Government and media: a union of deception.

THE ENGLISH POET WILLIAM BLAKE wrote that a people's morality is known by its "minute particulars." Put more succinctly: our moral fabric is reflected in the way we treat the least among us--for example, a dog at the palace gate, to use Blake's imagery. In a day and age of bombastic displays of so-called morality among politicians and preachers alike, Blake's nuanced definition of morality is indeed fitting.

For the image the mainstream media paint of the United States gives Americans plenty of reason to be concerned, if not ashamed, of the minute and not-so-minute particulars that define our morality. In fact, the front page of the Sunday, November 14, 2004, New York Times sounds an alarm bell about what our sense of morality has become. The lead story covers the U.S.-led attack in Iraq on the insurgent bastion of Falluja. Readers learn that "earlier in the afternoon, ten separate plumes of smoke rose from southern Falluja, as if etched against the desert sky, and probably exclaiming catastrophe for the insurgents." Such poetic vocabulary as "ten separate plumes of smoke ... etched against the desert sky," summons to mind the image of Boy Scouts around a campfire. A more fitting and forceful imagery such as a blitzkrieg would have been more accurate.

Readers are privy to just some details of the attack: "Mechanized units, mainly M1A2 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, have entered the district, called Shuhada, with their muzzles blazing, blowing apart buildings, rolling over barriers, and confronting insurgents holed up in mosques and other refuges." Such a description--obviously more true to life than the plumes of smoke--begs the question of civilian casualties. How can readers read and, more absurd, journalists write such an article without asking the next obvious question about the effects of the attack and the number of people killed?

If we are to believe military officials, there have been no civilian deaths, and all ambiguity about this has been scrubbed clean by assurances from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who boasted that U.S. forces were "disciplined and precise." This defies logic. Are we expected to believe that all of the civilian population--300,000 men, women, and children--fled the city while insurgents stayed entrenched exclusively in the Shuhada neighborhood? Clearly, not all civilians could have fled the city. Reuters reports that an official from a Sunni Muslim group in the city claimed that about one-fifth of civilians remained. Reuters also gives an account of "scores of civilians killed in Falluja," while a BBC reporter confirms that he saw "local people and fighters killed on the streets."

If we examine the track record of collaboration between the U.S. military and the mainstream media on the issue of civilian casualties, it should come naturally for us to regard with cynicism the little, if any, mention of civilian mortality. For example, it has been a moral disgrace that the military hasn't conducted and reported "body counts" or even estimates of people killed--all part of an effort to portray the U.S. invasion as a charitable mission to bring democracy to the Iraqi people in an antiseptic war targeting "only" insurgents. Reported estimates hovered around 10,000--until the scientific analysis by a team from Johns Hopkins University was published in the British medical journal, Lancet, placing the actual number of Iraqi civilians dead at more than 100,000. The New York Times relegated these awesome figures to page eight of its October 29, 2004, edition.

Instead of headlines that would give the American public a much needed dose of reality, even the New York Times subjects us to the worst triviality. In the same issue that reports the destruction of Falluja, readers learn that American college students are eating more cereal. This story actually shares front-page prominence with the deathless annihilation of a city! How could the editors retreat into such cultural banality when a major catastrophe is occurring by the weapons of that same culture?

Then again, maybe it makes sense--perfect sense. Such a story of triviality reflects not only a society that relishes a light and airy life defined by superficial values, feigned morality, callous indifference for others with whom it shares the planet, ignorance, and hubris but above all the extent to which its most respectable press has renounced any responsibility to enlighten the public about "minute particulars." Another succinct example of the prevalence of light and airy news stories is the number of times National Public Radio reported that Sears and K-Mart are merging, while scant mention was made of Margaret Hassan, the head of CARE in Iraq, who was murdered by terrorists.

It seems that the mainstream media believe they should just report what they consider to be the "facts" and leave their readers to develop their own opinions from them. Not all readers, however, when confronted with unflattering images of the nation will process that information with honesty. Take, for instance, the remarks of the International Committee on the Red Cross about the fate of people wounded in the battle for control of Falluja. The ICRC urged "the belligerents to ensure that all those in need of such care--whether friend or foe--be given access to medical facilities." This statement--and not the banal one about college students eating more cereal--should have found a place on the front page of the Sunday New York Times to convey a sense of the true nature of the war in Iraq.

The ICRC has called the U.S.-led forces belligerent. Yes, belligerent. What Americans must realize is that the United States isn't defending freedom or, even more absurd, fighting a war on terrorism in Iraq, as is assumed in the press. For the media to refer to the resistance encountered by coalition troops as led by terrorists, fanatics, and foreigners is neither convincing nor true. The insurgents are rebels, most notably Islamic Sunnis, who had nothing to do with 9/11. They are fighting an invading force and a U.S.-installed dictatorship that favors Shiite Muslims over Sunnis. (If there is any ambiguity about how the U.S.-led coalition discriminates against Sunnis, see ]on Lee Anderson's laudable article in the November 15, 2004, New Yorker.)

Not all American journalists, but certainly many, even at the finest press organizations, seem to suffer from a feel-good psychology approach to reporting. "Let's not offend the public by revealing the true and unjust nature of our foreign policy," seems their motto. Or, worse: "Let's exploit the ignorance and insecurities, let's emphasize trivialities or just record events, and let interpretations be done by columnists and editors of the opinion page."

Journalists also seem to have received a heavy dose of the postmodernist paranoia of judgment and opinion. It's naive for reporters to believe that all they do or should do is report. Of course their eyes act as a filter, sifting out unpleasant thoughts and images. Just as scientists understand that their field carries a certain element of subjectivity--as explained clearly by Jacob Bronowski's adage that "physics does not record events but observations"--it's time for journalists to acknowledge that their reporting is colored by a subjective position. They should then move toward writing to clarify reality, not cloud it.

Journalists who consider themselves "professional" should get out of the business of indoctrinating the public. As it stands now, the mainstream media are participating along with the U.S. government in the worst forms of deception. By failing to emphasize that U.S.-led forces are killing people (yes, Iraqis are people too) and that most insurgents aren't terrorists who attacked Americans but rather citizens trying to defend their homeland from an invading force, American journalists are acting in complicity with George W. Bush's administration. This disingenuous form of reporting, besides being irresponsible, is pernicious. It steers a destructive instinctual urge into acceptable modes of thought and behavior. It also provides a social bond, unifying the American public through aggression against a shared object of hate.

This bond, of course, played a significant role in Bush's reelection. When voters responded that their vote for president was based on the issue of morality, they may have meant more than gay marriage and abortion. What they may have really been intimating is that they feel psychologically better, pumped up with greater self-esteem, when their leaders and media can dupe them into believing that they are morally superior to the "evildoers." They can sleep better at night because they are convinced that Iraqis are nothing more than dogs at our palace gate.

Suzanne La Londe is a writer living in the U.K.