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Television's Gulf Crisis
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17160 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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12 / 1990 |
2,380 Words |
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S. Robert Lichter
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Television may be stuck on the periphery of the action in the Persian Gulf, but it is already at the center of controversy. The major networks (including CNN) are blamed on one hand for being passive agents of Saddam Hussein's propaganda ploys and on the other for acting as cheerleaders for American policy. These contradictory criticisms remind us that television is not just covering this story; it is a part of the story. And this carries dangers that put the current concerns to shame.
The shooting has not started in the Persian Gulf, but the living-room war is already in progress. In the month following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the three major networks devoted a remarkable 84 percent of their evening newscasts to the crisis - more than 25 hours of airtime and 872 stories during August alone. It is by far the biggest TV news story of the past 10 years, with a rate of coverage more than double that of the Panama invasion, the Iran-Contra revelations, and the 1988 general election.
By the same token, other major stories simply disappeared from the news agenda. Coverage of the Soviet Union, the environment, and the war on drugs dropped by about 90 percent once the current crisis began. (All data of coverage are from an ongoing study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs).
Initially the news focused on Iraqi aggression and the threat to what President Bush called "our way of life." These abstract issues quickly gave way, however, to an overwhelming preoccupation with the American hostages. They were the topic of 134 stories in August, second only to the networks' attention to the U.S. troop deployment. That shift is testament to the psychological warfare being waged by Hussein and the willingness of American television to give him ammunition.
The propaganda offensive began when CNN aired an Iraqi state-controlled TV broadcast live and unedited, purporting to show Hussein chatting amiably with comfortable British hostages. The other networks used clips of this and later versions of Iraq's so-called guest news - an Orwellian term for hostage propaganda. CNN executive Ed Turner claims that this "up close and personal" approach assisted the policy debate by making us "less driven by a hatred of this individual." Had the technology been available in the 1930s, he adds, "you would have seen Eva Braun on the Donohue Show and Hitler on Meet the Press." The result, presumably, would have been less hatred of lovable Eva and Adolph land a happier ending all around. Just imagine the sound bites Goebbels might have dreamed up.
In his television appearances, Hussein comes across as menacing rather than misunderstood. Nonetheless, he has succeeded in focusing public attention on the hostages and in making their fates seem more important than any long-term strategic considerations. Putting the hostages on television is the psychological equivalent of moving them to military installations; it immobilizes American military initiatives that might put them at risk. And the networks seem only too happy to turn this story into a rerun of that hit series from 1979, "America Held Hostage."
The second front in Hussein's video war consists of interviews with American journalists. CBS agreed to air at least an hour of his exclusive talks with Dan Rather, with the Iraqis controlling the cameras. Rather told viewers that Hussein "is not a
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