Bending the News
I'm struck by the disparity between our media coverage of every detail of the last moments of a dying Iranian girl, tragically killed while protesting an election, while there is no such coverage of the multitude of American soldiers dying in Iraq or Afghanistan brought to the public's attention. Such coverage is, in fact specifically suppressed. I had a friend from France, sadly departed from this world now, who in less than perfect English would describe people, other friends of ours, who tended to exaggerate descriptions of events in order to promote their particular agendas. She would say that so and so: "bends the news". This seems to be an apt description for the media coverage we are being exposed to here in the Land of the Free.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Since G.W. Bush involved us in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as his open ended so called War on Terror, (SCWOT), we appear to be involved in perpetual war, and Walter Lippmann's quote above, describes an insidious tendency toward 'bending the news' that itself will have no end. For some reason I keep thinking of The Matrix.
We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy's side of the front is always propaganda, and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace. Walter Lippmann
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Since G.W. Bush involved us in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as his open ended so called War on Terror, (SCWOT), we appear to be involved in perpetual war, and Walter Lippmann's quote above, describes an insidious tendency toward 'bending the news' that itself will have no end. For some reason I keep thinking of The Matrix.
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If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely" it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein
June 25, 2009 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent Point! We do hear about numbers but never putting faces and families to them so that we are incredibly distant an disconnected from the lives being lost.
June 25, 2009 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
It cuts both ways. The manipulation of sentiment in support of a protestor to a regime we have had 'strained' relations with since the late 70s, while suppressing similar knowledge of our war efforts in order to minimize erosion of support for the ghastly business we're involved in. Marshall MacLuhan as it turns out was prescient in his assessment of mass communication. The trick for us is to disentangle the threads of real information that actually get through, and attempt to make sense of them.
June 25, 2009 8:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
hum
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105923784
June 25, 2009 9:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
So are you implying that an NPR radio show describing a remembrance of a killed soldier, (in those oh-so-soothing-radio-reporter tones), has the same impact on the public as rolling video footage over and over again of the murder of Neda Agha Soltani? On all of the news channels? Really?
June 25, 2009 9:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
No. I am saying, that it is up to us to make this NPR story, "viral."
I just don't like seeing truth bent by anyone.
June 25, 2009 9:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
We're outgunned in competing with the kind of exposure the television stations offer, and I'm still unclear. Are you saying that my presentation of the differences in coverage between Neda's death and the deaths of our troops was bending the truth?
June 25, 2009 9:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who made the Neda video viral? It wasn't the MSM. They just covered the Youtube 'sensation'.
My contention is that we get what we ask for. I do not think blaming the MSM entirely is correct, although, they are responsible for quite a bit.
I don't think it's fair to say what you did. If you are going to talk about 'bending' the truth, it's best to stick to the whole truth.
It just so happens that NPR covered this guy tonight. They cover individual soldiers quite often. It rakes at my heart (h/t Decemberists) I sent NPR $25 today, which is as much as I could, sadly. I used to send them that much a month. I'm not going to bitch about the MSM unless:
1.) I NEVER watch them. (check)
2.) I fund alternatives. (kinda check)
You?
June 25, 2009 9:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't have a TV either, and I won't detail my own record of giving to non-profits, as I basically agree with Rutabaga's response to KateO's declamation of 'self righteous blogging' vs real world giving, in that I can say right now that I donate 6 figures to NPR anonymously and you couldn't prove otherwise, so WTF? I googled msm video clips in the research of this blog, so if I'm wrong about the amount of exposure, for whatever reasons this death had, someone else besides bwak please weigh in here and correct me. I guess if you think the coverage of that death is in any way proportionate to the coverage of the 4314 US soldier deaths in Iraq, 153 in Afghanistan, 92,393 civilian deaths in Iraq, 7,760 civilian deaths in Afghanistan, (You can google the other nationalities soldier casualties), then I can only shrug, and respectfully disagree.
June 26, 2009 12:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
And you may be correct in your assessment of our own culpability here. It's always easier to see a strange foreign martyr die, than our own children in a political misadventure such as the Iraq war.
June 26, 2009 12:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well I suppose that is what I was getting at.
I try to pay attention to the coverage that is out there
I would hope we all do.
I will try to post more on these stories when they come out. That is something I can do, I guess.
I have no right calling you out when I am so obviously lacking, myself.
June 26, 2009 12:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Soooo.....
(shuffles feet)
Me disculpo
and that's meant as literal as it can get.
June 26, 2009 12:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Gracias amiga, y no es importante. Esta un buena conversacion.
June 26, 2009 12:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
we good
June 26, 2009 12:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
I hope it is far enough along in the comments to this blog,which I recommended and agree with, to make a tangential reply.
Many people seem to think that NPR is an exception to the "bad" they are referring to when they mention the MSN. I agree that NPR is not AS bad but I also feel that it is not nearly as good as it used to be and it is morphing in the wrong direction, that is, it has most of the faults we dislike in the MSN. I see much of this myself but I recognize much more when I see a good analysis of their coverage. For such an analysis I suggest following the link below.
http://nprcheck.blogspot.com/
June 26, 2009 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you misunderstand.
Neda became a "story" because of the net. That is the "bit" you left out, and needed to be acknowledged. "The youtube sensation" ring any bells?
Thanks for sending six figures to charity. I didn't think admitting to a paltry $25 would elicit that kind of response. But maybe $25 to me is six figures to you. That would change my understanding of you, for sure.
I guess I'm just not used to hyperbole in quite this degree from you, peegalito.
If you really think my attitude is what you breezily and scornfully attributed to me, then I guess you haven't really been reading me.
That's not a disagreement, that's kind of surprising in my understanding of you, and unfortunate for me.
¡¡Lo Siento Lo Siento!!
(careful of the nuance there. It's hardly literal)
June 26, 2009 12:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
I obviously did 'misunderstand' if that is what you wanted me to take home from your first two comments.
June 26, 2009 12:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
The first showing a recent NPR (sorta MSM) story, and the second ascribing the "story" to 'You(-and-Me-)Tube'?
Yeah.
¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿???????????
June 26, 2009 12:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Gonna both amplify and expand here, Bwak...
Yes, we get what we ask for. The "MSM" is purely ratings-driven. They get revenue that way, and the more viewers, the higher the ad sales rates. And yesterday's death of Michael Jackson will draw more viewers than, well, anything in recent memory. And they will all rush to put obits and pundits on because if they don't - and cable boxes and Nielsen boxes and satellite boxes will bear this out - viewers will go find a channel that did.
And if you ask any news director, and there is no longer a firewall between news and ad sales in any broadcast (or print) journalism outlet, "foreign" stuff goes un-noticed, and viewers tend to switch away when it comes on.
So the MSM is acting purely as they are designed to - as an advertising medium. Delivering viewers for the spots that keep the lights on and the cameras operating. And they do that by giving the public what it wants. Sensationalism. Go away from that and they're out of business.
June 26, 2009 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
NOW, RIGHT NOW, would be exactly the right time to have a blurb about the healthcare SNAFU interjected for 15 seconds every 10-15 minutes, to help inform the people we have a chance, right now, to change the system and actually focus on health and not profits.
June 26, 2009 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Someone has to guy the ad avail for that to happen.
And I think it's a good idea, I just like the notion of it being well-enough-phrased - something along the lines of "Health care is a basic right. Mandatory purchase of coverage is a welfare program for the insurance industry."
June 26, 2009 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
which came first the chicken or the egg????
if you raise your kids on junk food... do they understand anything else... do their survival instincts tend to equate with junk food?
hmm... sensationalist 'tabloid' media out of business...
one can dream...
June 26, 2009 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Synch, that one's been long-settled - eggs preceded chickens by millions of years.
And just as we are hard-wired for sweet and salty tastes, and to look at the brightest or most rapidly moving thing in our field of view, we seem to be hard-wired for sensationalism in some ways.
To (again) cite the besotted Walt Kelly, draped over a Saigon bar: "We have met the enemy, and they is us!"
June 26, 2009 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
so what your suggesting then OG is
we have to hatch a new paradigm for our relationship to media
and I would add our relationship to 'representative' government.
If it ain't broke fix it becomes...
when completely broken down and in absolute disarray...
look for any and all valuable, usable parts, and start over.
June 26, 2009 1:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Partly. In order to have better media, we need better viewers/readers.
Not so easy...
June 26, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's why I made the chicken/egg reference. How do we get better viewers/readers when they grow up on junk food. It seems it will take some serious social shifts, leadership, people willing to stick their necks out and challenge the norm.
June 26, 2009 3:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The human eye tends to see what is pointed out to it." Libby Henrietta Hyman
June 26, 2009 2:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I see your zoologist, and raise you a gonzo journalist:
June 26, 2009 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
And a long-dead social commenter:
June 26, 2009 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Having gone through a course in semantics, as any good art student in the last 30 years has, I would point out that those 'professional' tones give their coverage weight in subtle ways that aren't exactly negative.
Just sayin'
June 25, 2009 9:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
So are you suggesting we should position cameras to catch the moment of death for one of our soldiers and encourage the media to begin playing it over and over? To what end?
I'm pretty sure I agree with your overall point about the media. At the same time, this framing seems like this is a blaring false-equivalence on many levels. A big one is that our soldiers are volunteers who signed up knowing they were going into a combat zone in a country we invaded. Neda was just a civilian youth on the street of her hometown protesting election results. I think the death of the former is a logical result of invading another country, while the death of the latter is a genuine tragedy.
Also, I don't think the fixation on Neda is an example of "bending the news". I think it's a different phenomena - commercial exploitation of a high-shock-value video. It seems everyone has a cause that Neda's death can be used to advance.
June 26, 2009 4:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I do see the difference between the death of a protester and a soldier. My point is more directed to the media coverage of death in the world, and that there is a bias in what gets covered. The military learned during the 60s that showing those bodies, bagged or not, ran at cross purposes to their agenda, and we've accepted that as a nation. Out of sight out of mind, I guess, meanwhile men are dying, volunteers or not. My point is that a free press would show all of these deaths in some degree. While Neda's death deserves worldwide attention, the deaths of 100,000+ people in iraq and Afghanistan deserve more than they're getting. And I'm not suggesting filming the actual death of sodiers. I'm suggesting photographing returning caskets, and reporting on the lost lives. Doing so might erode public support for our adventurism in the Middle East, and who makes that decision to suppress? The decider, our public's appetite for death and destruction, and the marketing sensibilities of the networks as you say. The net effect is that we receive a slant to what comes into our HDTVs and public opinion is shaped in accordance to the bias.
June 26, 2009 5:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
In 2004, Nightline aired a program that did nothing but read the names and show the pictures of the American soldiers killed in Iraq.
Sinclair Broadcasting ordered its affiliates not to air the program.
Not sure where I'm going with this except to mention a rare exception. And even something as simple as that program pissed some off for pointing out, however mildly, that actions have consequences.
June 26, 2009 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree 100% - I figured that was your point. The framing just rubbed a little.
June 26, 2009 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Spin doctoring.
June 25, 2009 9:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fear not. We're going back to what we do best: suppressing all news to celebrity news. I'd bet on at least a week.
(And don't get me wrong. I think it's sad, a tragic end to what often seemed like a tragic life. And I loved Michael of the 80s and early 90s. He was awesome.)
I just hate this post-celebrity-death media circus. Remember when Anna Nicole died? No one even whispered of the news that came out the next day, that report that the Pentagon had purposely doctored pre-war intelligence.
June 25, 2009 10:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I know what you're saying Hil. I do not mean in any way to detract from the awful death of Neda either. It is pretty remarkable that someone of Anna Nicole's stature or lack thereof, (go ahead and laugh all you Playboy subscribers!), can waylay the delivery of 'more meaningful' information. Now in the media savvy 21st century, we have all of our news 'timed' to reach the outlets at the appropriate time and day of the week in order to maximize or minimize impact on the electorate. I'm just trying to say 'Heads Up!' when it comes to interpreting the information that for the most part is taken in with one ear at best.
June 26, 2009 12:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, and there's the paranoid aspect of news delivery to consider as well. Like what if Sanford, got taken to the woodshed by the Republican power brokers, and was coerced to sacrifice himself on the alter of conservative ideals in order to deflect news coverage of healthcare, fill-in-the-blank. Not likely, I know, but other things are orchestrated to function as such a news sump.
June 26, 2009 12:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
These guys (Ensign/Sanford at least) confessed their sins to "The Family". They wouldn't have to be convinced; they could simply be sacrificed. Notice, both Sanford and Ensign were targeted by tawdry leaks to the media.
IMO, "The Family" is eliminating competition to make way for the evangelicals' true #1 choice for president in 2012 (a totally empty vessel willing to do anything for power). Kind of makes you wonder how many other politicians have compromised themselves, eh?
June 26, 2009 4:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Those leaks do seem to tell a tale don't they?
June 26, 2009 5:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, it was a "family Outing" for sure. The oh-so-soncerned fellow Republican that put the newshounds on the scent of Gov. Sanford wants to be Governor himself. Will the news ever make mention of this? Will they admit they were "played"? Well, actually, they made the ratings jump, so there was an incentive for them, but it is important to give the rest of the story.
June 26, 2009 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
The positive side of the Neda coverage is that there are now human faces to the very Iranians that so many Americans wanted to bomb bomb bomb before we got to know them.
June 25, 2009 10:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree rootman. My point was only that we are selective in our coverage of death, (particularly political killings), around the world.
June 26, 2009 12:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
I object to you considering John McCain as speaking for 'all americans'. I never advocated bombing Iran and I am an american. How do you determine that 'so many' of us did?
I appreciate that this is not the point you were making but I have seen the notion that 'americans wanted to bomb Iran' repeatedly, especially during the last two weeks. I don't get it...
June 26, 2009 4:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
As long as we're going off on tangents, I've just got to point out: McCain didn't make that song up. It was pretty huge on the radio when I was a kid in D.C. during the hostage crisis (on both rock and country stations). I think it was originally recorded by a couple of DJs in LA; a big production with 4 part harmonies and such.
June 26, 2009 5:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'll call your tangent and raise you two. Part of what's driving the Neda story is the news value of the cameraphone/twitter media-is-the-message phenomenon itself. Reality TV. Dead Housewives of Tehran. Second, does the whole thing open our eyes about how much opinion is driven by martyrdom, so we can wake up to how other communities' news and opinion are driven when we robot-bomb a family?
June 26, 2009 5:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Really interesting comment rootman. The commercial value of the Twitter™ franchise in and of itself had not occurred to me. As long as we're delving into conspiracies here, with the Republican caucus very vocally adopting tweets as their lunge into the 21st century, I'm wondering who might be positioned to take advantage of a big bump upward in the perceived value of the enterprise. The impact on public opinion effects due to robot bombing seem self evident.
June 26, 2009 6:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: robot-bombing...knew that all along intellectually, but now WE are mourning and stirred to action by a martyr in a foreign country, so with that gut experience we can appreciate the impact of what's been going on all along with what Muslims see on their networks. I think there's a lesson learned for the American public, maybe. Could have a significant effect.
June 26, 2009 6:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
I feel embarassed to say that I agree. I do feel much more impacted based on what i have learned from the situation in Iran and the media crackdown has actually exposed ys to more raw information. It does cause me to feel deeper pain and empathy for all that our government has been doing abroad.
More and more illusions gets peeled away to reveal new information and perhaps a new 'layer' of illusion yet to be revealed.
June 26, 2009 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
What has made an enormous difference in Canada is the way the caskets/bodies are televised, from Afghanistan... through landing at the major base in EAstern Ontario... through the procession driving down the Highway of Heroes (a renamed section of the continent's most-travelled road, the 401), wit crowds hanging off the overpasses... into Toronto, the country's largest city, where they're examined... to the eventual burial, with families and troops.
You have to imagine a US equivalent I guess, but imagine wach casket being seen... a drive into NYC... crowds greeting everyone... cemetery scenes, etc.
This has been done 120 or so times now, and it's drilled into all of us, emotionally. Hockey Night in Canada has special segments, by the same sportscasters who cover the games, showing each of the dead, and the announcers themselves have been over to spend time with the troops, and it often - sometimes embarrassingly - ends up with Don Cherry (the most red-necked of all Canadians) weeping at the sight of these lost young people.
I'm not saying it's perfect, a lot of horseshit gets said, and it can be played by the right as well as the left, but it's certainly the case that the overall effect - even without individual heroes - has been to drill the reality of the troops an their deaths into 33 million people. There's not a single Canadian who doesn't know the troops are still over there, and dying.
June 26, 2009 1:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for weighing in on the Canadian protocols Q. I don't get the sense those returning caskets here get the same exposure, flawed or not. I guess my point is that if we're justified in our wars, then we should be able to stomach the cost in human lives as part of the deal, and if we're not then the visage of returning coffins can help us as a nation rethink our foreign policy.
June 26, 2009 5:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
We do get some local coverage of the military dead returned from overseas. Not much is seen at a national level, but they do get the hometown hero treatment. I have yet to see a flag draped coffin or motorcade filmed by a local tv station....but then, I don't generally watch tv. When I do, and there is a military death reported of a soldier from the area, it's usually about family members filmed in their homes, being brave for the camera. It irritates me that the media pounces on this 'news', this 'human interest' story, when to me, it seems the grossest of invasions into personal grief. Where is the dignity of that death? Those news crews are not honoring the fallen, they are out to capture emotional misery. But, they stop short of showing the physical misery. No dead body in the street. Not even a flag draped coffin. Maybe a bouquet of carnations left on the family's doorstep, red, white, and blue ribbon fluttering in the breeze. The feel good moment at the end of the segment so we can all turn away from this military death guilt-free.
In a lot of ways, we citizens are shielded from the not so pretty. We are easier to manage if we think we're doing okay. I mean,our standing on the world stage has suffered terribly, for a multitude of reasons, but when you ask us what we think others think of us, well, we think everyone else is jealous because we're so swell and all.
This is touching base with the comment you left on Ramona's blog, Miguel. About how the labor class sees themselves as having a higher status than they actually do. It's not exactly an inflated ego thing. It's that we are believing what we are told we need to believe to elevate ourselves. Our lives have been separated from life itself. Life is dirty, mean, ugly, nasty and crappy for the most part. I mean, there's beauty, but as a whole, life is a rotten business and smells like it, too. But, when we don't have to actually look at it, or smell it, or if it happens to some other nationality in some other place far away, well, it's like it didn't really happen, did it? It's just on the tv. Like a movie. The visceral is reduced. We are removed from life here in the US and apparently, we like it that way.
You are on to it, I think, Miguel. News coverage is suppressed, or at the very least, tidied up so as not to offend our delicate sensibilities.
Am I rambling? I think I am rambling. I will stop now.
June 26, 2009 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's more complex than just being "tidied up". There are components of this 'bending of the news' that originate with the government, the media, us as individuals, and our cultural dispositions. The government controls access to news in war zones, probably more strictly than in a regime such as Iran. The Images slipped out over cellular networks in Iran, but are less available in Iraq or Afghanistan, so we don't see images from there that might move us as much as the image of Neda. That is not an accident, as our own government doesn't want public opinion, and our lack of appetite for violence determining foreign or military policy. The media gets into putting english on the spin by choosing images that will not cause viewers to turn off their TVs. Their 'censorship is commercially driven, and it diminishes the probability of them showing anything that would inhibit us from watching the next commercial. Individually, we bring our own spin into what gets shown. As I said above, it's easier to watch a foreign woman be brutally murdered, than to see our own children cut down in the prosecution of a war that is justified or not. That ties back to the Media's need to maximize profits via maximizing viewership. On top of all this we bring our cultural dispositions into the mix. My own take on that, is that we have a cultural aversion to death in general, and would generally prefer to keep such things on the back burner. The fact that the Iranian martyrs died in opposition to a regime that while very bad, has been further demonized by our government for thirty years, so showing the work of the demons is easier to view than witnessing the violence of our own making.
June 26, 2009 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Canadien example deserves emulation. Yes, it is deplorble that we so eagerly allow the media to suppress the pain of loss. Stop the feelings! Pain is an incentive to change things, so if we avoid the pain, we can avoid the change. Meanwhile, our best and brightest get killed in Iraq and we deplete our treasury to perpetuate the SCWOT.
June 26, 2009 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Like that line in the Matrix, "Buckle your seatbelt Dorothy,
cause Kansas is going bye-bye."
Read Jeremy Scahill. Or Amy Goodman.
You can watch “Democracy Now” online.
Or “World Focus” http://worldfocus.org/
Or “The Real News Network” http://therealnews.com/t/
TV news of Iraq and Afghanistan comes on here at midnight on PBS. "BBC World News" and "The European Journal" and “World Focus.” They have had explicit coverage of Iran too. But I never see in-depth coverage on our US network shows or "popular" cable news. The corporations here are in control of the messages. And those war profiteers don't want their dirty laundry aired. The only dead people they allow us to honor are the famous ones.
"We can do the innuendo
We can dance and sing
When it’s said and done we haven't told you a thing
We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry!"
- Don Henley
It's not just bent, it's twisted.
June 26, 2009 2:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Twisted indeed Strat. it's those other outlets, not PBS, and BBC, that have the biggest impact on public opinion here in the US.
June 26, 2009 6:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
The wars do go on and on and on.......
June 26, 2009 2:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
As do the deaths.
June 26, 2009 5:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
When you say "bending the news," I visualize the news as light that gets bent. Not even direct light, but darkly in a mirror or as shadows. Bent by mass. (That's why it's called "mass media.") The mass that bends the news can be different weights given to things. In this case, there's a martyr factor that makes Neda worth many more points than a soldier among many. Like the WTC victims who each had more media points than the civilians bombed in their name. It has always been the case that a martyr's death will precipitate the willingness of many more to die, and none who die will ever reach the score of the original martyr. Plus, there are other resonances, like a resemblance to Kent State in the still shots. (Sandra Scheuer, shot dead at Kent State, was walking to class. She was not a protester, even.)
June 26, 2009 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
As war zones, both Iraq and Afghanistan, have issues of access, just as Iran does. A question that comes to my mind is to what extent is cellular/twitter traffic available and is what is available all ready controlled by the US military or economic markets? I would be surprised to learn that the former, or both, don't limit access. One thing I guess I didn't make clear in this blog, and got further off course in the opening comments, is that I don't see this as necessarily something the media drives alone. It's a much more multi-layered issue, in which we all participate, from individual preferences, to societal preferences, and flavored by nationalistic agendas. In that sense I think your analogy of light being bent by the mass is appropriate. All that human,cultural, and national bias lends a lot of 'mass' to deflect the image presented in our news to some similar, but subtly distorted version of the truth. Your note of the added 'weight' accorded a martyr in our human and cultural psyches is duly noted and agreed to. Kent State became a defining moment in the opposition to our involvement in Vietnam because of that. Iran may find that the brutal crackdown on its dissidents carries enough 'mass' to create problems for them for a long time, and perhaps enough to eventually topple the regime that instigated such a harsh response to the protests.
June 26, 2009 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
The sentimentalism aroused by the Neda footage really disgusts me, personally. It feels so good to have something to feel righteous grief and compassion for. The media bends it to a good extent because people want it bent. Though I'm still amazed so little compromising footage or pictures on US or coalition actions has come out of Afghanistan and Iraq (whether or not it gets play in the MSM). I don't know why that is...
June 26, 2009 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe she's victim number one of a holocaust. Will that let you justify some grief?
June 26, 2009 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you have no other way to channel your emotions than to call everything a holocaust, by all means go ahead Rootman. I honestly don't get where you're going with this though...
June 26, 2009 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm saying that part of the outpouring of grief for Neda is that we witnessed it, seeing the capabilities of the guilty parties, and there's an anxiety that she's the first, like Crispus Attucks, of many. Just brainstorming. It's not wrong to remember Attucks. (For me, it was that Neda was someone's daughter and she died, but I'm sentimental that way. And my life was shaped by Kent State, where we saw four die and we remember their faces, and I guess what you're saying is that they distract from the faceless five million who died in the associated war de jour.) Something about people doing the math of "these deaths are greater than these other deaths" is feeling wrong to me.
June 26, 2009 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I really didn't mean to do such a crude equilibration of the deaths in our wars against the killings of Iranian protesters. The war killings take on a diminished factorial just by virtue of the number of them, and at least the non-civilian casualties are voluntarily involved in the act of killing themselves which immediately changes any such equation. As you say,
which is the largest component of what I was trying to get across in this blog. If we witnessed or at least acknowledged the loss of soldier and civilian casualties in our wars, they too would take on more weight, and foreign policy might be affected. The architects of those wars do not want that to happen.
June 26, 2009 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Obey. See my comment to Rootman, here, which addresses the availability/access of information in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as expanding on his analogy of "mass".
June 26, 2009 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink