Journalists acting in a time of crisis

Buying the War:

I think this is a great documentary of how journalists need to better reporters and skepticals. It illustrates that journalism failed and failed the public when it came to relaying the facts. Coverage of the officials and the war was a collaboration of government propaganda and groupthink. There wasn’t much double-checking of the sources and facts or holding officials accountable. It was pretty pathetic that one journalist asked Bush about his faith during a press conference about Iraq. Now, let’s not ask the hard questions…I mean it’s war, what’s to lose…America never loses. The documentary also demonstrates how journalists turned against the public by saying that if you were not for the war than you were unpatriotic and unsympathetic to the victims of 9/11. Bill O’Reilly even said that if you were not for the war then you were a “bad American.” There’s also shame that the bureaucracy within journalism conglomerates would not open the gates to dissenting views. And even when skepticism started to leak through, it seemed the opinion was to continue to back the government so that we can protect their reputation as well as ours’. What’s even sadder is that broadcast journalism, which can reach a larger mass of people, has turned into pundits talking on talk shows rather than reporters.

Ignoring the lessons of 9/11:

As part of his opening statements, Jensen is essentially saying that the U.S. has significant soft power, but we don’t mind to show that we have the hard power to back it up. I also like how he used the word critical thinking in two different ways: one of being consciousness of the war and one of showing dislike toward dissenters. Jensen also reflects on what we have been talking about and that is the U.S unwilling to relinquish its power and global control based on its founding principals. My favorite two lines of his article are of the following: It's tempting to argue that we should refrain from political debate on the 9/11 anniversary to honor those who died and to respect those who lost loved ones. I would be willing to do that if the cheerleaders for the U.S. empire would refrain from using the day to justify the wars of aggression that followed 9/11.” Loss is tragic not just American tragic. We define terrorist as physical attacks and Middle Eastern. However, I think many countries would label the U.S. as a terrorist in terms of finance, trade and enablers of corrupt leaders. Instead of being quick to blame, we should look inwardly at ourselves and use critical thinking as to why Al Qaeda attacked us.

Framing the war:

Journalists are very important when it comes to shaping public opinion where that’s cover elections or crimes. The amount of coverage and use of frames is significant. Unfortunately, after 9/11, the media created an “us” vs. “them.” There wasn’t much room for debate nor room to add context in regards to America’s past with the Middle East and the current situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even the word “terror” is a loaded word that naturally instills fear. The word, in my opinion, also suggests never-ending, and, honesty, the war has lasted entirely too long.

As a side note, journalists were crafty in how they framed the war after it was in progress. (Remember the backlash against the Dixie Chicks?) I remember during 2004, I was one of the few in my eighth grade class to show disproval of Bush and the war. People around me said the war was good because we were helping people who were being tortured and under a dictatorship. There was less talk about weapons of mass destruction and connections with 9/11 than it was with the welfare of the Iraqi people and power battle among the Shiites and Sunnis. Granted we were in eighth grade with not much knowledge about foreign affairs, but my classmates had to get that idea from somewhere… 

War on Terror Readings

Ignoring the lessons of 9/11:
"Critical thinking became a mark not of conscientious thinking but of dangerous disloyalty."
I completely agree with Jensen's argument in this article- that as a global powerhouse, the United States feels entitled to an aging notion of American imperialism. U.S. policymakers used the attacks as an excuse to start a war with "terror" (a concept- not a country). They pounced on Americans while they were weak and spiritually broken, just as men go after women when they are at their most vulnerable. At a time when Americans came together and united as a country (and should have been allowed to do so in peace), their own leaders marketed their American spirit and unity to rationalize an illegal war. In my eyes there were two big failures here: 1) U.S. policymakers failed to recognize that the time of American Imperialism is fading (big surprise there) and 2) that American journalists failed to do their jobs, which includes being critical of whatever political decisions are made regardless of emotional turmoil the country is experiencing. Essentially, journalists are not here to be our national cheerleaders and life coaches. They are here to report unbiased (in this case, American or anti-American) news. I have to ask, if 9/11 never happened, would America have found another excuse to go to war? Or would the war never have happened?

Buying the War:
I was most fascinated by the scene featuring the White House press, where specific journalists were called on and asked a prescribed question. Not only did the questions asked during the press conference ignore the discussion of he ramifications of the war and what they would honestly mean for America, they chose to take a human interest angle and talk about President Bush's faith. Good for him for having faith in America but the press conference was so completely staged and didn't answer any logistical or pragmatic questions. This kind of vague, amorphous propaganda made it easy for the U.S. government to so quickly and insensitively market the American people's moment of unity.

Framing the War on Terror:
"...the War on Terror was more than a policy label; it was a powerful organizing principle and, to the extent that journalists shared that way of structuring the world as indicated in the reports and analysis, create favorable news discourse climate for military action in Iraq." Journalists latching on to phrases of any kind is always a problem, because it frames people's ideas, promoting narrow-minded thinking and unquestioned politics. A phrase used by reporters over and over again can easily change the life of millions of people- that is why it is so crucial that they choose their words carefully. By referring to the war as "the war on terror" repeatedly, reporters structured the way the world thought about why America chose to illegally invade Iraq. The entire thing just seemed like a staged production with plenty of photo-ops along the way. Turns out, it was. On the other hand, it is difficult for journalists not to be sensitive during a national crisis. 9/11 is still a hugely emotional experience for me and I'm sure millions of other Americans. Re-watching those planes crash into the World Trade Center is a horrible sight. However, I still feel that there is a time and place to be political. And as a reporter, that place is at home.

Blind in to War on Terror

Through the two pieces on buying and framing the War on Terror, I guess it is clear that American politicians, so a significant extent, authored an agenda separate from that of the American people then employed sly tactics to trick their constituency into supporting a new violent conquest. Buying the War explains clearly how our most elite ring of leaders, the presidential cabinet under GW (Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld), coordinated a very thorough effort to push a lie on America. But in framing the war, it also becomes clear that there was no totalitarian censorship, that this overthrow of democratic autonomy in the United States was not conducted via the means of forcibly silencing any dissenting voices. Rather, the American press (and most of the American population), tidily fell in line with the executive and the military's narrative of what was going on and of what had to be done. The American people, generally good and peaceful, compassionate and intelligent, threw their support behind a monstrous reign of conquest of missiles, bombs, bullets, and tanks, that still continues today. And, it seems, they did it willingly with full access to the truth. The press, those charged with the responsibility of presenting us with a thorough image of the current reality, fell into the nationalist narrative that Bob Jensen describes. It was another chapter in our manifest destiny. For half a century before, the war machine of the United States dropped so many tens of thousands of bombs and chemical agents, concocted to kill, across the world. Our people carried weapons into remote reaches of the third world and fired them on the people of that land. We orchestrated coups, invasions, and ideological cleansing of turbulent foreign populations. But, when two of those thousands and thousands of bomb made it back home and hit us, we were shocked. We never knew the feeling of bombs in our own cities. We had always, always been on the other side of this deadly transaction. Warfare was not legitimate, not acceptable, not a natural, necessary part of the world when it was directed against us. And, our response was so blood-thirsty, so viscous that we, and our press, lost clear sight. Our leaders led an army of blind civilians, and the manipulation employed was crude. Seeing video footage of George W. Bush's speeches and Iraqi dissidents show diagrams of terrorist training camps drawn in magic marker shocked me. It all seemed so dumb. Is that really what we feel for? What about democracy? Isn't anyone bothered by that?

Documentary and Reading x2 Combo

Ignoring the Lessons of 9/11
When I learned about this article from Jensen himself a year ago, I thought the subject and tone of it all was a bit insensitive. It didn't seem like the kind of thing to bring up at a tenth anniversary of such a traumatic event. But it's funny how our opinions change the more we're influenced by conflicting theories and mindsets over time.

Now, considering this was written ten years after the incident, I think it got a lot of negative attention that it shouldn't have been getting by that point. I understand that we often mark the tenth anniversary of anything as something we should commemorate and honor, but I don't think Jensen's article particularly went against that so much so that it warranted a public rebuffing from the president of the university and so many more around Texas. Ten years is plenty long enough to look back on something, analyze and realize what we've done right and what we've done wrong.

I think this sentence adequately frames what most journalists were afraid to realize ten years later: "But given the events of the past decade, there is no way to take the politics out of the anniversary." Jensen just wasn't and, though we initially didn't want to admit it, he was right not to be.

Framing the War on Terror

It's no surprise dissenting voices were hardly heard throughout the years directly after 9/11 There were hardly any of them at all. Perhaps the more unpopular ideas would have gotten more attention if they had been given more priority in placement on newspapers or schedules on TV broadcasts. But I think a lot of those newspapers and broadcast stations were really just frightened to put those kinds of ideas on the front page because they didn't want to lose viewers or their readership.

Should this out-weight the importance of offering the public differentiating views and being fair? It is a hard choice, yet what a cowardly thing it would be to say yes. And that is precisely why it is so hard.

Buying the War

Thinking about 9/11 is always really hard for me. I grit my teeth and set my jaw in a pathetic attempt to remain "objective" when, as a speaker in the documentary pointed out, journalists are not robots. However, there's only so much we can say or do in our own defense against remaining unattached to a powerful situation. There's always a catch. A breaking point. A limit.

Do I think journalists failed in their attempt to document the war and subsequent chain of events after 9/11? Yes, I do. As proof, I am ashamed to say that I can't even begin to explain the war to anybody without doubting every syllable that slips through my lips. I know nothing, or at least nothing I can say with any bit of certainty that is true. The media contorted what was going on overseas into an image that depicted us as world-wide saviors and when they finally realized how wrong they were about their information, it was too late to set the public straight. Thus, we can see why it is so important for a journalist to report the truth on the first try and not rely on each other to do the work for us. But, I digress.

Principally, I believe our pride blinded us. Of course we are not robots. We feel, we breathe. We bleed. But our emotions, our dedication to our country, should never override our obligation to report the truth as it is in fact, not as we wish to see it.