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Review
by Rasha El-Ibiary, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne
Hoskins, Andrew. Televising
War: From Vietnam to Iraq. London: Continuum International Publishing
Group. 2004. Paperback. 148 pages. ISBN: 0826473067 $35.95.
In discussing obstacles and
challenges constraining critical journalism, Andrew Hoskins essentially
traces development in policy and techniques of war coverage, from Vietnam
to the 1991 Gulf War to the latest US-led invasion of Iraq 2003.
Emphasizing the role of television in constructing collective memory and
shaping audience perception of news, Hoskins argues, "Television,
and particularly television news, produce a new and apparently reliable
stream of historical consciousness of today's events."
Most significant is Hoskins' account of the different conditions that
shaped media coverage of 2003 Iraq war, pointing to the role of "immediacy"
in constraining accurate and critical journalism, and which resulted in
"breaking rumors" rather than "breaking news."
Embedded TV correspondents were effective in delivering the coalition's
viewpoint, he writes. The coverage strongly stressed "intense competition"
and raised "audience expectations," both "driven by a compulsion
for reality television" by the embedded reporters. The embedding
of TV reporters and the pressure for immediacy, in effect strangled objective
reporting. The "narrow and decontextualized snapshots of the war"
were predominantly caused by the "shrinking of the physical distance
between the embed and soldier" that was "matched by a shrinking
of the critical distance between journalist and the story." Rather
than critically reporting on the war, news networks and their embedded
correspondents constructed the story, and in many instances became part
of the story. "Journalists themselves became contestants in warfare.
And news packaged as entertainment provided the requisite celebration
of participants."
Unlike the single American perspective that prevailed in 1991, Arab-based
satellite channels, however, provided completely different perspectives
of the war, which Hoskins claims were also market-driven, and lacked objectivity.
Channels like Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and Abu Dhabi TV featured "journalists
possessed with different histories and different motivations, and so structured
different templates through which to frame the Iraq war." Objectivity
was a mirage. Neither the Arab nor the Western versions of the war can
claim to have presented independent reporting. Rather, the audience expectations,
and the consequent market forces, made war news more of a commodity, with
audiences "increasingly able to consume a version of news that does
not challenge their (or their nation's) cultural and political outlook,
or, conversely, choose one that does."
Providing an opposite version of the war news to their audience's expectations,
Arab media were able at times to challenge US "news management."
A key issue for western broadcasters was whether to air footage of captured
US POWs, fully shown on Al Jazeera, from the Iraqi TV. Only CBS showed
the footage, with faces "blurred," while CNN only showed a still
photo from Al Jazeera footage that depicted corpses on the floor. By making
the footage available in "the public domain," Al Jazeera apparently
provided an excuse, if not an obligation, for the Western channels to
show some of the footage. Also, the fact that Al Jazeera broadcast the
controversial footage made it "as significant a part of the news
story as the actual capture of the POWs."
In Televising War, Hoskins provides a crucial and critical analysis
of the televisual war coverage in east and west, questioning their claims
to objectivity and truth and posing audience expectations and market forces
as the main driving forces of news coverage. This, of course, is nothing
new. Most books about media and war have reported the same findings. However,
Hoskins makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how technology
and governmental policies drive TV's war coverage.
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