Noah Pollack has a perceptive column analyzing how the media covers a conflict such as the one now between Israel and Hezbollah. First, he points out that the media's role is not to convey information, but to tell a compelling story.
They can be more accurately described as entertainers, who stimulate their audiences with that which is factual and passing. The most striking thing about the producers and on-air reporters who show up in Israel is how deeply ignorant they are of the conflict and its history. This is not exactly their fault: It is the product of their job, which is to entertain rather than inform. The skills required of them are technical and theatrical, not historic or intellectual, and thus they do not approach their task with much in the way of rigor; they are looking for interesting personal stories and manufactured mini-dramas, whose correlation to reality is only occasionally discernable. It is just more interesting to expose the tortured consciences of IDF artillerymen than to report on their achievements in battle.
Next, he reminds us that the media is handicapped because they cannot interview the terrorists in hard-hitting confrontational interviews the way that they can the Israelis. So, their coverage will have an anti-Israeli tilt because they can only interview one half of the conflict.
The media today thrives on portraying conflict. That is why the media has become unwillingly, and perhaps even unwittingly, the ally of the terrorists.
This kind of reportage has created a relationship of co-dependency between terrorists and the media: The fetishization of suffering results in a morally obtuse emphasis on civilian casualties, and the ensuing outcry from world organizations and opinionated foreign governments intimidates and hamstrings Western militaries attempting to defeat terrorists. And the more that Western forces are undermined by oppositional coverage, the greater the incentive for terrorists to maximize civilian casualties and thereby keep the media pressure on their enemies. Operating without moral restrictions, Hezbollah has endeavored to do exactly that — and with magnificent, arguably unprecedented, success. Because democratic governments cannot endure in conflicts that the public believes to be immoral, the task of groups such as Hezbollah is to undermine the Western public’s sense of moral clarity in the fight. And, in too many cases, in the television news media Hezbollah has found a willing partner — as have other terror groups like Hamas and Fatah.
The media needs to portray the drama and what could be more dramatic than civilian casualties? So, the media is the tool of the terrorists. Hezbollah, or the terrorists in Iraq or wherever, will orchestrate warfare so that there will be many civilian casualties. They can kill the civilians themselves or, their preferred tactic in Lebanon, position themselves next to civilians so that when Israel retaliates civilians die. Then the resulting media focus on those deaths will lead to an outcry for an end to the violence.
Thus, the media, by its very nature, lends itself to the tactics of the terrorists. And, because this tactic is so successful for the terrorists, the media coverage guarantees that more civilians will die in the future. posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:39 AM
