Televising War: From Vietnam to Iraq
CONTINUUM, 148 PAGES, $24.95
FOLLOWING THE New York Times' mea culpa about their complicity in spreading misinformation during the run-up to Bush-Saddam II, the American media has engaged in a distinctly self-serving round of complaints about how they were "duped" into serving as unofficial house organs for the current administration. For a fuller understanding of how the Bushies used the mediatelevision news in particularto advance their agenda, and their critical miscalculation, British intellectual Andrew Hoskins' new book Televising War is a must read.
Television, as a medium almost wholly dependent on the image, creates an inherent hierarchy where any story without captivating imagery becomes inherently un-newsworthy. Similarly, the relentless barrage of images that make up the 24-hour news environment creates the illusion of fullness. In the parade of embedded journalists' detailing their ant's-eye perspective of the Iraq war, little sense was provided of what all the footage added up to. Television news flourishes on the audience assumption that if the show is on constantly, nothing of importance is being left out. When the image rules, analysis and detail are nowhere to be found. "TV news can thus be seen to promote an essentially inhibited and oversimplified view of the past and of people because it is increasingly dependent upon the visual image for its direction and narrative," writes Hoskins. He plays productively with George Steiner's notion of "equivalent instantaneity," in which everything on television is equally important and equally temporary.
Hoskins' study of television's dependence on the image as its bread and butter provides a nuanced analysis of the recent shift in public opinion regarding Iraq. If the image is king, one set of triumphant images ("Mission Accomplished"; Saddam's statue toppled) can only be neutralized by another set of images. The news media's protective shield of optimistic Iraq coverage could only be trumped by imageswords could never suffice. As such, the Abu Ghraib photographs of prisoner torture prove Hoskins' dictum that new pictures provide a new memory of already-established events. Saddam is toppled and replaced by the statue-like hooded Iraqi prisoner standing on his cardboard box. The Bush administration's brilliance at manipulating the media to tell only their story when it came to Iraq, unquestioningly, was overturned by a set of images too powerful to ignore.
Hoskins' cogent study lacks a certain verve, being written in typically tweedy British academic prose. Televising War will not cause its readers any sleepless nights racing through its pages. Perhaps, though, considering the never-ending onslaught of television news, Televising War provides a considered, measured dissection as a rebuke to tv's sensationalism.