Survivor: The Real Game

The quarter million dollar, Hollywood-designed briefing room for United States Central Command tells it all. This is going to be a war unlike any other in the history of the world. But what will make this war different will not be the manner in which it is fought, or the tactics that the troops will use (for “shock and awe” is as old as warfare itself), but that never before has a war been produced for a television audience.

Watching the 24-hour war coverage on CNN is more reminiscent of watching Evan Marriott’s love life unfold on Joe Millionaire than of a war that has the potential to change the worldwide order. It is like watching the ultimate reality TV show, only this time, when people get voted off the island, they don’t come back. For the first time, the nation saw network-arranged interviews between mothers and sons who are about to join the front lines of battle, and taped conversations between new fathers leaving their young wives and children. Such coverage is almost solely engineered to elicit a groundswell of American patriotism supporting our boys abroad, instead of the pointed questions that the Bush administration fears.

The root cause of this kind of sensationalized coverage is the radically new phenomenon of embedded journalists. For the first time in the modern history of war—and in stark contrast to Gulf War Part I where journalists were completely banned from the battlefield—reporters are traveling side by side with the soldiers that are invading Iraq. In a setting where journalists are not only in constant close personal contact with the soldiers, but also dependent upon them for their physical safety, it is inevitable that they will not feel comfortable criticizing the actions of the troops, even when this criticism is justified. The reporters have taken on the role of a friend trying to explain the soldiers’ plight, rather than an unbiased observer seeking to critically analyze their conduct. When such luminaries as Geraldo Rivera and Oliver North are sent to provide objective coverage on what will be our generation’s defining struggle, journalistic integrity comes under fire that is as unremitting as that raining down on the troops outside Basra.

But the slanted viewpoint presented in the television media is not only the fault of the reporters. Anthony Swofford, a Marine-turned-writer who served in the 1991 Gulf War reflected about his unit’s treatment of journalists. “Reporters visited my platoon and were treated to exactly what we’d been ordered to offer: smiling faces, bare, muscular chests and high levels of support for the coming war. We were ordered not to divulge our fears, our concerns about being uninformed about the long-term intentions of our mission.”

Compounding the problem is that the novelty of the “embeds,” as they are called, has not yet worn off. News anchors feel compelled to constantly avail themselves of this new resource, which distracts them from a broader analysis of the conflict and its implications. When they do try to analyze the war, they tend to turn to their retired American military experts to digest and then regurgitate reports from the field. These generals have close personal and professional ties to the current war planners, and inevitably they too find it difficult to take a dispassionate view. As noted in The New York Times, these generals, unless pressed, rarely question the conduct of the war, instead reminding viewers of the sound judgment of the current commanders.

The media’s obsession with reporting the minute-to-minute vagaries of combat, has diverted resources away from reporting on the broader, systemic and far more important issues involved. The critical issue that will redefine the Middle East is what will happen to Iraq once Saddam Hussein is removed from power. The debate raging in both European capitals and the hallowed halls of the United Nations Security Council is over the role that various world powers, most specifically the United States and the U.N., will play in the post-war reconstruction. Unfortunately, however, because its sex appeal ranks markedly below that of the number of rounds that a Bradley fighting vehicle can fire per second, this issue has been absent from our television screens and has thus been relegated to the back burner of our national public debate.

Interviews with soldiers both on and off the battlefield make great color stories that should undoubtedly be a part of war coverage. But in this war, the color has blinded the American public from seeing the gravity of the conflict. If coverage of this war is to ask the tough questions that a democracy requires of its journalists, the reliance on the novelty of embedded journalists must end. Reporters must respect our fighting men and women by moving away from sensationalist stories, and focus instead on the global issues that will remain with us for years to come.

Zachary K. Goldman ’05, a Crimson advertising manager, is a history concentrator in Dunster House.