Page 193 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Doctrines of Media and State 183

troops were in the hospital at the time [of her "rescuev]-and that they had un-
successfully tried to turn Lynch over to American soldiers earlier." Lynch also
told Diane Sawyer of ABC-contrary to earlier reports in the media-that she
did not recollect ever being raped or being beaten during her stay in the hospi-
tal.''
Anti-war critics (Iraqi and American alike) have drawn upon the news cov-
erage of Jessica Lynch as an example of the focus on American lives to the ne-
glect of Iraqi deaths. One Iraqi interviewed by Cliff Kindy of the human rights
group Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), asked why Americans hold Iraqi life
so lightly. As one of the doctors stationed at the Nasiriya hospital, he had
worked to take care of Jessica Lynch, only to witness invading troops treat hos-
pital staff as if they were threatening Lynch's life. This, according to the doctor,
stood in glaring contrast to the way American troops treated his nephew, who he
explained had been killed at an American checkpoint. The man's nephew was
shot during a sudden backup of highway traffic as he approached the military
checkpoint. In hoping to avoid crashing into the cars in front of him, he swerved
out of the line of iaffic, and was killed by American troops who feared he was a
suicide bomber. The young man's family later accused American soldiers of
having "lost" the body so that there would be no way to prove they had made a
mistake. Sadly, this Iraqi's story (in addition to thousands of others) have not
received coverage anywhere near that of American troops who lose their lives in
Iraq.
Throughout the Iraq war, establishment papers like the New York Times and
Washington Post provide regular updates of American troop casualty counts,
while neglecting a similar accounting of Iraqi civilian deaths. As Anthony
Marro, an editor for Newsday admits: "We pay more attention to Americans
deaths" than those of lraqis.ll "It is easier to report on people we know, we put
more faces of the ~mericins, we know who they are." To be sure, it is easier for
the American military (and the media) to verify the exact number of American
military deaths as opposed to those of Iraqi civilians. However, the coverage of
ChN International and A1 Jazeera are clear cases of another standard amongst
media channels seeking to present both Iraqi and American casualties with
greater frequency. Specials like "Faces of the Fallen" and "Fallen Heroes" as
seen in outlets like the Washington Post and Fox News, honor American ser-
vicemen and women without asking about the Iraqi civilian death toll. While the
"Faces of the Fallen" are often shown in print and on television, gory images of
those killed in combat are limited in the American press.
Statistical studies of television media coverage reinforce a pattern of dis-
comfort with running bloody pictures of the casualties of war. A study by
George Washington University's School of Media and Public Afairs analyzed
600 hours of news segments on Fox News, ABC, and CAN from March 20
through April 9, 2003, revealing that just 13.5 percent of the over 1,700 stories
examined contained pictures of dead or wounded coalition soldiers, Iraqi sol-
diers, or civilians. Less than 4 percent of the over 500 images of combat con-
tained dead civilians or soldiers.I2 Another study reviewing a six-month period
following the 2003 U.S. invasion found that, of five major American newspa-