Death is always in the news. From local car crashes to catastrophes
in faraway places, deadly events are grist for the media mill. The
coverage is ongoing -- and almost always superficial.
It may be unfair to blame journalists for failing to meet standards
that commonly elude artists. For centuries, on the subject of death,
countless poets have strived to put the ineffable into words. It’s
only easy when done badly.
Yet it’s hard to think of any other topic that is covered so
frequently and abysmally in news outlets. The reporting on death is
apt to be so flat that it might be mistaken for ball scores or a
weather report.
Pallid coverage of the dying is especially routine in U.S. news media
when a war is underway and the deaths are caused by the U.S.
government.
When a news report breaks through cliches to evoke realities of
carnage, the result can be memorable. Here’s a passage from an April
1999 story by Robert Fisk, reporting for the London-based daily
Independent about a U.S.-led NATO bombing raid on a target in
Yugoslavia:
“Deep inside the tangle of cement and plastic and iron, in what had
once been the make-up room next to the broadcasting studio of Serb
Television, was all that was left of a young woman, burnt alive when
NATO’s missile exploded in the radio control room. Within six hours,
the [British] Secretary of State for International Development, Clare
Short, declared the place a ‘legitimate target.’ It wasn’t an
argument worth debating with the wounded -- one of them a young
technician who could only be extracted from the hundreds of tons of
concrete in which he was encased by amputating both his legs. ... By
dusk last night, 10 crushed bodies -- two of them women -- had been
tugged from beneath the concrete, another man had died in hospital
and 15 other technicians and secretaries still lay buried.”
Compare that account to the easy enthusiasm for NATO’s air war from
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who wrote a day earlier:
“It should be lights out in Belgrade: Every power grid, water pipe,
bridge, road and war-related factory has to be targeted.” Or consider
the contrast between Fisk’s grisly account and the media jargon that
the Times brought to bear on its front page that same week: “NATO
began its second month of bombing against Yugoslavia today with new
strikes against military targets that disrupted civilian electrical
and water supplies...”
Such contrasts -- between facile journalese and human experiences of
death -- are also part of the standard media terrain much closer to
home. In late February, the state of California was all set to kill
Michael A. Morales in a San Quentin death chamber. But news reports
told of delays after two anesthesiologists refused to participate in
the lethal injection.
Public acceptance of killing thrives on abstractions. And, in turn,
those abstractions (like the phrase I just used, “lethal injection”)
are largely facilitated by news media.
The reporting about the death penalty is usually light years from
what really goes on. We’re accustomed to those kinds of gaps. By the
time we become adults, we’ve seen thousands of televised narratives
-- from entertainment shows to newscasts -- that purport to depict
death but actually do nothing of the sort. It’s not hard to watch
because so much about death is hidden from media viewers.
For those who champion death-dealing policies as solutions, whether
administered by the “Department of Defense” or the “Department of
Corrections,” euphemisms are vital. Fog prevents acuity about what
can’t stand the light of day.
“Government officials don’t want the American public to view the
death penalty as a lethal, destructive, violent act that isn’t really
necessary,” says Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal
Justice Initiative of Alabama. “Therefore we sanitize and obscure the
act of killing a person, who is no longer a threat to anyone, with
protocols and procedures that are aimed at comforting the public. The
problem is that intentionally killing another human being is always
painful and shocking. As medical doctors, correctional staff and
anyone who gets close to capital punishment quickly discover, there
is no comfortable way to kill a human being who doesn’t have to die.”
But there are plenty of comfortable ways for news media to report on
the killing of human beings.
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Norman Solomon’s latest book is “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits
Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For information, go to:
www.WarMadeEasy.com