Page 201 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Doctrines of Media and State 191

that Iraqis have died due to U.S. actions, military officials claim that such deaths
are unfortunate and accidental. Often, military officials react to reports of civil-
ian deaths by claiming that civilian casualties cannot be substantiated with
available evidence. Media reliance on official sources in regards to casualty
counts and admissions (or lack thereof) of civilian deaths, and the reluctance or
inability of reporters to go out into the field to verify claims of civilian deaths,
means that most of the reports on civilian casualties fail to receive serious fol-
low-up attention. Reporters and editors generally take the Bush administration
and military planners' promises to use "pinpoint weaponry" and reduce "collat-
eral damage" at face value, especially since they are not reporting from Iraq and
are not in a position to directly challenge official claims with evidence collected
from contrary, on-the-ground reporting.
There is another standard of reporting, however, seen in Independent-Left
and foreign media outlets, which make it a higher priority to directly challenge
official claims of minimizing collateral damage. Take, for example, one inter-
change between a reporter at the independent Pacifica radio network and an
editor at the Washington Post in which they discuss the U.S. military's estimates
of Iraqi dead. In response to the Pentagon's recognition that it keeps track of
"insurgent" dead in Iraq, the Paclfica reporter combatively asked Bradley Gra-
ham, a staff writer for the Washington Post:

Please explain how the Pentagon counts the number of insurgents killed from a
jet traveling near supersonic speed at an altitude of 25-30,000 feet. At times,
these numbers seem to come out of thin air, literally. When reports on the
ground clearly contradict the claims that civilians are not killed in these attacks
it throws into question all that we are told. How can a mere observer of events
make heads or tails of what is really going on?

In response, Graham stated that: "For air strikes by high-flying, fast moving jets,
the casualty counts appear to be derived from advance estimates of how many
bad guys [emphasis added] were suspected of being at or in the targeted site just
before it was struck.. .As for sorting out differing accounts after a particular in-
cident, there's often nothing a reader can do at first except to keep an open mind
and wait for further reporting to determine the truth."53 The problem with Gra-
ham's hope that "further reporting" will provide a better picture, however, is that
continued media over-reliance on official propaganda leads to chronic under-
emphasis and underreporting of Iraqi suffering and casualties.
The promotion of, and opposition to, terms like "collateral damage" is of
major significance when looking at the differences between most mainstream
reporting and Progressive-Left critiques of the bombing of Iraq. "Collateral
damage" implies many of the deaths and the destruction that come along with
bombing are unintended effects of U.S. actions. On this point many critics seri-
ously challenge official justifications for war.54 Questioning the attempt to dis-
tinguish between "intentional" and "unintentional" violence against civilians is
useful when one reviews both sides of the debate over whether the U.S. is en-
gaging in terrorism in Iraq. Dissident scholars and activists claim the U.S. is a
leading terrorist state, while the mainstream press, political leaders, and many