BLACKFIVE: Whither the Media

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Whither the Media

Posted By Mr Wolf

Well, as a media 'expert', I've been wanting to ask the following questions to B5 readers for a while. I want to get to the heart of what it will take, in coverage, to get the 'message' across to Americans what we are facing in the Arabian peninsula. What will it take to get Americans 'involved'? To understand?
How many people remember seeing this photo? How about it's context? If it were in our media, would it help understand what the Media War is all about?

That photo was one that was released by the insurgents during the Nov '04 battle of Fallujah. During that period, the insurgent propaganda machine was in full swing. In the Arab media, this photo was released purportedly to show that the US had killed these children; they had supposedly drowned after their car was overturned in an explosion caused by a bomb being dropped. We had a heck of a time deciphering this picture- where is the mud, the wet clothes or skin or hair, the discoloration that occurs after a body is immersed in water for a period of time, etc etc. How do you 'disprove' something?

Will an understanding of photos like these help? Or is it the far more graphic ones (the ones you didn't see of the Marines who were kidnapped and tortured earlier this year) that will bring Americans to understand? How about the ones of the kids whose school bus was blown apart by a suicide bomber?

Another of the more vexing ones involved pictures of the Fallujah hospital, and an orderly 'mopping up' or squeegeeing what appeared to be gallons of blood. To have that much blood on the floor, hundreds would have had to have bled out in that room. Yet, the insurgent media purported that so many people had died, this was the only way to clean up the room. If you looked closely, the red substance (I still do not believe it was blood) was far too thin a consistency.

All of these are available around the internet, but like CNN and their sniper vids, they are not 'news' unless they serve a higher political purpose- namely, to discredit the military or their activities. What imagery do we need to 'see' in order to understand, that we are currently not? Do we trust the military to provide it, or will it have to come from the MSM? Obviously, blogs and internet media are not enough, it seems. Or is it?

Polls show that 41% or so of voters get their information on candidates from the internet- do these same people see these websites? Its pretty obvious they may not, or worse, cannot fathom them.

The US has lost the Media War- that much is clear. What we need to do now, is turn it around. Paying someone (Lincoln Group?) obviously doesn't sit well, even if the results may work. What are we left with? I gave stuff to the MSM all the time- and unless it fit in with their editors views, it never made publication, no matter what the material. What will it take?

Wolf