Responsibility of Media in War Time

Jasna Bastic

The most dangerous thing about war is when ordinary people, consumers of TV news, start to think that "clean" war exists, that it lasts for short time and that prosperity necessarily comes immediately after war ends. That is exactly the picture about war in Afghanistan how it is created by CNN and other main stream media. High-tech war machinery in action, faces of journalists who tell us what is happening and what in fact we never can see, enormous number of spokesmen and authorities who all the time explain us something - these are images of war offered by TVs. Is it really a true picture of war? How much do we know about Afghan civilians and what has happened to them? If media would show the true character of war in all its horrific sides of endless human suffering whether we would be really ready to support it and agree that our taxes go to military budgets?

In such trembling historic moments like terrorist attacks in USA and war in Afghanistan are, when it is so important to keep political impartiality in media reporting, most of American main media have ruined the basic principles of professional journalism making own contribution to what is euphemistically called "patriotic journalism". Not so far away in the past we faced in Balkans how "patriotic journalism" can influence and harm people. In another more honest words "patriotic journalism" is political propaganda, which comes to the scene when journalists stop to be critical. When media stop to question own government, the president and the military establishment, those media have become loudspeakers of state politics giving up the touch with reality. Exactly that unfortunately happened to CNN and other American main stream media after 11.of September. Three main principles of American patriotic journalism can be summarized as following:

1. in this situation (after 11. of September) media serve to our state and our nation (said by one of the main CNN editors);
   This is the principle of political propaganda, uncritical justification of the politics of White House and president Bush denying basic principle of professional journalism to serve reality. Journalists never serve to their state or nation, they serve to true and to reality of what is happening in their country and in the world.
2. neutrality belongs to classical journalism which is over; in this situation neutrality is not possible (many times mentioned in various American media)
   Nobody expects from journalists to be neutral, if something like that exists at all. What professional journalists are expected to fulfill is, not to be neutral, but to give full information, to be objective, fair, to research and investigate, to be critical and analytical.
3. in this moment it is inappropriate to look for roots of terrorism, otherwise it could be treated as rationalization of terrorism (said by one of editors of Washington Post)
   This is a typical example of self-censorship, which can come from strong public pressure, from fear, from national homogenization, from collective solidarity, but whatever is the reason, this is perhaps the saddest position that any journalist could have.

It is known that infotainment has been dominating in media for years, particularly in TV, and that media commercialization with ratings making has been killing good journalism, but appearance of so called patriotic journalism in main world media as CNN provokes many new serious concerns and fears about media influence. This shouldn't be neglected by American and international journalists associations as well.

Falsification of reality which shows the war as clean and efficient mean to sort out problems, has extremely delicate consequence on our understanding of war matters. When public opinion is influenced by such clean picturing of war and by one dominating patriotic feeling, there are no doubts that people will not stand against militarization and war. In the contrary - when the nation is mobilized towards one goal, like to catch Osama Bin Laden and retaliate for attacks, that has to thank to media which gives journalistic legacy to war politics. The lesson of patriotic media from Balkans is not obviously learnt.

Jasna Bastic