Ryan at The Dead Parrot Society links to a report on a survey of journalists and readers he worked on that asked its respondents to decide whether they would publish certain graphic news photos. He writes that journalists and readers all focused on similar concerns when making the decision, but that journalists were 10% to 15% more likely to publish than were readers. This makes sense to me, and as he quotes:
"It's probably safe to say that journalists as a group are more likely to ground their moral decisions in duty," [said Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute.] "They believe it is their duty to inform. In the wider public arena, a greater portion of people are going to ground their moral decisions in care. That means they would be concerned about harming the people in the photos, as well as the audience who might view the photo."
According to the survey, journalists are wary of becoming mouthpieces for "terrorist propaganda" -- yet as Wretchard at Belmont Club has noted, they often appear to do just that.
So what's the right answer? Frankly, I wouldn't care what images the media chose to show as long as they made it clear that they're on our side and want America to achieve complete and total victory. The only reason there's worry about helping the terrorists is because the media refuses to take the side of the good guys. That doesn't mean they should be issuing American propaganda or lies, but they also shouldn't let any of their viewers doubt where their loyalties lie: to their country, or merely to their profession?
The problem is similar to that faced by many international "human rights" groups. They don't get anywhere publishing articles about the evil of terrorists and tyrannical regimes, because everyone knows. Kim Jong Il starves his people and keeps hundreds of thousands in concentration camps? Big deal. Uday Hussein snatches girls off the street to rape and murder them? Who cares. China controls its population using forced abortions? Whatever. American soldiers strip their prisoners naked and take pictures? Stop the presses!
The domestic government is held to a higher level of accountability than foreign governments.
This seems ok to me. The newspapers' readership are more likely to a) care and b) act on the information concerning our own boys than other peoples' boys. Also, as enlightened free consumers (so good, we're now exporting it!), don't we have to be extra vigilant against our own decline. I think we do.
If, in the act of protecting ourselves, we turn into our enemy, then we loose. We require our media to hold us accountable.
America does not deserve people to be on her side simply because she is "America", but because of what she is. If she slips, then that allegiance should and would shift.
The problem isn't that the media covers American atrocities, such as Abu Ghraib -- it's that it distorts perspective on them. You're right when you say that "we have to be extra vigilant against our own decline." But at the same time, it helps to keep a sense of perspective on the world at large. Abu Ghraib was a horrible incident, and the soldiers involved should, in my opinion, receive the death penalty for high treason -- their actions in a time of war provided the most effective propaganda that the enemy could have hoped for.
But what they did was still nothing compared to the daily operations of Saddam's government, which averaged forty thousand murders a year for every year of his reign. And those are just the official military/police kills.
But that side of the story isn't being told, the mass graves aren't being shown, and the American people aren't getting the necessary sense of perspective. No, we shouldn't try to whitewash our abberant soldiers, and we should -- and do -- hold them accountable. But we shouldn't try to pretend that a bunch of misfits humiliating and tormenting prisoners is equivalent to genocidal murder and systematic rape and real torture.
I'd be willing to bet that the majority of the American viewing public believes a great deal of incorrect information about Abu Ghraib -- such as that real torture (defined as treatment which causes permanent physical harm or requires immediate medical care) occurred there. I'd be willing to bet that that same segment is largely unaware of Saddam's average "kill count," the day to day operations of an Iraqi prison under his rule, or the kind of tortures inflicted on prisoners, such as lining up their female family members to be raped and then beheaded in front of their eyes, crushing their genetalia, lashing the soles of their feet with barbed rods and then forcing them to run through sand, and other such things.
Perspective must always be maintained, and on that score, our mass media have been an abysmal failure, both out of laziness and a general political aversion to spreading news that might justify the war, and hence, help Bush.
I strongly disagree with Gonzales' definition of torture. If the authorities were interrogating you, think of all the things they could do to you that "wouldn't be torture"...
Perspective, yes. But the most important news is that which the audience is involved with, can do something about. That always squews towards domestic or internal events.
jez: Maybe you aren't aware, but domestic police are allowed to do lots of things that our soldiers have been prohibited from doing. I think soldiers should have at least as much leeway when interrogating prisoners as police do.