Norman Solomon
Media Beat, March
7, 2002
Six Months Later, the Basic Tool Is Language
Cameras have recorded countless defining
moments. And six months after Sept. 11, some nightmarish televised glimpses
of that day's horrors still resonate deeply. Visual images are powerful.
Yet there's no substitute for words that sum up what might otherwise seem
too ambiguous, upsetting or baffling. Words attach meaning to events.
Since last fall, the biggest media
buzz-phrase has been "the war on terrorism." By now, journalists are in
the habit of shortening it to "the war on terror" -- perhaps the most demagogic
term in recent memory.
Present-day reporting is locked
into a zone that excludes unauthorized ironies. It simply accepts that
the U.S. government can keep making war on "terror" by using high-tech
weapons that inevitably terrorize large numbers of people. According to
routine news accounts, just about any measures deemed appropriate by top
officials in Washington fit snugly under the rubric of an ongoing war that
may never end.
Irony, while hardly dead, is mainly
confined to solitary reflection. If insights run counter to the prevailing
dogma, then access to mainstream media is fleeting or nonexistent. The
need for independent thought has never been greater.
At this point, facile phrases about
war on "terrorism" or "terror" are written in invisible ink on a blank
check for militarism. They can be roughly translated as "pay to the order
of the president" -- to be cashed with a lot of human blood.
The grand media outlets are so entangled
in the current newspeak that they rarely seem capable of presenting any
fundamental challenge to the White House. At the same time, a smattering
of news outlets -- far from the centers of journalistic power -- refuse
to dodge the task of raising key questions.
A daily paper in Florida made a
profound statement on March 2. "The nation's loyalty is turning into groupthink,"
the Daytona Beach News-Journal editorialized. "How else explain a president
who, playing on the war's most visceral slogan, gets away with justifying
an obscene corporate tax cut as 'economic security,' a build-up of defense
industry stock as 'homeland security,' and an exploitative assault on the
nation's most pristine lands as 'energy security'? How else explain his
contempt for Congress, his Nixonian fixation on secrecy, his administration's
junta-like demeanor in Washington since September?"
The notably forthright editorial
pointed out that "without robust dissent, democracy might as well pack
up and head for the hills." And it accurately described the status quo
of March 2002 in the USA: "This is not unity. It's not patriotism. It's
stupor."
At once foggy and focused, the media
lexicon of self-justification rolls on. By implicit definition, Washington's
actions against "terrorism" can only be righteous -- and a penumbra of
virtue extends to Uncle Sam's allies. That helps to explain why, in the
daily drumbeat of reporting from the Middle East, the Israelis who shoot
are engaged in "security" operations while the Palestinians who shoot are
"gunmen."
Almost without exception, in U.S.
news reports about the back-and-forth violence, exculpatory words like
"retaliation" are reserved for deadly Israeli actions, not deadly Palestinian
actions. It's a typical element of style for American journalism: Israelis
"retaliate." Palestinians don't.
The media spin is exceedingly kind
to the occupiers. When Israeli onslaughts take civilian lives, that's not
"terrorism." When Israel sends tanks and aircraft to attack Palestinian
neighborhoods or refugee camps in the West Bank or Gaza, that's merely
an "incursion."
Meanwhile, American taxpayers are
financing massive new Pentagon ventures, with troops and weaponry deploying
overseas from Afghanistan to Georgia to the Philippines. To boast about
waging war against "terror" by terrorizing is a no-brainer only in the
sense that our brains must be on automatic pilot in order to nod approval.
A little more than a year ago, at
the first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the Latin American
writer Eduardo Galeano commented that our societies suffer from "fear of
solitude ... fear of dying, fear of living." The dominant trends encourage
passivity. "Quietism is based on fear." And: "The system presents itself
as eternal. The power system tells us that tomorrow is another word for
today."
Currently, that's more true than
ever. Promised a perpetual "war against terror," we face a parallel media
war without end. It's a propaganda siege that must be resisted -- because
truly open debate is essential to democracy. As Galeano observed: "There
is no greater truth than search for truth."
That search, positively endless
and necessarily difficult, stumbles over manipulative language. Words are
pivotal for keeping us in this mess. And words may be crucial for getting
us out.
Norman Solomon's latest book is
The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media. His syndicated column focuses
on media and politics.