 On Tuesday, Michael Berg, center, hugs his daughter, Sara, as his son David stands nearby, after learning the details of the killing in Iraq of his other son, Nick. |
Farhad Manjoo, writing for Salon (free day pass available) theorizes as to why 26-year-old freelance contractor Nick Berg did not become a media story until video of his horrible decapitation was played on an Arab website.
From a government which has, for years, held sway with the American press, when spin control from the White House, since 9/11, has all but guaranteed favourable press for the Bush administration across the United States, times have certainly changed. The brutal realities of war have been brought home in a new and horrendous way, as digital age ‘travelogue’ pictures and videos are transmitted back home from the war front, sent by e-mail, or posted on websites.
And the senior ranks of the Bush administration reels with each new revelation.
“The video of Berg’s beheading that so dominated the news on Tuesday is just the latest example of how gruesome digital images are forcing us, and forcing the government, to confront the awful reality of war,” writes Manjoo.
We were never supposed to see the pictures that are now pouring out of Iraq. If the U.S. government had its way, ‘embedded journalists’ would have reported only on what the American administration wanted us to see and read. There would be no pictures of dead soldiers returning, of Iraqi prisoner abuse, or of Canadian and American civilians held at the mercy of the shadowy enemy.
That amateurs — American soldiers employing new technology — have emerged as the journalists who have created the iconic images of the Iraq war represents a watershed change in the way we receive news, and a shattering and revolutionary new way of documenting the world around us.
