be rendered in English, Persian and, occasionally, for the benefit of Canadian and French television, in French. The students clearly understood how to exploit the independent, non-governmental nature of American broadcasting. They also knew that reaching the American public was relatively easy, as there existed only three American broadcast networks, and all of them dedicated enormous time and resources to coverage of the story.
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Actually, I've read that the compliant students gave the CBC crews two chances at the shot. They'd protest in English until they got the sign that the Canadians had all the footage they needed for their English language programming -- then start over again in French. You've gotta love a helpful terrorist.
In any event, he continues:
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The Al Qaeda leadership has repeatedly emphasized this lesson to its followers. Reminding its followers of the Tet offensive, the Tehran crisis and the disastrous Somalia mission, Al Qaeda statements reveal the belief that it is far easier to demoralize Americans than to defeat its armed forces. For this reason, beheading videos have become an important strategic tool in Al Qaeda's arsenal.
Yet America's enemies fail to understand that the power of network journalism to structure the public sphere has been significantly lessened. The era of the big three network news divisions is over.
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