Bill's Last Word
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Bill Brioux
Debate: War as Reality TV?
Hosted by the Media Awareness Network
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Dear Dwayne,
My last word will have to be the column I wrote the other day on the war coverage. I'm just too jammed up and on deadline to get into another, if you'll pardon the expression, war of words.
The story is pasted below. Thanks, Dwayne, for all your ideas and perspective. Despite all my cranky jabs, it was very helpful to get challenged on this issue.
TV Truths
Viewers’ Appetite for War Coverage Wanes
Bill Brioux
Toronto Sun, March 25, 2003
Republished with permission
It is an old cliché that the first casualty of war is truth. But was truth already mortally wounded, on TV at least, before this war even began?
The question is raised after a rough weekend for the coalition forces seemed to dim viewers' appetite for war coverage. To use an apt metaphor, the wall-to-wall TV war is running out of gas. News divisions are struggling to stay with the story, and without any sustained "shock and awe," the blather from political pundits (despite all those showy charts and graphs) is fast slipping into "talk and yawn."
By yesterday afternoon, you had to go to the news channels to find the war. CTV, Global, ABC, CBS and NBC were all back to The Young & The Restless, Dr. Phil and Crossing Over.
That's the good news. Rather bore than gore, any day. Unfortunately, Sunday wasn't the day.
Early Sunday, CNN's Mark Strassman blew the whistle on that U.S. soldier's weird grenade attack on his own tent compound, killing one and wounding others. An embedded journalist broke another story that a U.S. Patriot missile had brought down a British jet. Then came news that veteran Brit reporter Terry Lloyd had been killed.
In all, CNN reported 22 U.S. and 17 British soldiers had died by late yesterday afternoon.
Then there were those disturbing images of American PoWs broadcast on Al-Jazeera. U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld charged that the PoW treatment contravened the Geneva Convention, and all but ordered CNN and others to keep those negative images off North American screens.
Too late, CNN anchor Judy Woodruff reported yesterday. "CNN has decided that coverage of the treatment of the PoWs is an important part of the story," she said. So, apparently, was tracking down the mothers, brothers and sisters and other scared family members of the five prisoners and getting their teary faces on camera. No wonder the stock market started to nosedive yesterday.
Stage-Managed War
What happened to our carefully stage-managed war, The Pentagon must be asking. After all, they went to the trouble of bringing in a leading Hollywood set designer to dress the news briefing studio in Doha, Qatar. They embedded the journos right into their military divisions, where they could be "safe." (Why weren't any of the Naked Newscasters "embedded," kids colleague John Coulbourn). They've cheerfully allowed dozens of former colonels, admirals and other intelligence officials to "guide" viewers through this conflict.
But are these military lifers simply there to "cheer on the home team and pick up a few bucks on the side," asks Kansas City Star TV critic Aaron Barnhart?
Oh-oh. After a week of rah-rah-wave-the-flag, that ol' credibility gap is slowly creeping back into the picture.
As mentioned here before, TV's ability to convey truth may have been irreversibly damaged after all those phony "reality" shenanigans. Reality is a lie, as Joe Millionaire taught us. A sustained, messy blend of fact and fiction can come back to haunt you, especially after some renegade documentary director stands up in front of the entire world and rails about a fictional president and a fictional war. And what about that other fictional president? Is it live Saddam or Memorex? And if we ever find the truth, will we believe it?
