Good analysis by Cori.
THE RUSSIAN CATASTROPHE
Any way you look at it, what happened today in Russia was horrific, and completely heartbreaking.
But there were some commonalities to the coverage on the Big Three that are worth pointing out.
1. Given that the Russians announced that a number of the terrorists (oh, excuse me, hostage takers -- maybe we can all just compromise on baby murdering bastards, it's got a certain ring to it, no?) were Arabs, the nets had no choice but to report that fact. But given that for the last several nights (and during their reporting of the two planes that were brought down, and the suicide bomber who set herself off outside a Moscow subway stop) the nets have studiously avoided mentioning al Queda's relationship to the Chechen's, indeed, have tried as hard as they could to avoid mentioning that the Chechen's even had a relationship to Islam, this must have seemed like a bizarrely context free bolt out of the blue factoid to most viewers.
Arabs? What the hell are Arabs doing in the middle of an ethnic war of independence in the middle of Russia?
What indeed. NBC did indeed mention al Queda, but "mention" would be the operative word, as in the Arabs reflect "growing links between al Queda and the Chechens."
Mentions like that must surely leave viewers more, not less, confused
Growing links? When did any links at all get started? What's al Queda doing in the middle of a war in Russia?
2. This was hardly the Russian security services' finest day. You hardly needed to listen to the reports to know that: the footage was enough. There was absolutely no control over the scene and therefore over the perimeter. Completely aside from the question of who started firing, there was no way to tell who was coming out of the building. Frantic parents ran into the school alongside soldiers, media were mixed up with them, emergency services, soldiers, parents, adult hostages just freed and running out -- there was no way to tell who was who. When the shooting started, there were plenty of innocent people caught in the crossfire. And if the report is true that before it all went bad the terrorists started by changing out of cammies and into civilian clothes so they could blend in with the crowd in the chaos, then the Russians sure helped them out.
Now, lets be clear here. Critiquing government performance is what the media does. And there's no doubt that's completely legitimate here. (Jeez, if we haven't already offered to train a counterterrorism force for them, we need to do that tomorrow morning. And if the reason we haven't done so yet is because of fear we'd be attacked for complicity in violations of the Chechens human rights, well, that's just absurd. Those babies were not in the business of abusing Chechen human rights. They were in the business of learning how to read and how to do long division.)
But lets keep a little perspective. The Russian security services are not the ones who kept those hostages in 100 degree heat for three days without food, water, or toilet breaks. They are not the ones who booby trapped the school and, whoever fired first, set off those bombs when the shooting started. They are not the ones who shot the injured, who shot children in the back, who trapped people in the crossfire of a firefight rather than be captured.
My point is this: the point of view of all three broadcast network stories focused on the weaknesses of the Russian security services. And that's an entirely legitimate focus. But they did that at the expense of a focus on the heinousness of these terrorists. These stories suggested that the body count would have been lower if the security services hadn't blown it so badly. And I think it might have been equally appropriate to suggest that the body count would have been lower still had these men not held the value of these children's lives so cheaply. |
