From the Mouths of CNN...

[redneckgaijin]

... comes, occasionally, a bit of unintended truth.

"Here in Lebanon we can walk right up to people and talk to them- we can't do that in Bagdad. For example, there was this guy just picking up the glass from his storefront, we could walk up to him and say, 'What does this make you feel? What do you think about this situation?' We can't do that in Bagdad."

So, you mean there's one place on Earth where you can't spot someone in misery, stick a camera in their face, and ask them to scream or blubber their anguish, rage and impotent fury to fat Americans for their viewing pleasure?

It's an ill wind that blows no good...

(No, I don't favor censorship or terrorism of reporters... but I am SICK AND FUCKING TIRED of reporting doctrine which preaches that crying and screaming on tape equals journalism.)

Comments

[bar1scorpio.livejournal.com]

or take it as "In Bagdad, they won't say what we want them to say. Won't put the same pro-terrorist, anti-western world spin that we want." and that's what they're looking to do. Basically the media has been airing Hezbolla's propaganda directly to westerners.

In Bagdad, they'd be more likely to be pissed off at the people who drove in and blew up their car in front of a mosque, not at a gaggle of ambiguous foreigners halfway across the planet.

[gau.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, you can also make the argument that Americans who -do- see the human suffering are more likely to resist the tide of unilateral support for Israel's complete levelling of civillian (and neutral) targets. Of course, as someone else pointed out, this is a dual-edged sword; Lebanese seem to blame the U.S. just as much as Israel for the current situation (and given our actions in the U.N. security council, perhaps rightly so.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I agree with this sort of pseudojournalism; it's a way to create a "story" without there being any real story to tell. Of course, Americans aren't interested in the history of the conflict, the development of escalation, or possible solutions to the conflict; it's "infotainment" to them. My own sister told me, the other day, "Well I'm sorry, but I'd rather pick up the National Enquirer than a newspaper." That's the sort of attitude being built in our society today (she graduated high school just this June.) So I think it's a chicken-egg case; Americans aren't interested in the world, so they don't watch the news. Therfore, news organizations attempt to make the news "entertaining", but it ceases to be real news at that point...is there a solution?