In The Future of Media, a collection of authors from varied backgrounds (the majority as activists) argue against increased media consolidation at the hands of the Federal Communications Commission, promoting grassroots activism to halt a trend that flies in the face of our democratic principles. This trend toward monopoly is nothing new to American business; but it picked up speed in 1996 when Congress passed the Telecommunications Act, drastically relaxing ownership regulations in the media sector and paving the way for corporate hegemonies like Clear Channel’s dominance of the radio waves. In the name of free market competition, deregulation allowed most of the images and sounds seen and heard on a daily basis, all over the world, to fall into the hands of only five major corporations: General Electric, Viacom, News Corporation, Time Warner and Disney. Instead of fostering competition, the act shrank the media industry into an even smaller group of self-interested parties that Robert McChesney, an academic media critic and one of the book’s editors, likens to Hyman Roth’s Havana patio in The Godfather Part II [12]. In 2003, the F.C.C. approved another set of deregulatory measures that would have allowed the media pool to shrink even further, has it not provoked a firestorm of citizen outrage and grassroots activism on both ends of the political spectrum. Several of the essays in The Future of Media describe the democratic fervor whipped up by the F.C.C.’s rule changes, culminating in a series of hearings before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which struck down the changes in 2004.
Each of the authors takes up the mantle of media reform forged in 2003, urging readers to get involved in the “fight to limit conglomerate swallowing of media outlets by sensible limits on multiple and cross-ownership of TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, publishing companies, and other information sources,” as Bill Moyers puts it in the book’s introduction [xxi]. The cause of media reform stems from the principle that the media are supposed to balance their financial interests with a concern for their audience, the public, whom they are obligated to inform as well as entertain. As F.C.C. Commissioner Michael J. Copps points out in his essay, “Where is the Public Interest in Media Consolidation?”, broadcast media companies receive their free licenses to use the publicly-owned electromagnetic spectrum in exchange for a pledge to serve the public interest (this system is known as the public-trustee framework, or the public interest standard) [120]. As those media companies join bigger, vertically-integrated corporations, where they are only one of many profit-seeking operations, the public interest loses out to the bottom line.
The problem is not a vast and insidious corporate conspiracy to control the hearts and minds of average Americans—it’s more subtle than that. Corporate emphasis on profit forces out programming that genuinely reflects the makeup and interests of the public in local markets, because selling more ad time means targeting the most commercially coveted demographics and promotes a “lowest common denominator” approach. Funding for informative and locally-geared programming gets cut as corporations consolidate their resources in order to maximize the ratio of revenue to production costs. Corporate honchos are also likely to hire and put on the air people who look and think like them, at the expense of voices of dissent. In the essay “Media Bias: How to Spot It—And How to Fight It,” Peter Hart cites a study conducted by his organization, the media watchdog FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), which found that 92% of U.S. sources interviewed on network newscasts in 2001 were white and 85% were male [52]. Not surprisingly, corporate representatives were interviewed on the air 35 times more often than representatives of organized labor. FAIR’s study illustrates how the consolidation of media production and distribution runs directly counter to the Supreme Court’s opinion that “the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public” (quoted by Schwartzman, et al. in “The Legal Case for Diversity in Broadcast Ownership,” 153). Furthermore, the media’s conglomeration means that the people in control are increasingly elite, detached by class and culture from the majority of the public they are supposed to serve. If the elites in corporate media join forces with the elites in government, whose interests more closely resemble their own, then the media’s role as the “fourth estate,” a muckraking check on official power, will go out the window.
All of this is particularly scary in our postmodern age, which is so saturated with images and sound bites that there is no escape from mediation. If global media is a crucial node in the current heteropolar political landscape, as this course has argued, then the question of who controls the media is a direly urgent one. If media has the power to compete with governments in mobilizing political action and influencing our values and principles, then what happens when the media falls into the hands of an elite few, driven solely by the interests of free market capital?
Advocates for deregulation insist that the Internet and cable television will make up for the diversity lost in the consolidation of the newspaper and broadcast industries. But in “The Legal Case for Diversity in Broadcast Ownership” in The Future of Media, Andrew Jay Schwartzman, Cheryl A. Leanza and Harold Feld (lawyers who argued the case against the F.C.C. for the Media Access Project in 2003) maintain that the internet is still just a red herring. “Because of the economics of news production, only a handful of websites control the bulk of news generation and distribution over the Internet,” they write. “Although anyone remains free to set up a website and post or send information to the rest of the world, this freedom does not equate with an ability to effectively compete with existing media companies. The question is not whether news is somehow discoverable, but whether it enters into the public’s awareness” [155]. On the surface, this argument seems a little outdated. Political blogs like Talking Points Memo and the Drudge Report existed when the book was published in 2005, but they have only recently risen to prominence as the potential messiahs of 21st century news, especially since TPM received a Polk Award this year for its coverage of the US Attorney scandal. So maybe the Internet already plays a more important role as an alternative news source than it did three years ago. But the authors’ point about public awareness is well taken. Although online news has certainly become more important, it still pales when compared to mainstream news in terms of viewership and cultural permeation. Everyone knows what CNN is (we even have an effect named after it), but it’s unlikely that anybody outside politically well-informed circles has ever heard of TPM. And although the right people might be reading the blogs, allowing the info they dig up to circulate more widely—the US Attorneys scandal is a case in point—they still fail to reach an audience anywhere near as large as those of the network news shows or the 24-hour cable news channels. The other crucial distinction between online news aggregates and the mainstream news is money: no blog has the finances to bankroll the kind of investigative reporting that the media’s fourth estate role entails. Although the aggregation model is gaining traction as a valuable way to compile and distribute good information, the blogs have yet to figure out a reliable means of sustaining themselves financially while expanding their operations. All of which goes to show, yet again, the defects of a media system that depends on the capitalist model.
If traditional television news is still the average American’s main source of information, then who controls the media is just as important today as it was a few years ago. Indeed, as very recent events have proven, the question of media consolidation is not off the table despite reformers’ victory in 2004. In December, the F.C.C. relaxed a ban on ownership of different media in the same market, allowing companies to own one newspaper and one TV station in one city in the top twenty markets, provided that the station is not in the top four and there are at least eight other news sources. The Senate Commerce Committee passed a “resolution of disapproval” on April 24 to invalidate the new policy; but President Bush has threatened to veto the resolution if it passes in the Legislature, and several media titans have already filed a lawsuit against it on the grounds that it violates their First Amendment rights. Cross-media ownership is an especially pressing issue in light of current controversy over one of the world’s biggest media markets, New York City, where Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is on its way to controlling several of the biggest media outlets. Thanks to F.C.C.-granted waivers of the pre-existing cross-media ownership ban, News Corp already owns The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and two television stations, and is in talks to purchase Newsday from the Tribune Company. The sale would put Murdoch’s corporation in control of three of the country’s ten largest papers.
The authors of The Future of Media clearly anticipated in 2005 that the fight for media reform was far from over; the book is presented not as a commemoration of the successes of 2003 but as a primer for concerned citizens and future activists. The back of the book features a 70-page media reform action guide, with step-by-step guides to filing complaints with the F.C.C., monitoring local media outlets, organizing like-minded individuals, and other levels of activism. This call to action echoes what many see as the key strength of alternative news gathering on the internet: putting authority over information into the hands of the people that that information is supposed to serve. In our era of media conglomerates, we need individuals and local groups to keep an eye on policy and production/distribution institutions in the same way that blogs monitor the mainstream news. In order to preserve the fourth estate, we need a grassroots fifth estate to mediate the media.

Sources:
“Murdoch Taking on F.C.C. Media Rule.” Stephen Labaton. The New York Times, April 23 2008.
“Murdoch Closes in on Newsday and Reshapes Journal.” Richard Perez-Pena and Tim Arango. The New York Times, April 22 2008.
“Senate Committee Votes to Overturn F.C.C. Cross-Media Ownership Rules.” Katherine Skiba. US News & World Report, April 24 2008.

Posted by Jessica Kerry at 06:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Errol Morris Lit Review
New York Times "Zoom" blog, 3/3/08 and 3/10/08

“If seeing is believing, then we better be damn careful about what we show people, including ourselves – because regardless of what it is – we are likely to uncritically believe it.” – Errol Morris, Zoom, New York Times Online, April 3, 2008.

Three years ago, I found myself, heavily bandaged and bruised, sitting at the desk of a clinical psychologist. He took a miniature Hot Wheels car and a plastic toy cow and asked me to share my account of what had landed me in the office that day. With this information, he sped the toy car across the surface, swerved to avoid hitting the cow (deer), and over-corrected, sending the tiny vehicle rolling four times before falling off the edge of desk, crashing to the ground. “Yeah, I guess that’s about right,” I thought aloud. The experience of witnessing the reconstruction from the outside was quite eerie.

The April 3rd and 10th posts on “Zoom,” Errol Morris’ blog on the New York Times Online, address cinematic re-enactments and the justifications for using them in documentaries. Both discuss Morris’ film, The Thin Blue Line (1988), the ultimate effect of which involved the exoneration of a man from Texas who had been convicted of murder. Morris uses the attention to detail present in his investigation of the Randall Dale Adams case, as well as the tendency of the human brain to miss these often vital clues in the discovery of truth to argue for the validity of re-enactments in documentary films.

At any given time, our field of vision can include an enormous variety of objects, such as Chihuahuas, zombies, etc. Unless they are addressed specifically, however, the narrative remains unchanged. Through re-enactments, Morris aims to call attention to previously overlooked objects in order to show how their incorporation may result in drastically different narratives, as seen in The Thin Blue Line.

To fully understand Morris’ reasoning, a brief introduction to The Thin Blue Line is beneficial. In 1976, Randal Dale Adams accepted a ride outside of Dallas from a stranger driving a stolen car, David Harris. Shortly thereafter, the two were pulled over by Dallas police officers, Robert Wood and Teresa Turko, on a routine traffic stop. Wood approached the stolen vehicle and was shot to death. Originally, police investigators believed Turko’s statement that she had positioned herself at the rear of the vehicle as demanded by protocol. To Morris, however, this scenario appeared suspect. A milkshake, belonging to Turko, was found thrown 14 feet from the door of the police car. If she had in fact been standing at the rear of the vehicle when Wood was shot, she most likely would have A) not carried the milkshake with her or B) dropped it at the position where she was standing. The position of the milkshake suggests that Turko had in fact remained in the police cruiser until after the attack had been made on her partner and then threw the beverage out of the car. Consequently, her ability to identify the suspect(s) would have been greatly diminished. Nevertheless, she maintained there was only one person in the stolen vehicle, Adams, resulting in an inevitable conviction.

In Morris’ view, the milkshake is symbolic of the often critical details we fail to notice when attempting to make sense of the world around us. Through the use of re-enactments, we are allowed “to see things that would otherwise be invisible.”[1] For me, the very crude re-enactment in the therapist’s office based on the highway patrol report allowed me to contribute to my own knowledge of “what really happened,” and thus begin coming to terms with a very traumatic event.

Continue reading "Blind Spots and Re-enactments" »

Posted by Anne T Krapu at 03:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Errol Morris – Literature Review

This literature review of Errol Morris's New York Time blog, Zoom, is one of three. I will be looking at entries from July 2007 through October 2007.

In his first blog entry with the New York Times, “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire,” Errol Morris opens with a line of skepticism running throughout Zoom: “Pictures are supposed to be worth a thousand words.”[1] It is the first instance in which Morris takes up an everyday cliché and brings the reader to pause upon it. The technique resonates with the act of photography itself—a methodical dissection of an environment to make what appears, at first, banal, challenging and provocative.

In the following entries, Morris engages the reader not with a crash-course in the aesthetics of the photograph—its framing or lighting of a scene—but rather, calls into question the implications of relying upon aesthetics. The frame may capture an engrossing image, but what truth does it leave out in the act of framing? The contrast between black cannonballs and a sun-bleached road may be strikingly beautiful, but isn't there truth in the strategic posing of that scene as well? What about the content that the image excludes—in focusing on this slice of time, are we focusing on a truth or looking right past one? The context in which artistic expression takes hold is critical for gleaning meaning from a photograph; context creates truth in photography. This is not an entirely surprising position for Morris, who is in “the business” of moving pictures, to take:

In discussing truth and photography, we are asking whether a caption or a belief - whether a statement about a photograph — is true or false about (the things depicted in) the photograph. [...] The issue of the truth or falsity of a photograph is only meaningful with respect to statements about the photograph. Truth or falsity “adheres” not to the photograph itself but to the statements we make about a photograph. Depending on the statements, our answers change. All alone — shorn of context, without captions — a photograph is neither true nor false.[2]

The truths Morris takes from photographs of his youth relate directly back to memories he has—the context out of which his present arises, perhaps. He may remember, as a child, playing a game against the wall upon which he is seated in one of the photographs; he may remember the day on which he received the bicycle which sneaks into the frame on another picture. These memories verify the meaning behind the photographs: they are photographs of Errol Morris the filmmaker, and Errol Morris was a boy at a time in the past. Additionally, the context in which Morris received the photographs is indicative of the truth behind them; they hold value, as they are shots taken by his father, fifty years after the man's death. With the multiplicity of contexts surrounding the image, numerous truths emerge, as the photographs are equally Errol Morris and the relationship between father and son.

To better understand why a photograph without context does not have meaning, we may consider Morris's consideration of photographs as data: “Photographs preserve information. They record data. They present evidence.”[3] In this instance, the filmmaker has stripped the photograph of all aesthetic sensibility and reduced it to a means to an end (that end being the truth(s) which the photograph lends itself to). The photograph of Errol Morris sitting on a brick wall as a boy has no inherent truth, it is simply evidence of a statement or question which has been formulated through contextualization in the viewer's mind (e.g. Morris contextualized the image relative to his past; the reader will contextualize it differently). The reader absorbs the language of the article on the website to contextualize the photograph before him (e.g. I, the reader, am reading an article written by Errol Morris, and so I contextualize the image as the boy, Errol Morris). The relationship between language and the world holds the truth Morris notes,[4] and the image is merely present to corroborate the language (unless the image is intentionally deceptive—this is the concern of Sontag and others in their consideration of Fenton's “Valley of the Shadow of Death.”)

The example of multiple truths can be extended to the images that Morris includes in his entries. The Lusitania, a ship which predates the first World War, has a historical context written into our texts. It is dry and factual—more data. For those of us who were not alive when the Lusitania sunk, this historical context is largely all we have in pursuing the truth of the image of the Lusitania. My guess would be that many of us view the truth of the photograph similarly: that was the ship that brought the United States into WWI; it was a large ship and could hold 1,000 people (per the caption). The context for the event is provided in writing and in other images which Morris provides for us, all of which are meant to make the initial image of the ocean-liner more truthful. To an extent, the filmmaker and the photographs succeed. After viewing the New York Times image of the coffins, conceptualizing the loss of life in viewing the original photograph becomes easier. The role of sequence becomes critical in contextualization, as the coffins only hold resonance in so far as they correlate to the original image (the ship); naturally, this correlation is dependent upon the coffin image dating after the photograph of the Lusitania chugging along.

As we find out in Morris's later entries, the filmmaker obsesses over the sequence of images. He does so because the sequence lends itself to the truth behind that data (the photographs). Roger Fenton's photos of “Valley of the Shadow of Death” speak to the photographer's personality, and Morris's project determining which comes first—OFF or ON—has little to do with the aestheticism of the photographs and everything to do with assessing the truth of who Roger Fenton was. The “Which Came First” entries depict one image producer trying to understand another, and the truth of Fenton's photographs revolve around the ethical implications of posing, for Morris. The caption under the photographs is not simply: “Valley of the Shadow of Death,” but also “Roger Fenton poses the ON Scene.” Both are “truths” which the photographs verify.

This distinction between a photograph as the truth and a photograph as evidence of the truth is emphasized in Morris's description of the photograph as a simulacrum: “[...] photographs are nothing more than coarse-grained screens laid over reality, revealing nothing more (about what is photographed) than a certain size. They provide an imperfect simulacrum of the surface of things.”[5] If one takes Morris's point to be valid, the sequence of images forms its own language which can complement the images themselves. Perhaps many imperfect simulacra find coherence in an order that lends itself to truth. The possibility arguably makes film, if not a more truthful medium, a medium providing more pathways to the truth. As Morris notes, “In every photograph something is absent. Someone has made a decision about what time-slice to expose on the emulsion, what space-slice to expose on the emulsion.” That being the case, the same can be said for film—something is always out of the frame, always missed just before the lens opens and after it shutters closed.

Moving forward, one might apply Morris's observations regarding the context in which representations emerge to our production efforts. In particular, I wonder what the filmmaker's insights offer in the realm of documentation. Documentation suggests that the medium acts to represent a truth evolving before us; theoretically, we are not producing that truth, we are capturing the data to corroborate it. Clearly, this is not the case.

How can the act of gathering (photographic) data be possible? When Morris suggests that “believing is seeing,” he notes the difficulty, if not impossibility, of objectivity. This should not be considered only in the realm of consumption, but in production as well. The photographer begins a communication with the subject of his photograph, and the photograph itself is data produced not as a documentation of what is as it is, but of the truth as it is found by the producer (It is interesting to note that only when Errol Morris and Dennis Purcell look outside the truth which Fenton sought to capture do they derive meaning (some semblance of truth) from the movement of the seemingly inconsequential rocks slipping down the slope of the valley).

A possible solution to this predicament may be found in Part II of Morris's “Which Came First” series. He closes the entry with an abrupt transition: “One last thought. I imagine a counterpart to Fenton.”[6] Morris offers no explanation for the shift, but it is instructive. Another producer is introduced. Tolstoy's truth enters the dialogue. Perhaps where Fenton's and Tolstoy's truths overlap, and where we the readers too find the truths we have been looking for—perhaps that is where meaning resides. If that is the case, we need as many images of the Valley of the Shadow of Death as we can produce, and we need them from as many contexts as possible.

Notes
[1] Errol Morris, “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire,” New York Times 10 Jul. 2007. http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/pictures-are-supposed-to-be-worth-a-thousand-words/
[2] Errol Morris, “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire,” New York Times 10 Jul. 2007. http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/pictures-are-supposed-to-be-worth-a-thousand-words/
[3] Errol Morris, “Which Came First? (Part Three): Can George, Lionel and Marmaduke Help Us Order the Fenton Photographs?” New York Times 23 Oct. 2007. http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/which-came-first-part-three-can-george-lionel-and-marmaduke-help-us-order-the-fenton-photographs/
[4] Errol Morris, “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire,” New York Times 10 Jul. 2007. http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/pictures-are-supposed-to-be-worth-a-thousand-words/
[5] Errol Morris, “Will the Real Hooded Man Please Stand Up” New York Times 15 Aug. 2007. http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/15/will-the-real-hooded-man-please-stand-up/
[6] Errol Morris, “Which Came First? (Part Two)” New York Times 4 Oct. 2007. http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/which-came-first-part-two/

Posted by Michael Dupuis Jr. at 12:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The First Casualty – Ch. 21
Literature Review
April 15, 2008
Julia Stern

"Despite scouring two national newspapers every day, listening to the radio, surfing the web and watching the TV news, I have absolutely no idea how the war is going" (527).

Phillip Knightley begins the final chapter of his book, The First Casualty, with this sentiment of irony and dissatisfaction regarding media coverage of the current war in Iraq, as expressed by a British reader in a 2003 Letter to the Editor of The Guardian. In an age when the media has assumed such a ubiquitous presence in viewers’ daily lives, the issue of assessing the truth and accuracy of news coverage becomes ever more crucial – and perhaps less easily discernible – as we are consistently inundated with compelling images, live footage, and “expert” commentary on the latest wartime events. In the case of the current war in Iraq – the U.S. now entering its fifth year of engagement – and the Pentagon’s broader concept of the “War on Terror,” Knightley points to the media’s unprecedented efforts to make this “the most thoroughly reported war of modern times” (528),equipped with the technological capacity to deliver 24-hour coverage, and inclined to embed reporters within military units so that the news we see would (in theory) come “directly from amidst the troops in the field: ‘the best representatives to convey America’s intentions and capabilities’” (528, 531). Yet, as is illustrated in this chapter with a critical assessment of news coverage since the onset of the war in 2003, Knightley sets out to prove – successfully, it seems – that often, and sometimes intentionally so, “the first casualty when war comes, is [the] truth.”

As we learned from our recent discussion with the Eisenhower Series generals describing their varied interactions with the military and the media, there are many different (often conflicting) interests – political, corporate, humanitarian, and individual – involved in determining what is ultimately reported to the public during wartime. In Chapter 21 of The First Casualty, Knightly focuses specifically on the Pentagon and its recent policies in Iraq concerning media coverage, seriously calling into question the morality of several calculated actions employed by the U.S. government to control the content of information ultimately disseminated. He describes the series of events which drove Bryan Whitman, Deputy Secretary of Defense, to construct the current “American media plan,” originating in 1999 with U.S. involvement in NATO’s campaign against Yugoslavia, and continuing into 2002 with the U.S. bombing of several targets in Afghanistan (529). Because there were remarkably few deaths on which to report from the American side, the western media, by default, turned toward “the enemy” to portray the civilian casualties and widespread devastation inflicted by American bombs abroad. So as to avoid another situation in which America risked losing public support for its military campaigns – especially in light of the impending decision to declare war on Iraq – Whitman devised a plan to portray the U.S. military in a just and humane light.

Thus began the system of “embedding” journalists within a military unit, infusing them with the spirit of solidarity (offering them food, shelter, uniforms, even honorary officer’s rank), and providing them pre-censored, pre-scripted, “‘ready-for-air’ package[s]” of “sanitized” news to report to the rest of the world (534, 541). New York Magazine writer Michael Wolff reveals that while reporting on the war, "I realised that every day you got to know less and less so that by the end of your stay you'd know absolutely nothing" (535). When he finally put his briefing officer on the spot and questioned the purpose of the U.S. occupation, and the instructional value of “this multi-million dollar press center,” Wolff claims to have been denounced as a “traitor,” and told to go home (534).

For many of those “unilateral” correspondents that chose not comply with the stringent protocol of the Pentagon and Ministry of Defense – instead reporting independently from the Iraqi side – Knightley cites the dramatic responses elicited against them by U.S. officials, including the barring of certain networks from broadcasting their reports, and actually firing missiles and killing suspected “enemy” journalists (whose reports might “fuel anti-American sentiment”) (538). While he does not specify the time span for these figures, Knightley notes that within a short period, fifteen international correspondents were killed by the American military and two wounded (although this has not been confirmed as a deliberate act of the U.S. government).

“Welcome to the new and highly dangerous world of the war correspondent in the twenty-first century,” Knightley declares, calling attention to the reality that unless reporters deliver the stories pre-approved by the administration, they potentially put at risk their jobs, and even their lives (537). He likens President Bush’s foreign policy mantra, "You're either with us or against us," to the administration’s attitude toward managing the activity of war correspondents (537). One thing I found particularly disturbing, was the cavalier, "who cares" attitude of the U.S. military toward the wellbeing of unilateral reporters, simply stating “they’ve been warned,” in reference to those who perished in the 2002 bombing of the al-Jazeera compound in Kabul—a move which U.S. officials deemed justified, as they believed the compound to be “the location of significant al-Qaeda activity” (which was only, in actuality, standard interviews with select Taliban leaders) (538).

In addition to highlighting the efforts of the U.S. government to conceal from the public any piece of potentially unfavorable publicity – or, as one al-Jazeera cameraman observed, to perpetuate a “war without witnesses” (539) – Knightley also describes America’s desire to convey its “awe-inspiring military might” to the rest of the world, and in so doing garner public support for current or future military campaigns (527). Knightley suggests that the portrayal of events is often manipulated by propagandists, so as to quite literally “sell” the war to the American public and their allies abroad. He cites the example of Private Jessica Lynch as a particularly egregious commercialization and distortion of facts, as the story of her rescue inspired a whole collection of “America Loves Jessica” paraphernalia, music, and a book deal. As observed by the BBC’s Simon Wren, instead of covering the events actually transpiring on the battlefield, the American news media was completely devoted to profiling this “fallen hero,” whose experience as an “abused” prisoner of war (which was later revealed to be embellished by the Pentagon) served only to strengthen the U.S. cause in continuing its mission in Iraq (545). It is Knightley’s intention to blow the whistle on this manipulation of the facts, calling on war correspondents to accept some responsibility in concealing the true story. Yet I wonder how even the reporters involved could have known the extent to which the government was spinning these events.

Perhaps this is a naive assumption, but conventional wisdom suggests that the more information you have, the more informed (of the truth) you will be. In an age when war correspondents have in some cases “developed the status of a pop star” from appearing on camera so often – T-shirts and taglines to boot – it is easy to get swept up in the media machine and believe everything they report, especially when they play to the human emotions of patriotism, comradeship, and love of a hero (as with the story of Private Jessica Lynch). Yet if this reporting is completely pre-calculated and one-sided, the increase in its ubiquity means nothing in the way of truth.

At times I found myself questioning the objectivity of some of Knightley’s claims regarding the U.S. government, simply because such dishonest, evasive policies seemed too unbelievable to be true. Yet in addition to his own opinions, Knightley’s inclusion of the testimonials and firsthand experiences of several war correspondents (i.e. the common feeling of being told by the military, “You can write what you like—but if we don’t like it we’ll shoot you” (537)), lent validity to his claims against the Pentagon’s meticulous “hand-outs” and “sound-bites” to manage the way the war would unfold before our eyes (542).

Kinghtley states in the Preface to this edition of his book, his intention "to challenge journalists to examine their own role in the promotion of war and urge them to consider the burden they bear...for what happens next" (xiii). Having read The First Casualty for myself, I believe that the onus of thoughtful criticism must also be extended to the public – the actual consumers of news media – who can choose to either accept or reject which truth, which "version of history" is in fact reported to us (544).

References
Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Iraq. 3rd ed. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.

Eisenhower Series College Program. Class Presentation. Watson Institute, Brown University. Providence, RI. 2 Apr. 2008.

Posted by Julia Stern at 06:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Literature review – Kristian Walther

Borradori, Giovanna: Philosophy in a Time of Terror – Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida

“[A]nd this is why I’m asking you to forget September 11. It certainly seems to me to be a better idea than forgetting ourselves in the name of the memory of the dead”
Maja Zehfuss – After 911

This book, or rather interviews, brings for the first time two of the most important European philosophers in the 20th century together. The theme, as the title of the book indicates is the question of philosophy in the wake of the ”event” 9.11.

Habermas and Derrida come from two different philosophical traditions. Habermas is usually described as the clearest inheritor of critical theory tradition/Frankfurter School – originally initiated around Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt and which counted among its most prominent members Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Benjamin.

Derrida on the other hand belong to “French” tradition, but looking at the ancestors of this “school” the distinction becomes somewhat blurred (at least if we understand ancestors as someone who is located in a particular space – in terra). Derrida’s general philosophical project (Deconstruction) owes a great debt to German philosophers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger. What distinguishes Derrida and Habermas is among other things, as Borradori highlights in her introduction, their style. The interview with Habermas comprises 20 pages and is one tempts to say, unusually clear. Derrida’s on the other hand is 52 pages and rather difficult. Derrida’s first major works is centered on philosophy of language. In this vein it makes sense when Borradori says, [H]is extreme sensitivity for subtle facts of language makes Derrida’s thought virtually inseparable from the words in which it is expressed (xll).

In the introduction Giovanna Borradori locates both Habermas and Derrida in the legacy of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment, although a rather heterogeneous tradition, shares the common theme, that reason is the light that leads human out of their “self-incured immaturity”. Clearly Habermas and Derrida shares this tradition but in different ways. In his major political “Theorie des Kommunikativen Handlens (the Theory of Communicative Action) Habermas is clearly building on the idea the reason and rationality is a necessary component, if we want to realize the universals that is inherent in the Enlightenment tradition. Modernity as an overall term for the contemporary historical epoch is to Habermas still an “Unfulfilled Project” Therefore, and this is where his connection to the critical theory becomes most clear, it is the task of the philosopher to criticize the different forms of pathologies, that characterizes the Modern. This task of the philosopher is closely connected the idea of communicative action. Building on the “Anglo-Saxon” trend in philosophy of language Habermas argues that communicative rationality (not instrumental!) is the means to which we will be able to fulfill this project. Language is in its very nature oriented to reciprocal understanding but this requires that people, when using the public space for discussion, meets the basic requirements (validity claims) of language such as telling the truth and further, that language as such always is oriented to different kinds of perspective always in the search for “the forceless force of the better argument”.

Derrida, on the other hand is usually located as a post-modern philosopher implying an anti-Enlightenment stance. But as Borradori points out this not the case. Although deconstruction in its very nature leads our attention to the unconscious blind spots, that has been handed down and reproduced through generations, this does not imply that the Enlightenment as such should be refused. Rather the emphasis in deconstruction is on deconstruction. Nietzsche famously said that “We can only destroy as creators” and this is pretty much what Derrida does.

In his conversation with Borradori, Habermas tries to locate the “event” that we call 9.11 within his overall philosophical scheme. Pointing to the fact the September 11 was the first “historical world event” in the sense that the live coverage was unfiltered and broadcasted throughout the world, Habermas turns to the question of techno-media structure and how it affect our possibilities for fulfilling the demand for communicative rationality. The development of media technology has on the one hand improved the possibility for participation in the public sphere, but on the other hand increased the amount of “bad” information. The classic distinction between information and knowledge becomes obvious and this is central to Habermas. As pointed out earlier the use of language requires that we take precaution and further that always reflect upon using it. But the discourse on “war on terror” is problematic because it simplifies the actual “event” and because it unintended gives legitimacy to the terrorist. As such “the war on terror” leads to a distortion in communication. This is due to the lack of “semantic sensibility” regarding the distinction between the concepts of war, state and terror. Traditionally war is something that states wage against each other, but by declaring war is against a network that does fulfill the criteria of a state, the Bush administration has given legitimacy to terror as a mean to achieve political goal – although it is difficult to see the political content of the specific act. As such terror or violence can have political legitimacy if it used to overthrow a suppressing political regime, but this is clearly what “al-Qaeda” is lacking. The only clearly stated goal is to destabilize the US/The West. Second, Habermas points to the fact that by dividing world into a Manichean “good-evil” dichotomy (with its clear religious connotations) we fail to see through the veil of immediacy. The globalization and the spread of western values lead to a disintegration of traditional ways of life in many non-western societies, something that causes disturbance and reaction. Further, the idea that globalization is only beneficial is an idea that western societies impose on others, but the fact is that there is huge economic inequality, lack of respect for basic human rights and democracy.

For Habermas then the philosopher in a time of terror needs to reconstruct the foundation from which we are to proceed. The dysfunction in language and understanding needs be cured if we want to approach a more just and cosmopolitan order

Whereas Habermas through the entire interview – and in continuation of his general philosophical project maintains that rationality is a universal concept, Derrida on the other hand – through the use of deconstruction, points to the fact that rationality and other seemingly neutral concepts (e.g. tolerance) has a specific genealogy which is closely tied to a Christian tradition and nomenclature. This fact leads Derrida to embrace an ethic, where we become more sensible to the view of the other.

Starting out with some critical reflection on 9.11 as a “major event” Derrida points out that a truly new “event” forces us to develop a new language, new word that can express the significant in its own particularity. But using an old vocabulary we fail to see the “perhaps” true significance of 9.11. This is not to say that Derrida refuses that the killing in the attack on World Trade Center and Pentagon was a new thing, but he point to the fact that terror has a long history and as such is not something entirely new. The media and their uncritical use of language lead to a linguistic vulnerability by not reflecting what language does. Unlike Habermas, Derrida sees language as performative. Language is not just something that we can use without critical reflection. Language as such participates in the construction of the very world we are living in.

The collective trauma caused by the 9.11 attack is reproduced media and the entertainment industry. By using the same linguistic vocabulary as the Bush administration, the media gives us the sense of “metaphysical comfort” – that we can fight the terrorist and win if we take necessary precautionary measures. This is where Derrida introduces the concept of autoimmunity, which he describes as: [T]hat strange behavior where a living being, in quasi-suicidal fashion, “itself” works to destroy its own protection, to immunize itself against its “own” immunity (p. 94). Autoimmunity relates first to the fact that “the Bin-Ladens” initially was trained and “sponsored” by the US. When the different Muslim groups fought against the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, they had the status of “freedom-fighter”. The distinction between terrorist and freedom fighter is then not as clear-cut as it seems. As an attempt to cure the system from the “communist decease” the US created the very means that could destabilize its own system. Further, Derrida distinguish between symbolic and real suicide. The symbolic castration by the collapse of the Twin Towers is clearly very real in its manifestation, but the real suicide is the denial of law as mean to solve the conflict. The refusal to acknowledge that the terrorist falls under the Geneva Convention provides the clearest example. Further, and again in relation to our need for “metaphysical comfort” the extraordinary means that has been taken – increased surveillance is not what is needed. Rather, and this is where Derrida and Habermas agree, the solution is not to decrease our civic liberties in the name of a “was against terror”, but to look at the roots of the “conflict”. Returning to the “event” of 9.11 Derrida says that one of the problems is, that we are constantly reminded of the “event”. The media is reproducing the images, but if we are to proceed, we have to cope with the collective trauma in “traditional” psychological manner.. We have to accept that we cannot raise the dead and then move on – not being haunted by the specters of yesterday.

One further argument in the interview is Derrida’s reflection on 9.11 as the perhaps last large scale terrorist attack, that is tied to a specific territory (terror – territory = terrortory). Our dependency on the techno-info system makes it likely that future terrorist attack will take place in cyberspace where the first hand casualty will be minimal, but the long term effect enormous. This of course is a central point. Just a small disturbance into the techno-highway can lead to significant consequences. As an example Michael Chertoff said last week that: “We take threats to the cyber world as seriously as we take threats to the material world” , thereby underscoring the significant consequences that a destabilizing of the cyper-system can have.

Returning to the possible solution to the solution to the problem of terrorism both Habermas and Derrida agree that we should avoid being terrorized by our own means. Further, both consider the possibility of cosmopolitanism as the long-term solution, and this is where Kant unites. In his plea of a “democracy to come” what Derrida urge us to consider is more or less an echo Walter Benjamin’s statement in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History” “[T]here is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim”. The consideration of cosmopolitanism leads Derrida to claim that what is needed is a cosmopolitan world government that transcend the nation-state. But when and how this is going to take place, is not something that Derrida tells us. One could say that this is a weakness in his argument, but the impression that I get is, that Derrida is trying to avoid the classic “logic-of-necessity” that has haunted much of the Marxist and critical theory.

Philosophy in a Time of Terror is a tour de force into two different philosophical universes. Although much is still to be said, this book shows the relevance of philosophy and critical thinking, when “major event” takes place. The introductory chapter locates nicely Habermas and Derrida within a larger context and the commentary that follows each conversation provides a good reflection of the major themes touched upon. In overall this book is a “must read” for everyone interested in critical reflection not only in relation to the “event” of 9.11 but also more general in the human conditions in late-/post-modernity.

Thomassen, Lasse (2004): De/Reconstructing Terrorism, in: Theory & Event, Vol.7, # 4 - http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v007/7.4thomassen.html

Michael Chertoff
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7335930.stm

Posted by Kristian Rune Walther at 09:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag asks the reader to think about how our engagement with a photograph affects our understanding of suffering and war. In this insightful essay, Sontag evaluates the use of images and the role of photography in representing atrocity, how the interpretation of images is heavily influenced by context, and the effect that these representations have on us - the privileged that live removed from the Other’s pain. In doing so, Sontag addresses three major questions concerning photography and atrocity: What is unique about photography and representation? Why do we look at pictures of atrocities? And how does the act of seeing those images influence us? Sontag offers important thoughts on these questions and challenges how the reader interprets his or her own relationship to images, while at the same time challenging the postmodernist perspective on representation and reality and her earlier work on the anesthetizing effect of images.

According to Sontag, photography, which came into its own capturing images of World War I, possesses an inherent tension between objectivity and subjectivity. The problem with this tension is that it is not always acknowledged. Photographs are more easily accepted as fact, even though truth cannot be established without context or an understanding of the perspective of the photographer and interpretation lies so much with the identity of the viewer. As Sontag writes, “it is always the image that someone chose; to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude” (Sontag 46). She remarks: “A photograph is supposed not to evoke but to show. That is why photographs, unlike handmade images, can count as evidence. But evidence of what?” (47). In the case of the Crimean War, for instance, in 1885 Roger Fenton was sent by the British government to counteract the written reports which portrayed the war in a negative way. Fenton brought back images that made the war seem as if it were a “dignified all-male group outing” by including posed pictures of soldiers in the Crimea, making sure not to photograph the dead, maimed, or ill (50). The “evidence” Fenton created was clearly not representative of the situation in the Crimea.

Photographs also inhabit the space between art and documentation, further adding to the tension between objectivity and subjectivity in photography. Documentation is perceived as objective, whereas art is allowed subjectivity and may include the perspective of the artist. When something appears to have the look of the photographer’s involvement, as is the case when the photograph is particularly beautiful, the veracity of the picture is compromised in the viewer’s eyes. When the images look less artistic they are thought to be less manipulative, and “less likely to arouse facile compassion or identification” (27). Therefore, there has been a trend developing in war photography to make shots look more amateur, gritty, real. Sontag notes: “Transforming is what art does, but photography that bears witness to the calamitous and the reprehensible is much criticized if it seems ‘aesthetic’; that is, too much like art” (76). This sense of the inauthenticity of the beautiful speaks to our expectations of the photography of atrocity. According to Sontag, when people view atrocity they want the weight of witnessing without artistry, which is considered to be disingenuous.

Taking a step back from the process of photography to the interpretation of the image adds another layer to the relationship between the evidentiary guise of the photograph and the subjective interpretation of its meaning. Sontag discusses the importance of context for viewing a photograph by first focusing on the identity of the viewer, then the added narrative of writers or editors, and finally the space in which the photograph is presented. In order to clarify the importance of the identity of the viewer, Sontag focuses on Virginia Woolf’s response to a letter sent by a male lawyer inquiring as to how “we” should prevent war. In Woolf’s reply, she places much emphasis in identifying who “we” is, highlighting the fact that every experience of the world is filtered by the lens of identity. Sontag builds on this by describing interpretations of various pictures of murdered children. She notes that the picture of a dead child, mutilated by a tank round in Gaza, for instance, would be to a Palestinian first of all a picture of a Palestinian child murdered by Israeli ordnance. She remarks that “to the militant, identity is everything,” explaining how one’s identity greatly influences the meaning derived from an image (10). The intention of the photographer becomes irrelevant to determining the meaning of the photograph, since it “will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it” (39).

That which frames and showcases a picture, captions and physical space, also shapes the interpretation of it. Captions create context for a photograph, without which it is difficult to determine what the photograph is about, especially if it is a snapshot from something in the distant past. An interesting example of this is the controversy surrounding the pictures taken of the pogrom in Tarnopol during WWII, described by Mark Weber in "Fraud Exposed in Defamatory German Exhibition." These photographs were shown in a German exhibit as evidence that German Wehrmacht troops, not just SS soldiers, perpetrated murder against Jews and others. Many of the pictures, however, came from Soviet-era Russian sources, and after further analysis by historians the images were found to have been mislabeled. The photographs actually showed the victims of Soviet and non-German forces. As Sontag notes, “all photographs wait to be explained or falsified by their captions” (10).

The understanding of photographs is also influenced by where the image is displayed. A picture in a newspaper surrounded by text reads very differently than one placed next to a Diet Coke add in the glossy pages of a magazine. Additionally, Sontag thinks that in contemporary society, there are few contemplative spaces where the gravity of images of atrocity can be felt, if it could ever be truly felt. When these photographs are hung in a gallery they become art, merely stations along a stroll in a social setting. In a book they hold the attention of the viewer longer, but eventually the book is closed and the emotion elicited by the photograph disappears. On television, “image-glut keeps attention light, mobile, relatively indifferent to content” (106). Sontag leaves the reader contemplating the fleetingness of feeling derived from someone else’s pain, offering no apparent solution to the problem other than suggesting narrative should accompany all photographs.

In addition to examining how atrocity is interpreted through photographs, Sontag addresses the question of why people continue to be fascinated by pictures of atrocity. She comes up with two possibilities – one is that photographs are used to remember atrocity and the other is that there is a side of human nature that derives pleasure from seeing other’s pain. To return to the example of the German exhibition of war crimes, supporters of the exhibit claimed that it gave voice to the victims of the Nazi regime and would allow the German people to confront their past in order that none forget it. Photographs are essential for remembering past events, since “to remember is, more and more, not to recall a story but to be able to call up a picture” (89). The scarcity of photographs of the genocide of the Herero or the Rape of Nanking, for example, may have contributed to the relative lack of attention they receive in comparison to the Jewish Holocaust or the Vietnam War. “The problem,” however, “is not that people remember through photographs, but that they remember only the photographs” (89). Sontag’s conviction that there is amnesia regarding events without pictures is not entirely convincing at this point, since certain important speeches or events that occurred before photography was invented are still remembered. However, the importance of photographs cannot be denied, especially as society moves ever further away from having significant un-photographed events as a result of the diffusion and affordability of technology. As noted by Walter Benjamin, history decays into images, not stories.

It is not just a few iconic images of atrocity, however, that make it into the mainstream. Instead, especially if one has access to the Internet, one has the opportunity to look at endless pictures of suffering. The proliferation of images of pain and the reality that people are drawn to them have to do with the less savory side of why we continue to look at photographs of atrocities – the fascination with the suffering of others. Edmund Burke, political theorists, may have been correct when he stated, “I am convinced we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others” (97). Viewing contemporary pictures of violence could be justified by the fact that they could shock someone into taking action to stop the abuse. For example, even though journalist and Darfur expert Nicholas Kristof has suggested images of victims of genocide are “genocide porn,” an idea shared by Sontag, he still uses them in presentations because he feels they are powerful enough to cause people to act. He also adds the important element of context and narrative, justifying the use of the photographs.

Photographs of past events don’t carry that same obligation. Sontag posits that the only people that should look at photographs are those who could learn from them or stop the atrocity. “The rest of us are voyeurs, whether or not we mean to be” (42). This voyeuristic element is especially prominent in old photographs of victims of genocide. In the case of the Cambodian genocide, for instance, many of the victims were photographed before they were killed. The identity of the photographer is known, but the subjects are nameless, and they live on always as anonymous victims. In a way, viewing these pictures without attempting to identify the victims or do anything proactive with the impressions derived from the viewing could be considered to be re-victimizing those who suffered at the hands of the genocidaires.

After considering possible explanations of how and why we view photographs depicting suffering, the inevitable question is, what effect does this have on us? Sontag addresses two main ideas about the proliferation of images of suffering – othering and compassion fatigue. Sontag introduces the idea of the Other immediately, the title of her work is, after all, Regarding the Pain of Others. It is not our own pain we witness through photography, but the pain of someone else in another place, far removed from our safe space. We, as in “everyone who has never experienced anything like what they went through,” cannot understand the pain of the Other (125). Even though the intention of the photographer was probably to humanize the victims, the extreme nature of the atrocity prohibits the viewers from identifying themselves in the subjects of the picture. If we identify too much, perhaps we would open up the frightful possibility that it could happen to us.

The legacy of colonialism and its history of othering also live on in the photography of atrocity.

The more remote or exotic the place, the more likely we are to have full frontal views of the dead and dying…. These sights carry a double message. They show a suffering that is outrageous, unjust, and should be repaired. They confirm that this is the sort of thing which happens in that place. The ubiquity of those photographs, and those horrors, cannot help but nourish belief in the inevitability of tragedy in the benighted or backward – that is, poor – parts of the world. (70-71)

In certain instances it has also been shown that powerful, Western nations are much faster to react to pictures of suffering when the victims are perceived as more similar to their own citizens. This is part of the history of humanitarian intervention that still hasn’t completely faded into the past. For example, when one compares the action taken after the iconic picture of the starving Bosnian man in a Serb death camp to the inaction taken after photographs taken in Darfur, the difference is noticeable. The legacy of othering, in combination with the violence in the picture, can thus dissuade viewers from identifying with the victims, and promote a sense of otherness. It is important to note, however, that this does not always have to be the case; there was action taken in Yugoslavia as a result of a picture.

The sense of distance from the victims relates to the second idea about the effect of the plentitude of images of atrocity – numbness and compassion fatigue. In Sontag’s earlier book On Photography, she made the argument that the images of violence had the effect of anesthetizing the conscience to violence, leading to inaction and torpor. In a drastically different take on the matter, Sontag critiques the postmodernists view on reality and grapples with the idea of compassion fatigue. Sontag primarily targets Guy Debord and Jean Beaudrillard in her criticism of the intellectual’s position on photography and representation. She writes:

Reports of the death of reality – like the death of reason, the death of the intellectual, the death of serious literature – seem to have been accepted without much reflection by many who are attempting to understand what feels wrong, or empty, or idiotically triumphant in contemporary politics and culture. (110)

Sontag claims that accepting the death of reality universalizes the experiences of a “small, educated population living in the rich part of the world, where news has been converted into entertainment” (110). Adopting such cynicism about media’s sincerity diminishes the experiences of those actually suffering the atrocities, since it assumes that everyone is a spectator. She notes that it assumes there is no real suffering in the world, only representations. In actuality suffering still exists, and the many victims “do not have the luxury of patronizing reality” (111).

Sontag further takes up issue with the idea that the diffusion of violence has desensitized the viewing audience to the point of indifference. Instead of numbness leading to inaction, Sontag posits that lack of action could be the result of fear or of the frustration of being unable to affect change. The viewer has not lost his or her sense of humanity. People don’t “turn off” because of indifference resulting from the hypersaturation of images of violence. They disengage because “war, any war, doesn’t seem as if it can be stopped [which makes]…people … less responsive to the horrors” (101). Compassion fatigue, according to Sontag, does not exist; it is the frustration with helplessness that causes fatigue.

The final notes Sontag leaves the reader with is that we, those removed from the suffering, just don’t get it. This simple idea is a fitting conclusion to her essay, which focuses so much on the viewer’s diminished ability to connect with the subject of a photograph – the result of the nature of interpretation and photography and the inability to respond to what we see in a picture. We can only regard the pain of others; we cannot understand it. Nevertheless, the photograph of atrocity still has an important role to play in promoting action. The fact that a picture can evoke strong emotions in individuals is important. The elicited emotions can only be maintained by effective action, however, and this requires the cooperation and compassion of individuals with power. This action is crucial in deriving something positive from these images. As Sontag states so eloquently: “Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers” (101).

Works Cited/Consulted
Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.

Weber, Mark. "Fraud Exposed in Defamatory German Exhibition," The Journal of Historical Review, volume 18 no. 5/6 (September/December 1999), 6-11.

Posted by Amy M. L. Tan at 05:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Virtuous War Chapter 5-9
Literature Review by Josh Sargent
Virtuous war combines two almost opposite aims. The first, or the virtue, is to use a just war for ethical reasons or to accomplish an ethical end and the second or the virtual is to accomplish these ends from a remote distance with a minimum of casualties. These two aims combine to form virtuous war, the model that the United States government and military has adopted as official policy.
The definition of virtue in war comes from just war theory in the Christian tradition, most well defined by Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. According to Thomas Aquinas, a Christian soldier shows virtue in war through charity. “Justice is the key cardinal virtue…but the virtue of charity is what gives the impetus for Christian participation.” Justice and charity lay the grounds for carrying out a just war both in the reasons for going to war and in the conduct during war.
Virtual war is the ability to choose a spot on a map and effect damage upon it or the people residing there, whether through a smart bomb, or cruise missile or UAV or any other method with no or minimal human casualties. It is networked war, where the enemy lacks a face or defining human characteristics. It is war in the Internet era and it is constantly being made faster, smarter, more accurate and less human to the point where someday America may not even field troops on the battlefield; only unmanned vehicles and aircraft.
Chapters 5-9 of Der Derian’s book discuss different points along his travels through virtuality. They serve as waypoints along his journey; though some may seem dated, as conditions have changed since the book was printed.
Chapter 5 attempts to define the virtuous enemy. When the book was written the American government refuses to identify any particular country as the enemy in their exercises and the list of rogue states has been replaced by a list of “states of concern.” Now America clearly defines its enemies, as President Bush outlined the infamous axis of evil in March 2003 and the terrorist organization Al Quaeda is considered the greatest threat to American security. Then enemy still is faceless, shown only on night-vision scopes where they look less real than figures in a video game. Videos of Afghanistan and Iraq being bombed look surgical and neat, and there are no formal declarations of war, only extended military engagements. As the physical violence and bloodshed are downplayed, war is easier to justify and bloodshed is only real when it happens on American soil.
War is not a game, except for when it is held in San Francisco. The war game in San Francisco could not happen today. The army does not have the personnel to do so and the protests against the war would have a focal point that could create another WTO riot, only magnified immensely. The war games have given way to the main event. And Waco reminds me that John Yoo, in his recently released memo on torture, argued that the 4th Amendment did not apply to the United States military, when acting against American citizens within the United States. The military is ever present and could in the event of a major terrorist attack be used as a policing force not bound legally by the same restrictions as conventional police.
The National Convention seems anti-climactic knowing the end result. The Cold Warriors won out over Hollywood stardom and so did on a platform that rejected the virtue in virtuous war and proclaimed that nation-building and humanitarian interventions were not in America’s best interest. America should operate on a platform of strict realism and only use military force for our own ends. The Drawbridge to Fortress America was raised. 9//11 followed and virtuous war returned as the use of war for ethical purposes, to create freedom and democracy, seemed to be in America and the world’s best interest.
To Wesley Clark, the American intervention in Kosovo was not a war; it was coercive diplomacy conducted with no self-interest. Any escalation the NATO forces took was intended to send a diplomatic message, not to force Serbia to surrender. Victory was having Milosevic back down and stop the violence in Kosovo. Bombing was a message, sending in ground troops was a message and all these messages Holbrooke used for diplomatic ends. Invading Serbia was a last resort neither side wanted. Yet to the Kosova being ethnically cleansed and to the Serbs being “bombed for peace”, it was war. Kosovo was war with the best of intentions yet Der Derian after spending all this time on war shies away from it as he tries to explain his new theory of virtuality.
Der Derian at his most ambitious is trying to replace both classical and post-modern theories of international relations with a virtual theory of war and peace. This theory seeks to understand how the way reality is seen affects the conceptuality and the actuality of an event or a representative, and thus what is represented. The interwar is seen as “eternally returning” yet if Der Derian’s virtual theory is fully realized not inevitable as global politics can change from being-between wars and arrive at becoming-different from war. This is Der Derian at his most utopian, seeing in virtuality the hope for a brave new world, one in which differences represent a “challenge of connectivity, creativity and responsibility”. Yet even as he grasps at this hope, he realizes when seeing a gruesome picture that all his theory and training and education pale when compared to an undeserved death.
A virtuous war is a war that combines virtue with virtual, using war to achieve an ethical end while realizing force from a distance. Virtuous war raises ethical and strategic questions, some of which Der Derian examines: Does the digitization of war make the enemy less real, less human and make civilian casualties easy to ignore? Does it make war too easy to fight as it requires no American sacrifice? Others he ignores: Is it better to demonize our enemies, as we have done historically, or is it better to dehumanize them? Is virtuous war a response to the Cold War and not appropriate to America’s current challenges? Is using a Christian framework of just war useful against non-Western enemies? Can and should America use military force to confront intractable political problems? These ethical and strategic questions demand answers, yet Der Derian answers none of them, giving us only the theoretical framework of the virtuous war and a vague utopian hope for the future.
Cole, Darrell. (1999). Thomas Aquinas on Virtuous Warfare. Journal of Religious Ethics 27 (1) 57-80.

Posted by Joshua Sargent at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Meaghan Casey
Global Media
*Extra Credit* Literature Review

Fables of Responsibility by Thomas Keenan and The News Media, Civil War, and Humanitarian Action by Larry Minear, Colin, Scott, and Thomas G. Weiss differ as texts in both prose and function. The profoundly dissimilar agendas of each author force one to teeter on the edge of abstraction (i.e. the theoretical work of Keenan) and concrete practicality (i.e. the grounded case studies of Minear) in order to establish an analytical link between the two texts. Both texts, however, converge in jointly calling for the intellectual to critically address the gaps in current studies of ethics and politics. The following essay comments on the style of each text and proceeds to utilize Keenan’s literary deconstruction of the rights and responsibilities surrounding ethics and politics to investigate Minear’s analysis of the media’s ever increasing role in humanitarian crisis.

Keenan’s text is more about language than application or understanding. Its abstract theoretical nature, although extremely well mapped out and articulated, is inaccessible to the general public. Interestingly, in the text Keenan refers to an instance in which a French publisher advised Marx to release Capital in separate parts to make it more accessible to the public. Marx ardently refused, stating that impatience “leads to change without interpretation” (Keenan 102). Keenan seems to embody this noble approach to his literature, taking pride in revealing the truth in time and only with much deliberation from the reader. He emphasizes that reading, “if it happens at all, happens only in the encounter with difficulty and without guarantees” (Keenan 103). Certainly that is the case in this text. Interpretations are not simply given; the reader must embark on a linguistic journey to discern meaning from the text.

Minear’s text, on the contrary, is extremely accessible to the general public and it situates analysis in context through practical case studies. While the greatest contribution of Keenan’s text may well be its deconstruction of language and eternal questioning, Minear’s greatest contribution is the systematic investigation of the role of media alongside governments and humanitarian agencies in the international system. The authors portray the shifting international stage as a new game of billiards in which states, non-states, and transnational actors- including many components of the media- comprise billiard balls. Minear addresses the gap in research on the important role of media to provide game-winning strategies for success in humanitarian crisis situations, while Keenan’s address provides an intellectual critic of ethics and politics which deconstructs the terms of the game.

Keenan’s book is broken down by theorists Aesop(if he may be named as such), Sade, Marx, and Foucault. Foucault preaches the responsibility of the intellectual to speak for the voiceless, exclaiming, “[T]he chance that misfortune will be left wordless, and not simply the misfortune itself, calls for active and insistent assertion” (Kennan 159). Foucault makes it clear that the individual, and likely in this case the intellectual, has a duty to make complex crisis known to agencies, such as the government or humanitarian organizations. The media has, in many ways, taken up this call to report on humanitarian crisis. A Foucault reading of the increasing role of the media perhaps would view media coverage as a new actor in the international scene, one who uses mediums of the media as strategies and tactics to transgress the prior era of international relations which did not as readily include individuals, non-state actors, the marginalized, or the periphery. But the media is not all the same, as Minear makes clear in a perceptive moment in the text. The authors use media in the plural to stress the variety of entities and interests within the grouping. This crucial component allows for multiple identities within the media.

For one, the media may be used a tool or a force multiplier by states, non-state actors and the media alike. As was mentioned in Grin Without a Cat, French New Leftists burned cars in the quarters of France, but it was the footage that made an impact. They may have burned the same five cars each night and injured no one, but the footage held the message. Likewise, as Major General Lewis MacKenzie, commander of UN-PROFOR in Sarajevo, reported, “‘The media was the only major weapon system I had. Whenever I went into negotiations with the warring parties, it was a tremendous weapon to be able to say: “OK, if you don’t want to do it the UN’s way, I’ll nail your butt on CNN in about 20 minutes.’ That worked, nine times out of ten” (Minear 59). The media has the power to cease human rights violations or exalt or damage image and reputations through photo opportunities.

This power of the media becomes problematic for Minear when it deteriorates public will or finite resources from humanitarian projects in need. As infotainment rules the news, less attention is paid to following through, even on worthy initiatives. Humanitarian agencies, for example, “stand to win greater backing for their actions to provide emergency assistance as they lose support for the more difficult but ultimately more critical tasks of tackling the root causes of distress and of development education in their own societies” (Minear 83). The media’s and the audiences short span of attention can dangerously result in failure to report crisis in dept or oversimplification of complex issues. The media may simply repeat stereotypes rather than analytically question events. These issues demonstrate a lapse in media responsibility, an eithic-policitcal dilemma. Keenan emphasizes that “‘to speak is to do something, to do something other than express what one thinks [or] translate what one knows.’ ‘Discourses are made of signs, but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things’” (Keenan 151). Keenan recognizes that the media does more than simply represent the facts, and that bias may be hard to differentiate. For example, in the case study of Rwanda, media reports reduced the crisis to ancient ethnic hatreds which masked the true nature of the genocide. It is imperative, based on examples such as Rwanda, for future media accounts to research the historical and political context of the events to situate the breaking news.

Minear calls for each pillar to become more responsible, for example by situating news stories in a broader political context, while Keenan questions what responsibility is. Keenan prompts that perhaps, “Responsibility begins in the bad example; one could even say that the only good example, the only one worthy of imitation, interiorization, and identification that the example calls for, is the bad example” (Keenan 45). Theoretically, Keenan’s posited statement holds, but in practice sometimes a lesson learned does not result in increased responsibility. The horrific scenes of dead US Marines dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in Somali, for example, “at the very least hastened- and perhaps also drove- a policy reversal by the administration” (Minear 55). Yet, this example, this bad example, did not necessarily help the US to become more responsible in international intervention, more cautious, but not necessarily more responsible. Although America soaked up a lesson, it might not have been the right lesson. It can be argued that due to the Somalia intervention, the U.S. delayed intervention in Rwanda, an intervention that may have prevented the full scale of the genocide.

It seems that one venue to reach greater responsibility in the media, appropriated by both Keenan and Minear in different forms, is to intellectualize media, perhaps through prevention and post-resolution media coverage surrounding complex emergencies. For example when US troops arrived in Somalia in 1992, the worse part of the famine was over, arguably. Minear reverberates, “A recurring lesson from the crises reviewed in this study is that prevention would have been more effective- and less expensive- than hurry-up responses to existing emergencies” (Minear 81). The best venue for pre and post conflict media attention, if not in infotainment, may be documentaries, researched publications, series, and specials directed at public education. The media should feel a responsibility as an international citizen to ethically research and contextual humanitarian crisis, however daunting this task may seem.

Keenan powerfully states, “‘Humanity’ is this madness, its subjects and its object. It is not simply the ignorance of not knowing what to do; it is rather the terror of still having to do, without knowing. And we have no magic caps, only ghosts and monsters” (Keenan 133). This pessimistic ending to his book leaves the reader ungrounded. Minear’s text helps re-ground the reader to reach for tool to help ensure rights and responsibilities, even if (as Keenan continuously reiterates), “Like rights, responsibilities are unlimited and unguaranteed- if they are anything at all” (Keenan 176). Minear’s tools involve increased cooperation and communication among the media, governments, and humanitarian agencies to reach a deeper understanding and produce better solutions. Although the media, governments, and humanitarian agencies may not know the next step- terrified of the ghosts, monsters, and lack of responsibility in the world- they can collaborate and use information from each other to lesson the fear. This cooperation will, ideally, prove that the international community can better defend rights, establish responsibility, reach security and end humanitarian crisis through increased interaction. Although Keenan’s theories posit that the ethico-political is forever insecure and endless, Minear’s practical manual takes steps to secure ethics and responsibility in humanitarian crisis through increased international transparency and collaboration.

Posted by Meaghan Casey at 07:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception
By Paul Virilio
Translated by Patrick Camiller

“War is the art of embellishing death” (-Japense Maxim).
This ominous quote begins and highlights the main themes of the book “War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception”. Author Paul Virilio, born in 1932 Paris, is a cultural theorist. He is best known for his writing about technology as it has developed alongside the arts, urban life and the military. In his own words, Virilio describes that, “this essay investigates the systematic use of cinema techniques in the conflicts of the twentieth century” (1). As readers, Virilio’s work allows us to explore several questions through the concept of the art of war. Is war imaginative like art is? Can violence be aesthetic? Is combat valorized? While the answers to these questions are debatable, it is clear from this book that war lives in its own ironies. War is both a highly studied and executed art form, as well as a horrifically, unexplainable tragedy. Virilio challenges the reader to see that both the tragic and artistic side of war can be tied to its strong media component, and more specifically to war’s relation with cinema. Virilio's interests in war, cinema and the logistics of perception are rooted at his thesis that military perception in warfare is similar to a civilian’s perception through the art of filmmaking. Thus, according to Virilio, the manipulation of images through human imagination and technological power is a process that is directly linked to both cinema and war. The author labels this parallel connection as the “war of images”, and depending on the perception we see that war like art may be “one man’s trash and another man’s treasure”.

The representation of war inspires new forms of reality. Virilio begins his examination of war by stating that there is no war without a strong component of representation. This representation can manifest itself in several ways and highlights the multifaceted components and capacities of combat. While war is scientific and premeditated, it is all the while ignited by its representative notions of exhibition and delusion. This paradox can be understood when we consider, for example, the representative positioning and camouflaging qualities of a battlefield. In addition, the intimidation factor of war is largely based on depictions of loud sounds and menacing explosions. Virilio believes so much in the representative forces of war that he goes on to say that in industrialized warfare, the representation of events outweigh the presentation of facts (1). Similarly, the author examines cinema as a method of symbolism. Virilio places great emphasis on technology and production and believes that what defines cinema is the exploitation of the projected images. Virilio connects the representation of war to cinema when he writes, “A war of pictures and sounds is replacing the war of objects” (4). Thus, the depiction of the examined fields inspires new forms of reality based on strategy and perception.

With the representation of war at the foreground of his essay, it is no surprise that Virilio relates political propaganda to the dependency between war and cinema. His exploration of propaganda is based in the context of the 1920s, with the rise of popular cinema. Subsequently, the technology and illusions employed by this growing art form became the foundation for the expansion of national governments and the emphasis placed on patriotism. In the case of Germany, the manipulation of reality was an essential aspect of the growth and sustainability of Nazi “culture”. With the anticipation of World War II, a new breed of both military and revolutionary leader arose. These leaders understood that real power was now shared between both war cabinets and propaganda departments (53). Through their direction, the employment of sounds and images was beginning to hold similar if not greater value to the logistics of weaponry. Impart, Hitler rose to power so quickly and was able completely alter the social order because of his manipulation of the projected reality. As historical witnesses, the possibility of such genocide that occurred during WWII can only begin to be understood if we take into consideration Hitler’s daunting violation of everyday reality through his “extraordinary technical knowledge of stage-direction” (53). Virilio suggests that Hitler’s plan for a new German empire required a “transformation of Europe into a cinema screen” (3). Thus, a pivotal piece of Nazi propaganda was Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Will. This film featured, among other things, several speeches giving by Hitler in order to emphasize the overall theme of Germany as a great power. Undoubtedly, Hitler was presented as natural born German leader who could bring back strength and purification to his country. In the context of war and cinema, the powerful and ever shocking dictators were no longer simply rulers but were themselves directors (53).

Virilio’s insight into the creation of the “other” through war and media presents some striking parallels with the current War on Terror. Ironically, Virilio’s book was published at the end of the Cold War. Now, almost 20 years later this essay seems to highlight some of the exact paradoxes of what has been coined as the “9/11 Generation”. The hate of communism during the Cold War became in a sense what terrorism is today. It was the common enemy that evolved into having an ambiguous identity. Elements of fear from different sides created a totalitarian way of looking at the “evils” of the world, and the causes of tension lost their meaning overtime. Virilio writes that terrorism, “insidiously reminds us that war is a symptom of delirium” (5). War cannot be separated from its demonstrative qualities because its main drive is to “produce spectacle”. In the case of terrorism, its very purpose is to instill the fear of death before actual harm occurs. For example, even when weapons are not employed there are “active elements of ideological conquest” (6). This point could arguably be compared to the controversial search of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the succeeding war that continues today.

Virilio ends his unique insight into war and cinema with the words, “Scan. Freeze frame”. After being taken on a historical and critical journey of the evolution of technology and the development of psychological conquest, it is as if we the readers have been manipulated into a new dimension of reality. As a writer and critic, Virilio’s reflections seem very ahead of their time. Many of his historical examples of the strong component of media in war can still be applied today. Although the author erases all doubt of the connection between war and media, he does not place an enduring emphasis on cinema. Instead, he encourages us to reflect upon what types of media currently change our own realities and what methods of perception and conquest will be executed in the future. It seems that as society develops a greater media conscience there is a growing distrust for the stage on which war is performed. Our familiarity with media will of course not eliminate the possibility war, but it should challenge us to redefine what war is and how it may occur.

Posted by Alejandra Piers-Torres at 02:16 PM | Permalink

“All are struggling with the uncertainties of the post-cold war era.” (xxii)

“Dreams have started wars, and wars, from the very earliest times, have determined the propriety and impropriety – indeed, the range – of dreams.”
Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin could not have predicted the state of war today, but his words ring true for our current state of affairs. The two opening chapters of James Der Derian’s book, Virtuous War, describes just this present state of war and how its has come to the point of not just being virtual, but virtuous. Der Derian’s travelogue through his investigation of Fort Irwin to the Salisbury Plan and Andrew Marshall brings in theorists Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin to understand the virtuosity of war. These theories applied to concrete examples in reality expose the dream we live in today, where “realism has become virtual” (37). Virtuous war is a technological running of war from a distance that displaces both viewers and fighters. It is Der Derian’s project to investigate this dangerous, current state of war and its implications in our interwar period through critically questioning this new space of technologies and war.

The fifth dimension is now upon us in the form of virtuality. This higher level is defined from the post-Ford, postmodern, post-cold war state of affairs. Here we are in flux. All ethical change is influenced by technology. Der Derian’s definition of virtuous war: “diplomatic and military policies are increasingly based on technological and representational forms of discipline, deterrence, and compulsion” (xv). Taken away from previously understood ways of war, virtuous war works to threaten violence at a distance. This network of fear and terror is brought to us, the viewer, through virtual technologies and we are left detached from war. For the fighters of such pixilated wars, they learn to kill, but not take responsibility for their actions. They too have become displaced and detached actors. The military now aided by computer games and other virtual technologies has created warriors in “cyberspace,” to use William Gibson’s 1987 term. Here is the “edge of globalization” (xviii) where the virtual has collapses all distance and left a dangerous space for war to inhabit.

“New technologies of imitation and simulation as well as surveillance and speed had collapsed the geographical distance, chronological duration, the gap itself between the reality and virtuality of war. As the confusion of one for the other grows, we face the danger of a new kind of trauma without sight, drama without tragedy, where television wars and video games blur together.” (11)

Der Derian’s first stop is Fort Irwin where the virtual war trainings first began in 1981 with Operation Desert Hammer VI. This simulation of war was created with the belief that such practice would enhance combat, especially the efficiency and speed of war. The question to be asked then is if war can be scripted from a distance, tested out like a mathematical equation? Carl von Clausewitz, a 18th century Prussian strategist, warned of the dangers of scripted war and the sheer arrogance of any leader to believe in such predictions of war. Today, we have a cyberdeterrent that proves these old theories wrong. The cyberdeterrent is the digitized superior who enacts war from a distance. It is the replacement to the cold-war nuclear balance of terror. The danger of the cyberdeterrent lies in the danger of all media – it is not readily apparent or visible. Digitization is a force multiplier of war, making it faster, more efficient, and smarter; however never without consequences.

“Deterrence precludes war – the archaic violence of expanding systems. Deterrence itself is the neutral, implosive violence of metastable systems or systems in involution. There is no longer a subject of deterrence, nor an adversary nor a strategy – it is a planetary structure of the annihilation of stakes.”
Jean Baudrillard, The Precession of Simulacra

Der Derian’s near death experience out in the field proves this theater of war and the consequences of deterrence. As a viewer of the simulated, practice battle, there is much confusion to the untrained eye. For instance, Der Derian stayed too long to catch a photograph of an oncoming tank. In his epiphanic moment of traumatic voyeurism, Der Derian experienced what few will ever. The collision of reality and simulation, a reality of death twice displaced. This 5th dimension battlefield that is there, but not there. The effect on both warrior-gamer-soldier and viewer is the splitting of the self, a fragmentation between simulation and experience that blurs reality. This dangerous situation trains soldiers to kill, but not feel for their killings. It trains viewers to watch, but not connect with the representations shown. War becomes a copy of a copy of a game played in Fort Irwin.

“What is qualitatively new is the power of the MIMENET to seamlessly merge the production, representation, and execution of war. The result is not merely the copy of a copy, or the creation of something new: It represents a convergence of the means by which we distinguish the original and the new, the real from the reproduced.” (xx)

The new virtual alliance, the military-industrial-media-entertainment network, in this hyperreality created Third Wave Warfare. This warfare is defined like a video game or cyberpunk novel. For example, Bruce Sterling, a writer for Wired magazine, was assigned to write the press packet for the Office of the Secretary of the Army. Invoking these rhetorics of science fiction and gaming the twenty-first century army reads well. However, their vision speaks to the hyper-postmodern condition of relative safety and dynamic instabilities. The cyberdeterrent is the twenty-first century army because it is a simulation, a spectacle, and a sheer technology. As a hybrid being, like a Borg on Star Trek, it is in the order of metaphysical signs.

“The pacification (or the deterrence) that dominates us today is beyond war and peace, is that at every moment war and peace are equivalent.”
Jean Baudrillard, The Precession of Simulacra

Next, Der Derian brings us to venture a look into the Salisbury Plan. From August 1927-1931 in Britain, the Salisbury Plan acted out “battles” like a laboratory testing a new form of warfare. The event was a huge success in performative spectacle. The first report, “Tidworth Tattoo – Modern War Staged,” explained the positive response from the audience on trains viewing the fight. It also brought to light how the modern machines of man worked in the realm of exhibition. Around the same time the concept of television was beginning to form. The idea of “seeing by wireless” was tempting and intriguing. The first broadcast was a missile attack onto New York City. These two examples of the desire to watch from a distance were not unknown to the American army.

Coming back to the interwar period, Der Derian sought out Andrew Marshall, officially the director of the Office of Net Assessment. This man’s work brought about a revolution in military affairs as he set up the first systems to measure how the military was performing during the Nixon era. What Der Derian’s interview brought out was that the interwar can be considered a revolution in technology, like the 1920s. In the period of the 1920s, as mentioned above, a “military technical revolution” occurred. The outcome was not clear, the factors had changed, and the forces multiplied. It was also a period of illusion, self-consciously thinking about what the world was going to look like after such technologies. In our similar period, it too must be our effort to self-consciously think about the revolutionary implications of technology on warfare.

With this turn of events, Der Derian turns to theory to look at such implications. Beginning with the work of Friedrich Nietzsche on understanding virtual powers through his theories of security and sovereignty. With life’s uncertainties, power rules through a virtual security in debt to the death of our ancestors. Fear becomes death and the repressed. The “good life” is security from those fears given to use by the sovereign power that prevents all struggle. Thus, a sovereign state is unnatural. Realism is built into this system as a means of check, a claim to world order. However, realism is virtual – it is “a perverse mimesis of the living other” (37). Nietzsche writes: “Life is a consequence of war, society itself a means to war.” War is the ultimate ratio between realism and sovereignty because it is an expression of those two illusory powers. Herein Nietzsche we find the core of the sovereign problem.

Moving onto Walter Benjamin opens up the power of mimesis or representation in interwar period. Mimesis, for Benjamin, is “imitation and repetition as a fundamental force in human development” (41). As in development of language and children, mimesis involves an important function of play. This play is the play of signs, called semiotics. The mimetic has a paradoxical danger for political problems because of this play and shirting “phase transition” between order and disorder. To quote Benjamin: “I am speaking here of an identity that manifests itself solely in the paradoxical reversal of the one into the other (in whichever direction).” There is a problem of identity with mimesis because, as seen in questions of violence, reality is dreamlike. Modes of knowing and ways of being are thrown into the air.

“I came to realize that the interwar was as much an invocation of a dream, conveyed in the guise of the virtual and inevitable reality, as it was a demarcation of past history.” (46)

Benjamin asks his readers to find a critical consciousness to battle this mimetic allure, and Der Derian takes up this mission for the interwar period. As subjects of mimesis we have unstable and fragmented identities. The methods of sovereignty and realism are to soothe us through deterrence of realism. Follow Der Derian’s travels through the rest of the book for a deeper look into such critical questioning of this virtual dream reality.

Posted by Megan Goetsch at 11:01 PM | Permalink

In The First Casualty, Phillip Knightley traces the extensive history of war correspondents. Beginning with the Crimean War, he shows how these reporters gradually ingrained themselves in the fight at hand, bringing truthful, unfiltered coverage to their readers or viewers at home. Yet sometime around the Falkland War, the tables turned, and the military realized the strategic importance of manipulating the media. The role of the correspondents suddenly became more ambiguous, and, forced to work on the military’s terms, these reporters found themselves at a “crisis point in their short history” (525). In chapters 19 and 20, which cover the Gulf War and the NATO bombing of Serbia, Knightley shows us the questionable tactics with which the U.S. and Allied militaries manipulated war coverage. By severely limiting access to information these officers managed to turn the reporters against one another, and with carefully spun propaganda, to turn the home front against the more resistant reporters. At points in these chapters, The First Casualty reads less like a history text and more like a Dan Brown novel; such is the level of the government’s conspiracies. In other places Knightley uses cold hard statistics to make startling revelations about the wars. While the writing sounds one-sided, even preachy at times, it never strays far from the question at hand: is war coverage in today’s age a right or a privilege?

Much of chapters 19 and 20 are dedicated to revealing government fabrications, news stories that have little or no basis in true events. However, as Knightley points out, such tactics are now part of standard military procedure. Press officers are even instructed to “lie directly only when certain that the lie will not be found out during the course of war” (484). Time after time, Knightley claims, the United States did just that during the Gulf War – it lied. The justification was usually that winning the war trumps less immediate ethical issues (the same argument has been made regarding domestic wiretapping).

But how does one justify lying to begin a war in the first place? In 1991, seeking to influence an American invasion of Iraq, the Citizens for a Free Kuwait signed a $10 million contract with Hill and Knowlton, a well-known American public relations company. Together they found a fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl and coached her to give a moving speech in front of Congress about how Iraqis had murdered “incubator babies” before her eyes. Two years later, it was revealed that the story “was a total invention” (488), long after the U.S. had fought and won. The distraught girl was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. The president of Hill and Knowlton, Craig Fuller, had actually been Vice President Bush’s chief of staff during the Reagan years. When I read about this elaborate scheme, Jay Rosen’s facetious advice came to mind: if you want to outsmart the media, create something huge - conspiracy huge. This corporate branding of the Gulf War seemed to come right out of Wag the Dog, especially the scene where the “Albanian” girl runs screaming across a Hollywood soundstage. Given the relative success of the Gulf War, few people later questioned the terms of its inception, but with the less successful and more prolonged Iraq II it is easy to see how this model of dishonesty can turn against itself.

Knightley reminds us that “propaganda works best not with arguments but images” (507), and the Gulf War, the “deadly videogame,” is full of such images. Unfortunately, much of this consists of stock footage, videos of flying missiles and building explosions drawn from official press packets. Occasionally, a maverick reporter like Peter Arnett of CNN would broadcast from across enemy lines much to the chagrin of press officers. The general public had a similar attitude: if anything gruesome or “unpatriotic” made it to broadcasting, their response was somewhere between apathy and outrage. For these viewers the Gulf War was clean, quick, and surgically precise; anything that contradicted this storyline was considered a threat to U.S. moral. By the time the Kosovo conflict rolled around, NATO had developed a system of pools whereby a small group of selected journalists, led by military personnel, could report back to the larger group waiting at base. Members of the press were made to wear uniforms and threatened with detainment if they did not comply by the rules. As a result, almost no one took risks, so starved were these reporters for even the slightest bit of news. In vying for the few spots closer to the front line, journalists turned on one another, so that a correspondent’s “worst enemy turned out to be his colleagues in the pools” (492). Sadly, the days of collaborating in the name of some common, higher standard had come to an end.

In narrating the fall of the idealistic war correspondent, Knightley often comes across as one-sided. The history of media in the Gulf War and NATO bombings is still quite recent, and I would have appreciated a more objective viewpoint. Born in 1985, I am too young to remember these conflicts as current events and too old to have studied them in my history books. I therefore read The First Casualty with some hesitancy, aware that Knightley may be less objective than he had been in earlier chapters. There were some lines where he even sounded accusatory. “Why did the war end when it did?” he ask