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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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May 01, 2004
Nightline "The Fallen" 721 stories in one
This controversial Nightline broadcast turned out to be mesmerizing television.
I rarely watch Nightline these days, but I tuned in to see what the hubbub was all about. I had considered in advance the basic controversy, and decided on principle that it was perfectly appropriate. Indeed, it seems like a valuable public service to document all these names for general public acknowledgment together. But I also expected it to be extremely boring to just hear a recitation of names. I was very wrong.
In theory, it was extremely simple. Ted Koppel read just a couple of sentences explaining that these were the names of all 721 US soldiers killed in combat in Iraq. He then spent the next half hour simply reading the names of the dead.
They also, critically, showed pictures of the fallen soldiers, going mostly for the simplest mug shot photos- along with their ages and military rank. It was those pictures, two at a time rotating across the screen that grabbed my attention.
Here were 721 lives flashing before my eyes in an instant, but you could get some clue about many of the individuals just from spending those couple of seconds looking carefully. A lot of these were common portrait shots, some fair number were high school graduation pictures, with tassels and gowns.
Some of the people were pretty poker faced, but a lot of them had a great deal of personality implied in just a captured moment. Some of them cast fairly stern poses in their military uniforms- all business. Others had sly smiles, or just a little twist in how they held their heads that said volumes.
There were a few for whom they apparently had no pictures. In their spot, we got the image of the flag draped coffins that were so controversial last week.
I noticed quite a lot of teenagers, at least a hundred. There was of course a wide ethnic mix, black soldiers and white and Latino. There were what seemed to me a surprising number of obviously Asian names. I personally found it a little rougher to digest the images of the women amongst our fallen.
In the midst of this, I felt pained to keep up. A couple of times in these recitations my attention lagged, and my mind started to drift for just a few seconds- and I snapped back to attention. Each soldier's picture was only up for a few scant seconds. That's probably the only time I'll see the name and image of this specific soldier who gave their life for our country.
Blink and you'd miss someone entirely. My eyes were pretty dry by the end of the reading, from trying not to blink.
Professional right wing crapweasel Brent Bozell expressed the general Republican spin on the issue arguing that the show was biased propaganda to simply read the names of the dead without explaining what they died for. Shut up. This show covers arguments for the war and against the war every night. Tonight they highlighted one specific issue- the names of the fallen US soldiers.
Certain parts of the right wing were opposed to this broadcast simply because they thought it would tend to work against public support for the war effort, not because of any reasonable objection to the content. They roused the rabble to start with the typical whining about liberal media.
One media chain had all their ABC affiliate stations pull this broadcast, arguing that the whole reading was just anti-war propaganda. David Smith, President and CEO of Sinclair Broadcast Group, is a jackass. He has a First Amendment right to decide what to put on his stations, but this particular judgment was asinine. It was disrespectful to the memory of those soldiers- as John McCain forcefully noted. It was also injurious to the editorial integrity of ABC News. David Smith is a tool.
At the end, Koppel took maybe two minutes to address the controversy around the show. He gave the most obvious basic way that a war supporter might say that this reading of names shows how we should support the war to complete the mission that our heroes have given their lives for. Then he noted how anti-war activists would take this reading to argue that too many good people have given their lives for a war we shouldn't have been in to start with.
Interestingly, Koppel said in answer to critics accusing him of anti-war propaganda that he was NOT opposed to the war. He just felt it appropriate to acknowledge this cost. A few minutes later, after the broadcast, it occurred to me that he did not specifically say that he FAVORED the war either.
You could take this whole presentation a lot of ways, much like a Rorschach inkblot. 400,000 Americans died in WWII, 58,000 in Vietnam, and now around 750 in Iraq. From my perspective, we're fortunate to have had few enough deaths that we could individually recognize every single person in one simple half hour broadcast like this.
At some point though, it doesn't matter what ABC's special secret agenda was. They told the truth, and quietly publicly acknowledged the individuals who have given their lives in service of their country in Iraq. That is a key part of the costs of this war, and the public needs to know that in order to make an informed judgment.
Spin that how you will. I call it good patriotism, and also good journalism.
By rights, they should show video of this broadcast at every VFW in the land on Memorial Day.
posted by Al at 5/01/2004 03:05:00 AM
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