Why TV holds us hostage
The city is ablaze, the bodies dismembered. This time it's Beirut, and the pictures are as horrific as those from Baghdad, Madrid, and Jerusalem. Cowardly atrocities are calculated to kill but, even more, to affect public opinion. Take Iraq. On the scale of warfare, the number of casualties in Iraq is relatively few. Every single one is a tragedy, but the images repeated over and over again on TV can drive government agendas and policy decisions. When we see American soldiers blown up night after night on the news, the images lead many of us to conclude that the Iraq war was a political miscalculation and a military disaster. How can America conduct foreign policy when that policy is perceived by policymakers and the public through the distorted lens of TV? Television, as former Secretary of State Warren Christopher once said, simply cannot be the North Star of America's foreign policy.
In Iraq, the suicide attacks on our soldiers are clearly meant to dishearten us all. The proof that the assassins have an eye on the media impact as much as on their murders and hostage-takings is that they dramatize them with videos of decapitations they expect to be endlessly recycled. In this, alas, they are not disappointed.
"If it bleeds, it leads " The result? Too often, policymaking is held hostage to imagery. TV networks, especially cable, have neither the time nor the resources to convey memory or history, and thus they distort the meaning of events by failing to provide the context that would help us make sense of these images.
The media do not cover progress nearly as well as they cover tragedy, scandal, and decay. "If it bleeds, it leads" is a time-worn TV newsroom cliche. One car bomb wreaking destruction amid smoking Iraqi buildings is more likely to be aired than images of 100 rebuilt schools. A handful of bad guys with video cameras can prove more powerful than a platoon of engineers fixing sewers. And so, bad news drives out good. A premium is placed on finding out what's wrong as opposed to telling the full story of what's going right and wrong. Every policy will have some flaws and thus provide opportunities for the media to focus on what went wrong. But in an age of instant mass media, it is imperative not to define every major policy or decision or military operation on the basis of its inevitable flaws: Yes, the Iraqi election did not solve all the problems; yes, it was only a beginning, but good heavens, what a beginning!
At a time when modern TV journalism demands action images and boffo pictures, our leaders are going to have to find ways to provide TV images that will dramatize their policies if they hope to have adequate public support. In Iraq, for example, the government might well have helped the media focus, especially with pictures, on the grisly new evidence of the crimes against humanity committed during Saddam Hussein's reign of terror.
advertisement
