Compelling Coverage

Spring Break raged on in Panama City Beach without me. I am not ashamed to admit that I was on the couch keeping an eye on the war. In the wee hours of the morning, when the networks stop bouncing from one correspondent to the next, the coverage nestles in with one little slice of the war—a single camera, even—and lets you watch a live stream, uncut and unproduced.

That’s when I tuned in to the siege of some anonymous Iraqi outpost outside an irrelevant southern city. I watched three American tanks fire their chain guns into a berm for about an hour, supposedly rooting out an Iraqi tank. But the only thing I could see on TV was flying sand. The phantom tank disposed of, American tanks eventually turned their attention and guns toward the snipers in the building.

For the better part of an hour, the tanks exchanged fire with the snipers in the building, as the cameraperson crouched half a mile from the action. Little bursts came from both sides, and then short pauses to see who was still alive. All the commercials and commentary that break up primetime coverage of the war didn’t deign to show themselves in the rough and tumble 2 a.m. slot.

The action limped on uninterrupted, and as this siege crawled into its third hour, it became clear that the Marines were not worried about adhering to any producer’s timetable. Another half hour went by with no shooting from the Iraqi snipers, and then the camera showed a Marine carefully aiming a shoulder-launched missile at the building. Here was the climax of any good show. The rocket roared, and then missed to the left. This was reality.

On his next shot, ten minutes later, the Marine hit the building, yet as I wallowed in my late night stupor I couldn’t help questioning whether this had been worth three hours of my TV time. But worth it or not, I couldn’t pull myself away.

In fact, the tedium of the coverage is part of its attraction; it gives a context and a pace to all the war developments. Something important could happen at any moment (although it almost never does) so that even if this embedded war coverage is just another distorted view of combat—as so many pundits maintain—there is no denying that this coverage feels more convincingly realistic than any prior war reporting.

Whether it is the lumbering siege of a military complex or the brisk advance of a convoy through the desert, these uncut broadcasts are the most compelling when they show the tedium of war. All the networks carried live footage of the Third Infantry’s advance up the Iraqi highway on the first day of the conflict, even though it was no more captivating than watching rush hour traffic. But I stayed tuned because I wanted to see where the rubber meets the road, where the high drama of politics and war is translated into action.

And it is the revelatory nature of this raw, unpackaged coverage that has angered millions of viewers throughout the Arab world and beyond. It has so convincingly demonstrated American military might. But as the next phase of the war approaches—the much-awaited battle for the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq and the Middle East—we could use the power of this style of programming to persuade skeptics of American goodwill.

The propaganda we’re using right now to do just that is far too packaged and polished to be persuasive. The problem with our propaganda is that it feels too much like propaganda. We have sponsored an infomercial, for example, which features a Muslim-American family explaining how Islam is perfectly compatible with their lives as American citizens. This message is undermined by its puff-piece packaging.

Her Majesty’s troops fare little better in the art of propaganda, judging by the thousands of flyers they handed out in Basra. These flyers depict two cartoon characters—one British and the other Iraqi—shaking hands vigorously. The text reads, “This time we won’t abandon you. Be patient, together we will win.” Again, a sincere message ruined by a simplistic and patronizing presentation.

If we’re going to push the virtues of democracy, it can’t be through a civics course. No one is going to buy programmed propaganda about democracy after seeing so much raw coverage of the war. Rather, we need to bombard the Middle East with realistic images of our legislative process in all its glorious tedium.

Let’s start by beaming C-SPAN far and wide so that all the doubters can see the excruciatingly dull debates about education funding or agricultural subsidies. Let them watch as a no-name representative inarticulately stumbles through a speech about price supports for grain. Let’s show the pandemonium on the House floor as a congressperson tries to speak above the din of scurrying pages and strategizing staffers.

This is a long way from Saddam Hussein’s puppet assembly and Bush’s State of the Union Address. The very awkwardness and tedium of Congressional debates will help to convince the viewer that what they’re seeing is real, unprogrammed, open government. Just as it convinced the world of our military might, the unflinching eye of the camera can convince the world that democracy actually works.

The U.S. government won’t win any Golden Globes for this most real of reality-TV shows, but at least it will harness the power of the media for the constructive purpose of selling democracy. And if we don’t bore them to tears, we might just win the hearts and minds of a hostile world.

Jonathan P. Abel ’05 is a history concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.