Dear George,
In the massive screw up known as the Iraq enterprise, there is but one shinning glimmer of success. You have cowed the media into self-censorship. A free press plagued Vietnam; a muzzled press is sanitizing Iraq. There have been no photos of a terrorist getting a bullet in the head, or a naked girl running down a road screaming after napalm burned off her clothing, no photos of the slaughtered bodies at My Lai. You have even spared the public scenes of flag-draped coffins.
This self-censorship has been a stunning PR victory for the Pentagon. Whoever came up with the idea of embedding correspondents deserves a medal. It protects you from having a Cronkite grousing about a Tet offensive. Granted, the photos that came out of Abu Ghraib were a momentary embarrassment. The ease with which you convinced the public that it was just a few bad apples is testimony to the willingness of the media to be cowed.
One of the things that have made this self-censorship possible is the changing nature of media coverage. The early days of radio and television gave rise to newscasters known for their gravitas. They were, for the most part unsmiling and deep of voice with a manner well suited to plumbing the tragic depths of disaster and pronouncing judgment on public and private misconduct. Now the emphasis in the electronic media is on peppy little blondes who blather on like a next-door neighbor as they trip all over themselves trying to project a cheerful mien. The men aren’t much better. They read their copy with the breathlessness of an arrested adolescent sneaking a peek at the girls’ locker room. These are not people who will report deep and disturbing stories. They go for the cheap sentimentality of trivialized tragedy made media event. The death of a blond white girl sends them into paroxysms of orgiastic bombast while a child shredded by a bomb in Baghdad gets nary a mention. The skin is too brown and the hair is too dark. Sorry about that, kid.
They are the embeddables, the ones who will cheerlead when they should be exposing. They are the ones who understand that leadership has come to mean playing the public for a sucker. A gelded press will be your greatest legacy.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
9:38:20 PM 
|
