in Arabic would be intended to lend credibility to the sniper images, to validate them so they would appear credible enough to justify the on-air attention CNN proceeds to give them.
But the confusion over which tape would likely be the more important to this group is of a piece with CNN's general confusion over the role images and, indeed, the media itself, play within the logic of terrorism. There is no reason, however, to believe that CNN is any different in this from any other mainstream media outlet. Willfully or not, CNN does not understand the role the press plays in this war, and because they do not—or, perhaps, simply do not care—they continue to play that role quite effectively.
On the air the night after the story aired, Anderson Cooper said, "even if there weren't a single camera around to record it, insurgents would go on shooting Americans. They are the enemy, and that's what they do."[1] What Cooper fails to understand is, unlike previous wars, that there aren't cameras around belonging to Western press organizations doesn't matter. There is no kind of forced choice for those who would want to kill Americans—kill them in front of Western cameras or kill them without the event being recorded for an American audience? Because, of course, there aren't any press cameras around to record what is happening for the most part. If there were, CNN would be airing footage professionally shot by its own people, not badly focused black-and-white footage mailed in by the same people shooting the guns as well as shooting the pictures. The insurgents have simply adapted to the lack of Western cameras by providing their own cameras, since the American press has proven so willing to air their footage. The sniper videos themselves deny Cooper's statement. The enemy will not stop killing American soldiers when Western
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- ↑ Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, October 19, 2006. available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=e9a3bcff5e517bfe5db27a0a2d94c26f&_docnum=9&wchp=dGLbVzW-zSkVA&_md5=dbe566989b798d2b4861aaffd2b8fc1f.
