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Chatting About The Mainstream Media Coverage Of The War With Emily Jones And Michele Catalano
by John Hawkins
I got together with Emily Jones from Give War A Chance and Michele Catalano from A Small Victory & The Command Post to discuss how the mainstream media has covered the war. Read and enjoy!
John Hawkins: First off, Peter Arnett...is his career over?
Michele Catalano: There's always room for him at the Weekly World News.
Emily Jones: I sort of hope not. Then he'll only become the poster child for the whiny "stifling dissent!" cretins.
Michele Catalano: If Robert Fisk and Mark Morford have careers....
John Hawkins: Well maybe I should have rephrased that -- he's working for the Daily Mirror and Abu Dhabi TV -- that's like "New Kids On the Block" playing 500 person clubs after they've done stadiums. Do you see him working on American TV again?
Emily Jones: Possibly, once we've licked our war wounds. People will forget almost anything, given time.
Michele Catalano: People like Arnett always find a way back.
John Hawkins: Speaking of reporters that die harder than cockroaches, should Geraldo still have a job?
Michele Catalano: Yes, but not as a hard news reporter. He is entertaining, I will give him that.
Emily Jones: No. But then again, I don't think he should have had the job that he did in the first place. Michele is right, he's entertaining, but in the "throw a chair at THAT guy's head" sort of sense. Not as a serious reporter.
John Hawkins: Should he still be doing Fox News or should he be looking for Capone's vault again on a Jerry Springer style talk show?
Michele Catalano: Right, he's an "Entertainment Tonight" commodity. Not a war reporter.
Emily Jones: He should unequivocally not be doing Fox News. Not unless it's interviewing Anna Nicole Smith in some lame "focus: entertainment" spot.
John Hawkins: Actually, it might be entertaining to see Geraldo in an Anna Nicole Smith type reality show...So what do you think caused the media to starting screaming, "Quagmire" almost from the start of the war?
Emily Jones: Because they wanted it to fail from the start.
John Hawkins: So you think they were hoping the bad press would become wish fulfillment?
Michele Catalano: They had this idea that we would walk right over the Iraqi forces.
Emily Jones: I think Michele is right, they expected one striking blow to start and end the whole thing. But, I also think that success would have offered a certain amount of respect and validity to the cause of the Bush administration.
Michele Catalano: As soon as the first firefight broke out, they started yelling, "quagmire". The "fast war" was a media fabrication. They believed their own hype.
John Hawkins: Personally, I think a lot of media was against the war and they projected what they believed and maybe wanted to happen onto the battle field even when the facts didn't fit...
Emily Jones: I agree, John.
Michele Catalano: If you wanted failure, you could point to POWs and looting and civilian deaths.
John Hawkins: Yeah, but considering the success of the campaign, that's like complaining that the free steak you got with your lobster wasn't big enough, especially this lame museum thing...
Emily Jones: Well, I'm biased - the only people that aren't are the ones who are kidding themselves. As for the looting, what kind of an idiot would think that it's sooo shocking to find chaos in a country with a newly collapsed government?
Michele Catalano: People grasping at straws. We toppled a regime. We found children in prisons. We found suicide vests. The biased of the media had to find something to write about.
John Hawkins: The good thing about it was that much of the mainstream American media other than Fox ended up being humiliated by their own coverage when things turned out so well...
Emily Jones: What I'll never understand is why they all expected it to go so smoothly. I mean, it's WAR. You can learn enough about war to not make such stupid judgments from a Steven Spielberg movie, for goodness sake. Things go wrong.
Michele Catalano: Emily is right. How can you go into a war not expecting death? But, there were things that all the media covered the same way. Jessica Lynch, for instance.
Emily Jones: Do you think Jessica Lynch got the sort of coverage she did because she was a woman? Would we have been so endeared to her if she was a guy?
John Hawkins: Nope -- even if she were an unattractive woman she wouldn't have gotten the same coverage. Not that I begrudge it to her. I'm already jazzed to see the TV movie starring Jodie Foster =)
Emily Jones: Foster is too old. You need one of the more hip starlets.
Michele Catalano: What about the POWs who were recently rescued. There was a woman among them. How many people even know her name? Why did a cute white Mid-Western "girl" get so much coverage?
Emily Jones: Good question. I think the drama factor plays into what we choose to focus a good deal of attention on. We love it when life imitates the movies.
John Hawkins: Lynch was more attractive and she had a better story -- gunning it out and being captured -- tortured by the Fedayeen -- then Muhammad's help and the daring rescue -- it's a cool story... I see Jennifer Love Hewitt as Jessica Lynch, Bruce Willis as the special ops leader sent to save her, Christopher Walken as the Fedayeen captain and Antonio Banderas as Muhammad -- the Iraqi who only wanted to help.
Emily Jones: Muhammad's help gave this entire element to the whole thing that justified the idea of "liberating" the Iraqi people - you know, the idea that these are good folks that are worthy of our own national sacrifices.
Michele Catalano: That's why I thought it was such a great story.
John Hawkins: Do you two think the media has spent too much time on the whole museum issue? Personally, I think the coverage has been incredibly overplayed...
Emily Jones: I think it's a tragedy, but not something that is entirely unexpected or startling. Any people are going to be opportunistic, given the chance.
Michele Catalano: I think the museum was looted before the war even started. But again, the liberal media was waiting for something like this.
John Hawkins: The artifacts are probably already sitting in some Saudi sheik's private collection already...
Emily Jones: It's a no-win situation. The only thing that stops looters is an immediate threat, but if we shoot even one of them, we're the bad guys. Do you guys think the FBI investigation is just for good press? And if not, is it worth our efforts?
John Hawkins: Oh no, I think the FBI might be able to get a few relics back. Hell, if they just look around at whatever the Iraqi equivalent of yard sales are they'll probably be able to get some of the pieces...
Emily Jones: A lot of people have been calling the coverage of the fall of Saddam "jingoistic" and "a whitewash". What do you guys have to say about that?
Michele Catalano: Another no-win situation. You cover it and people call it staged. I think it was a great day and the coverage was great. But, some stations that were using the word quagmire the day before were suddenly all teary eyed over the fall of the statue.
John Hawkins: I think it's sour grapes. We invaded a country the size of France, won the war in about 3 weeks with minimal casualties on our side and far fewer civilian casualties than anyone thought possible. The people were thrilled, we got rid of Saddam & we're trying to put a Democracy in place. Quite frankly it's the "feel good story" of the decade. It deserves incredibly positive coverage...
Emily Jones: I was really frustrated at the folks who wouldn't address that. Not a one of them, at least not as far as I noticed, could bring themselves to say "I was wrong. We did the right thing."
John Hawkins: Andy Rooney came out and said exactly that and a few others did as well although most of the hard-core anti-war crowd was just as delusional after the war as they were before it....
Michele Catalano: They are still holding anti-war marches. The delusion never ends.
John Hawkins: I think a lot of the people still beating the anti-war drums would jump for joy if everything went to hell in a handbasket now. They'd rather be proven right than see the Iraqi people live in freedom...
Michele Catalano: Because the anti-war movement is a selfish movement. It's all about making the protester feel good.
Emily Jones: Yes, and smug. "I'm a superior being to you, because, unlike yourself, I understand that war is bad and it sucks when people die." Whereas, we all think death, especially the death of children, is just phantasma-friggin'-goric.
Michele Catalano: You know what's interesting? Back when I was a "liberal" I was often chastised by my fellow liberals for being isolationist. Now that I see it from this side, I can see that they are the ones who are behaving like isolationists. They only want to know how things affect their country and their people. Screw the Iraqis if it means we lost some history. Screw the Iraqis if we alienate France.
Emily Jones: That's another interesting phenomena about this war. Isolationism is traditionally a trait of the right.
Michele Catalano: So Emily sees it too...the left becoming isolationists.
Emily Jones: Not necessarily in truth, though, Michele. Remember, they had no problem when Clinton bombed Baghdad. It's been pointed out before, sometimes without shame by the extreme left themselves. Most of these protests aren't even anti-war, they're just anti-Bush and antirRight.
John Hawkins: That's because they have no principles that go much beyond getting more leftists in power. Every Republican president is the "stupidest ever" and the others get smarter retrospectively. Same deal with containment. It was terrible when we were using it against the Soviets, now it's the greatest thing in the world since we're starting to engage in preemptive wars. I think it's all about moving the goal posts myself...
Michele Catalano: But, they will never admit that. Even though they are changing course as we speak.
Emily Jones: But, do you notice how anti-Americanism, at least the loud, uber-vocal aspect of it, increases when there's a Republican in the White House?
John Hawkins: That's because -- and I'm serious about this -- the left puts getting along with other nations above everything else when it comes to foreign policy. Better to sign terrible treaties, compromise our security, give up part of our sovereignty, etc than have someone else get mad at us. The right has never bought into that philosophy. We've had a lot of complaints that the anti-war movement hasn't gotten a "fair" amount of coverage and their points of view haven't been represented in the media...do you agree?
Michele Catalano: Newsday, which is my local paper, covered every anti-war protest, but not one single pro-troops rally.
Emily Jones: Not at all. Maybe, initially when the buzz about the war was just starting, but seeing as how the latest numbers of support are hovering at or above 70%, I think they're getting more than their fair share. Plus, there was a time there that it seems like you couldn't crack a news site without some huge report about "globe-wide protests".
Michele Catalano: They can't expect to have their rallies covered without the media covering the window smashing and "Bush-as-Hitler" signs.
John Hawkins: Nothing annoys me more than celebrities like Barbra Streisand, Tim Robbins, and Janeane Garofalo who know absolutely nothing about foreign policy complaining about having their dissent squashed while you can't even open a newspaper or look at Cable TV without hearing people talking about their views...
Emily Jones: My question: I think "what if" is kind fruitless, if not fun, but what do you guys have to say about the "What if Al Gore were President" speculations?
Michele Catalano: I shudder to think.
Emily Jones: My speculation: possible bombing of Iraq, but without protests and the use of the word "war". We'd be on a "peace keeping mission" right now, if we were on a mission at all. How about "Operation Sipping Tea With Hans Blix"?
John Hawkins: I think Al would have invaded Afghanistan and we would have won although who knows if it would have gone as well. Gore has said he wouldn't invade Iraq and I can't imagine the war on terrorism going as well as it has with him in office. Since the "Mcgovernites" took over the party, Democrats are too soft to deal with tough foreign policy issues...
Michele Catalano: I don't think Iraq would have even been a thought. We would still be appeasing the Taliban.
Emily Jones: Do you really think he could have gotten away with that? I mean, we wanted heads on pikes after 9/11.
John Hawkins: I think Gore would have been anxious to forget about the war on terrorism after Afghanistan so we could focus on more "important issues" like raising taxes & gun control...
Emily Jones: Sure, John, but do you think we would have given him the chance? The first termer always has his finger on the pulse of his nation.
John Hawkins: I think it would have destroyed his presidency. Democrats, and I mean ALL Democrats today, are so handicapped by their anti-war base that they can't be effective in this sort of situation. Even a hawkish Dem like Lieberman couldn't afford to anger his base by running a long, sustained war on terrorism. So ladies...you about ready to wrap this one up? Anything you want to say before we call it a night?
Michele Catalano: Umm thank you? I enjoyed this. And (for John) "Eason Jordan slept with Saddam!"
Emily Jones: John, it was an unexpected privilege.
Michele Catalano: Definitely.
John Hawkins: Thanks ladies.
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