Yeah, yeah, I know. Last week's post was far too long, but the issue of a functioning public discourse is important to me. My little rant was an attempt to illustrate two things I strongly believe:1) Informed public discourse is crucial in a democracy, and...
2) The current output of the US media is doing little to help keep the public informed - if anything the large media outlets have muddied the waters.
Today point number 2 was made clearer. The image above actually made it depressingly clear.
I woke up this morning to learn about the leaked video out of Iraq. The screen shots here show that I should have learned about this last night when I checked the top US headlines before going to bed.
It was at about 10pm CET, and I remember reading about Tiger's return. That's embarrassing to admit, but it was the most eye-catching headline (this coming from a reader who closely follows news about the wars).
As a consumer of news, I would now like to know why Tiger was the top story last night. How is it that a sporting figure's return trumps the kind of military misconduct that costs innocent lives, fuels the anger of our enemies, and puts our troops at greater risk?
How can Americans have a real conversation about the wars we are engaged in if we are not informed of the implications those wars have?
We deserve a better media.
To Reuters' credit, they have been attempting to get access to this video for some time - two members of their staff were killed in the attack. Their efforts to expose this were very public, and I count them as part of the mainstream media. Nevertheless, the story has already disappeared from Google's top headlines.
1 comment:
It's surprising there isn't more footage of civilians being killed in these too wars, with estimates of 100,000-1,000,000 killed in Iraq. Video is so much more powerfully then shear estimates in showing the horror of war.
Part of every war includes the killing of innocent bystanders. I'd like to believe the US Military is doing their best to limit the deaths of civilians. War means death, death for all sides. This video is shocking, I felt sick watching it.
How does this leak of video change the current state of affairs? Supporters of the wars cheer as the "bad guys" are blown up, or say "Well even if they were civilians/non-combatants it's their damn fault for being in a war zone looking suspicious". People against the war have a smoking gun? But seriously, we're killing SHIT loads of civilians, it's war, go figure. How many IED's have blown apart Iraq civilians? Am I to protest the fact that we could be doing a better job of war? Should every solider be held accountable for killing even one non-combatant? Or how about the commanders? Do we put them on trail if the civilian deaths go over some fixed amount? What about the senators/congressman then voted to support these wars, how much liability do they have?
Maybe it's not about blame, perhaps its more about opening our eyes to the horrors. Will this make us think more critically about what the hell our military is doing, and the total cost of our occupations in both human lives / political fallout.
I'm more then likely missing the point here. Man, that video is just like a part of Call of Duty Modern Warfare, except real people die. Perhaps that is the part that disturbs the most. Millions of gamers in the USA have seen this already. Millions have been the gunner on a AC10 raining digital death down on the virtual enemy. Being a gamer most of my life I can tell you I call feel the difference between the video game and real life, but I wonder how I'd feel about all this if I as 8, 10, or 16.
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