Page 207 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Doctrines of Media and State 197

troversial and infamous throughout the world. Only a select number of newspa-
pers printed the images in front-page stories, including the Los Angeles Times,
the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post, and those were censored so as to
avoid printing "obscene" images. One study done by American University
scholars surveying 210 journalists in the U.S. found that most of those inter-
viewed chose to self-censor in their reporting of the Abu Ghraib scandal by re-
fusing to run "graphic" pictures, and by putting more grisly details regarding the
abuses inside their papers, rather than on the cover.80
The New ~ork Times decided not to print the pictures on its cover as the
story broke, claiming at first that it wanted to wait to see if the images were au-
thentic. Executive Editor Bill Keller summarized the papers coverage as fol-
lows: "our night crew was uncomfortable with their inability to independently
verify that the pictures were legitimate. . . that held us for a day."" By the time
the pictures were revealed as authentic, the New York Times decided not to print
them, supposedly because they were no longer "timely." Keller explained that
"by the time we had assurance that the pictures were genuine, they had been so
widely distributed that we opted to run a couple pictures inside rather than front
them" in the paper.82 Claims about the lack of "timeliness" of printing the pho-
tos are difficult to take seriously in light of the large amount of attention ac-
corded Abu Ghraib in the months following the initial reporting. More likely,
the New York Times' editors-as with other maior mediawere concerned with
avoiding the controversy of challenging U.S. humanitarianism in Iraq.
It was not only the military, however, that attempted to limit the reporting
on the Abu Ghraib scandal. A number of commentators in the media attempted
to downplay Abu Ghraib and the images that were actually run in the American
media, by suggesting that the press was over-blowing the scandal and rnisrepre-
senting information when it came to the events surrounding the scandal. Rush
Limbaugh claimed that the scandal "is not as serious as everybody is making it
out to be. . . this is a pure media-generated story. . . . This is no different than
what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's
lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military effort. . . . I'm talking
about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional re-
lease? You [ever] heard of need to blow some steam off?"83 In an interview with
Seymour Hersh, Bill O'Reilly admitted that "there's no question about" whether
Abu Ghraib constituted a major scandal and embarrassment for the U.S., but he
also challenged a number of reports that over half of those held at Abu Ghraib
demonstrated no ties with Al Qaeda or the "insurgency." O'Reilly questioned
Hersh: "How do you wind up in a prison if you're just innocent and didn't do
anything? I'm going to dispute [the] contention that we had a lot of people in
there with just no rap sheets at all, who were just picked up for no reason at
all."84 Finally, CNN's Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr blamed the media
for reporting the story. Starr justified her criticisms by labeling the photos, rather
than the military's actions, as "inappropriate": "Let's start by reminding every-
body that under U.S. military law and practice, the only photographs that can be
taken are official photographs for documentation purposes about the status of
prisoners when they are in military detention. That's it. Anything else is not ac-