YouTube War/Endnotes
ENDNOTES
1. "Hezbollah Dot Com: Hezbollah's Online Campaign,", n.p.:n.d), p. 19.
2. For a more detailed discussion of the conditions under which particular types of attacks will attract coverage, and the amount of coverage they are likely to attract under which circumstances—in other words, using the amount of press coverage a particular attack gains as a metric for its success, see Cori E. Dauber, "The Terrorist Spectacular and the Ladder of Terrorist Success," in James Forest, ed, Influence Warfare: How Terrorists and Governments Shape Perceptions in a War of Ideas, West Port, CT: Praeger Security International, 2009, pp. 93–122.
3. Majid Tehranian, "Review of Small Media, Big Revolution: Communication, Culture, and the Iranian Revolution," International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 27, No. 4, November, 1995, pp. 523–525, available from links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0020-7438%28199511%2927%3A4%3C523%3AS MBRCC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y. The reviewer makes clear, however, that these tapes alone were not sufficient for the revolution to succeed.
4. See 304th MI Bn OSINT Team, "Al Qaida Like Mobile Discussions and Potential Creative Uses," Supplemental to the 304th MI Bn Periodic Newsletter, October 16, 2008. Although marked For Official Use Only, the document has been posted to the web by the Federation of the American Scientists at www.fas.org/irp/eprint/mobile.pdf. The author points out that there is no confirmation some of the technologies discussed in the paper are being used in the ways proposed by Islamists on chat rooms. The point is that they are aggressively seeking to develop as many applications as possible, p. 2. There is no question that many of the applications, even of technologies now quite commonplace, are as creative as any of the past—for example using cell phone interfaces as a medium for the dispersal of propaganda, p. 3.
5. Noah Shachtman, "Online Jihadists Plan for 'Invading Facebook'," Wired blog network, Danger Room, December 18, 2008, available from blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/online-jihadist.html. When Facebook was made aware of an Islamist presence on their site (by a media inquiry), the page was shut down immediately, which has not been the reaction of every site informed they were hosting such material. See Joel Mowbray, "Jihadist Group Trying to 'Invade' Facebook Gets Shutdown," Foxnews.com, December 19, 2008, available from www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,470385,00.html. The Psychological Operations Officer for the CJSOTF-AP does report Facebook and other social networking sites being used by some of the larger insurgent groups in Iraq as a way to get their message out as of 2009. David Jenkins, Interview with the Author, Fort Carson, CO, May 19, 2009.
6. 304th MI Bn OSINT Team, "Al Qaida Like Mobile Discussions and Potential Creative Uses," Supplemental to the 304th MI Bn Periodic Newsletter, October 16, 2008. Although marked For Official Use Only, the document has been posted to the web by the Federation of the American Scientists at www.fas.org/irp/eprint/mobile.pdf.
7. Wretchard, "The Blogosphere At War," The Belmont Club, December 28, 2006, available from fallbackbelmont.blogspot. com/2006/12/blogosphere-at-war.html. The Belmont Club is a very popular and respected site, receiving thousands of page views a day.
8. Stuart Elliott, "A CBS Take on the YouTube Madness," New York Times, February 28, 2007, nytimes.com, available from www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/business/media/28adco.html.
9. Katherine Q. Seeyle, "YouTube Passes Debates to a New Generation," New York Times, June 14, 2007, nytimes.com, available from www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/us/politics/14youtube.html?r=1&oref=slogin.
10. Matea Gold, "The Conflict in Iraq: Video of the Execution; In the Internet Age, TV Faced A Dilemma," Los Angeles Times, December 31, 2006, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, available from web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=c5854ab292540d8fa0a8248c3aff2870&_docnum=29&wchp=dGLbVzzzSkVA&_md5=0bc412d3de16f5a9ec1f708993c43e1.
11. In poor countries, where Americans would not assume the population would necessarily have access to cell phones, they may actually be using phones far more sophisticated than those most Americans are used to. The infrastructure of the landline networks may be so decrepit and backwards that it becomes easier to simply skip over the landline system and go straight to the most advanced possible cell network. Where people cannot afford those phones, they combine resources so that an entire village may be sharing a single phone, and, although the population may not as a matter of course have access to computers, the phones become their link to the Internet. This has a number of profound social implications, either in reality or in potential. See Garrett Jones, "The Revolution Will Be Brought to You By Text-Messaging," Foreign Policy Research Institute e-notes, March 2008, available from www.fpri.org/enotes/200803.jones.revolutiontextmessaging.html.
12. "It can now be expected that any new jihadi organizations looking to make their mark and establish an identity will not only attempt to film their operations but also create 1–2 hour produced videos. Existing groups will likely feel pressure to continue to release new video material or risk being pronounced 'dead' and 'on the run' by the media …" IntelCenter, "The Evolution of Jihadi Video, EJV)," v. 1.0, May 11, 2005, p. 4, available from www.intelcenter.com/EJV-PUB-v1-0.pdf, p. 2.
13. Ibid., p. 1.
14. Ronald Schleifer, "Psychological Operations: A New Variation on an Age Old Art: Hezbollah versus Israel," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 29, 2006, p. 6. Although there is no evidence it ever happened—or was even a viable idea—the fact that al-Qaeda sympathizers were discussing the possibility of strapping a cell phone camera to a missile warhead, to capture footage all the way in to the target, is evidence of the priority still placed on acquiring footage. 304th MI Bn OSINT Team, "Al Qaida Like Mobile Discussions and Potential Creative Uses," Supplemental to the 304th MI Bn Periodic Newsletter, October 16, 2008, p. 4. Although marked For Official Use Only, the document has been posted to the web by the Federation of the American Scientists, available from www.fas.org/irp/eprint/mobile.pdf.
15. Indeed, analysts have noted that as soon as the Algerian group Salafist Group for Call and Combat merged with al-Qaeda, its media efforts and production values immediately began to improve. See Stephen Black, "Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb's Burgeoning Media Apparatus," Terrorism Focus, Vol. 4, No. 14, May 15, 2007, available from www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2373396. For a description of the development of al-Qaeda's media strategy, see Henry Schuster, "Al-Qaeda's Media Strategy," in Karen J. Greenberg, ed., Al-Qaeda Now: Understanding Today's Terrorists, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 112–124.
16. Colonel Kenneth Tovo, Commander U.S. Special Forces 10th Group and Former Commander Combined Joint Special Operations Forces Task Force, Arabian Peninsula, Interview with the Author, September 21, 2006, Ft. Carson, CO.
17. Abdel bari Atwan, The Secret History of al-Qaeda, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, p. 122.
18. Personal correspondence with the Author, June 12, 2007.
19. Iranian authorities have had great difficulty locating anti-government blogs to shut them down. The Guardian reported that the government took the step, perhaps unprecedented when compared to the rest of the world, of ordering telecommunications companies to restrict the speed at which material could be accessed to 128 kbps—in effect, banning high speed internet—specifically to make it next to impossible for Iranians to download the kinds of materials (songs, video clips, television shows) the authorities view as carriers of negative cultural influences from the West. See Robert Tait, "Iran Bans Fast Internet to Cut West's Influence," The Guardian, October 18, 2006, available from technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,1924637,00.html.
20. "A World Wide Web of Terror," The Economist, July 12, 2007, available from www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9472498.
21. Deborah L. Wheeler, "Empowering Publics: Information Technology and Democratization in the Arab World—Lessons From Internet Cafes and Beyond," Research Report No. 11, Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford Internet Institute, July 2006, pp. 6–7.
22. Ibid., p. 7.
23. Alan Cowell, "Britain Arrests 9 Suspects in Terrorist Kidnapping Plot," New York Times, January 31, 2007, available from nytimes.com, www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/world/europe/01britainhtml?ex=1170997200&en=50c3676a80e47899&ei=5070&emc=eta1. Interestingly, the group apparently planned to behead the soldier. What none of the press coverage of the arrests mentioned was that after a series of hostage beheadings were filmed and that footage uploaded to the Internet in Iraq, beginning with that of the American Nicholas Berg (whose example was mentioned in the coverage), the practice of filming beheadings stopped—although decapitated bodies continued to turn up regularly in Baghdad. An intercepted letter from Zawahiri to Zarqawi, although its authenticity has never been definitively proven, requested the practice stop because it was so brutal and gruesome that it was hurting the movement's image, not helping.
24. "Protection For Muslim Police in Kidnap Fear," Daily Mail, February 2, 2007, available from www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=433298&in_page_id=1770.
25. "A World Wide Web of Terror," The Economist, July 12, 2007, available from www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9472498.
26. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006 Ed. (orig. pub. 1998), p. 206.
27. Gabriel Weimann, Terror on the Internet: The New Arena, the New Challenges, Washington, DC: United States Institute for Peace, 2006, pp. 91–92.
28. Ibid., p. 53.
29. Susan B. Glaser and Steve Coll, "The Web as Weapon: Zarqawi Intertwines Acts on Ground in Iraq with Propaganda Campaign on the Internet," The Washington Post, August 9, 2005, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=b9d74f52e88e19e8531bae8bae901a31&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVA&_md5=973034f5f87f54c5c2f367909c698ccb.
30. Michael R. Gordon, "Deadliest Bomb In Iraq Is Made In Iran, US Says," New York Times, February 10, 2007, nytimes.com, available from www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10worldmiddleeast/10weapons.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=e9a9ae56cb1df98a&hp&ex=1171170000&partner=homepage.
31. Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Jenkins, Director of Operations for the Combined Media Processing Center, Qatar, Interview by phone, December 3, 2007.
32. Ibid. Interestingly, as of December, 2007, no Apple platforms have been captured in Iraq.
33. Thomas Harding, "Terrorists Use Google Maps to Hit UK Troops," January 13, 2007, The Daily Telegraph, telegraph.co.uk, available from www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/13/wgoogle13.xml.
34. Almost immediately after the attack, a legal case was brought before India's high court asking that Google Earth be banned for aiding terrorism, and that Google be instructed to "blur" images of "sensitive" sites until the case was decided. Since any civilian site is a potential terrorist target, it is unclear how the Court was supposed to determine what specific instructions to issue Google, or how Google was to interpret an order of this nature. See "Google Earth Aided Mumbai Attacks," Perth Now, December 11, 2008, available from www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21498,24784014-948,00.html?from=public_rss.
35. Jenkins.
36. Ibid.
37. Donald Bacon, Chief of Plans for Special Operations and Intelligence working Public Affairs Matters in the Strategic Communication Department of MNF-I, Interviewed by Phone, November 10, 2007.
38. Glaser and Coll, "Web as Weapon."
39. Lieutenant Colonel Terry Guild, Interview with the Author, MacDill AFB, Tampa, FL, August 15, 2006.
40. Bacon.
41. Ibid.
42. Haviv Rettig, "Iraqi Insurgents Using YouTube to Distribute Propaganda," Jerusalem Post, February 22, 2007, jpost.com, available from www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1171894497777&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull.
43. When Senator Joseph Lieberman demanded that the most popular of the video sharing sites, YouTube, then owned by Google, take down the videos posted by or from Islamic terrorist groups, the site at first resisted on the grounds that, "While we respect and understand his [Lieberman's] views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view." They quickly reversed themselves, changing their policy to forbid videos that include an incitement to violence, but it is unlikely that will remove all of the videos, first because that it is a quite subjective standard, but more practically because there are so many videos on the site—and so many added each day—that it has always been "self-policing," meaning that users must file complaints before particular videos are taken down, which means someone has to come across a particular video, find it offensive, and contact site management before anything will be done. See Peter Whonskey, "YouTube Bans Videos That Incite Violence," Washington Post, September 12, 2008, p. D-1, available from washingtonpost.com, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091103447.html.
44. Michael Scheuer, "Al-Qaeda's Media Doctrine: Evolution From Cheerleader to Opinion Shaper," Terrorism Focus, Vol. 4. Issue 15, Washington, DC: The Jamestown Foundation, May 22, 2007, available from jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2373417.
45. Rhonda Schwartz and Maddy Sauer, "Dead US Solder in Anti-War Video 'Alive and Well'," The Blotter, ABCNews.com, January 8, 2007, available from blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/dead_us_soldier.html.
46. Lieutenant Colonel Edward Loomis, Division Public Affairs Officer, 101st Airborne Division, phone interview with the author, February 9, 2007.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. It is not clear that professional journalists are using editing software any different from what the average citizen would use. For the combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, CBS was preparing to use Adobe Premiere for producers and photojournalists, and the basic free MovieMaker 2 program that Microsoft includes with its Windows XP operating system. Mike Wendland, "From ENG to SNG: TV Technology for Covering the Conflict with Iraq," Poynteronline, March 6, 2003, available from www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=23585.
50. There are a variety of sources on the Internet offering advice to families preparing for a soldier or marine's deployment, and inevitably, particularly if there are young children involved, "get a webcam if you don't already have one" always makes the list. See, for example, Tom Gordon, "When a Soldier Comes Home," The Birmingham News, November 10, 2008, available from blog.al.com/living-news/2008/11/when_a_soldier_comes_home.html. This is, of course, the high tech way to make sure a very young child doesn't forget an absent parent. The low tech solution is "flat daddy," a life-size cardboard version of the deployed soldier.
51. Wendland, "From ENG to SNG."
52. This is based in part on the typology in Ben Venzke, "Jihadi Master Video Guide, JMVG) v1.1," May 18, 2006, IntelCenter, Alexandria, VA, available from www.intelcenter.com/JMVG-V1-1.pdf.
53. I asked a well-known Professor of Documentary Film-making, himself a documentarian, to watch clips posted by as-Sahab, al-Qaeda Central's media operation, on YouTube. These were relatively sophisticated propaganda pieces, making use of what were, to the untrained eye, very elaborate special effects. He commented that,
Yes it is fairly sophisticated in terms of the use of special effects and editing, but the person making it may have simply been trained on and used a special effects program, such as Adobe After Effects to put these layers together on a AppleMac computer, using information that came with the program and then edited sequences together in Apple's Final Cut Pro. Our students use these programs and they are readily available in Europe and elsewhere.
Gorham Kindham, Personal correspondence with the author, April 7, 2007. He also noted that since the clips were being filmed for the Internet, and not for screening in theaters, high resolution cameras would not be necessary—off-the-shelf videocameras would be more than sufficient. Personal correspondence, April 8, 2007. Both comments were made after viewing "Futur (sic) Martyrs of Iraq." So once video clips filmed in Iraq or Afghanistan are posted to the web, the person putting the final, finished propaganda video together can be anywhere in the world, a point made in Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo, The War of Images and Ideas: Iraqi Insurgent Media, Washington, DC: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 2007. This means that the lack of Mac platforms in Iraq does not mean that produced videos about Iraq were not made using Mac equipment and software. And it is wrong to assume that because a video appears with what seems to be "high" production values that a sophisticated lab was necessary. It might still be the product of a "guy and a laptop" if it is the right guy with the right laptop.
54. At least in the case of Iraq, it appears that the sub-titles are added by others outside the country. Videos captured inside the country have only had English-language sub-titles in two cases as of December 2007. Pedro Vega Colon, Media Chief for J3 under Combined Media Processing Center, Qatar, Interview by phone, December 3, 2007.
55. I am indebted to Mark Robinson for this insight, along with many others.
56. Jenkins. My thanks to Mark Robinson for his invaluable assistance with this point.
57. Philip Nelson, Senior Vice President of Strategic Development, NewTek, quoted in Eliot Van Buskirk, "TV Studio in a Box Enables Long-Tail Television," Epicenter, Wired Blog Network, December 18, 2008, available from blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/tv-studio-in-a.html.
58. Eliot Van Buskirk, "TV Studio in a Box Enables Long-Tail Television," Epicenter, Wired Blog Network, December 18, 2008, available from blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/tv-studio-in-a.html.
59. Ibid.
60. Jenkins.
61. Glaser and Coll, "Web as Weapon." See also Weimann, Terror on the Internet, p. 9.
62. Brian Krebs, "Terrorism's Hook Into Your Inbox: UK Case Shows Link Between Online Fraud and Jihadist Networks," Washington Post, washingtonpost.com, available from www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/05/AR2007070501153.html?referrer=emailarticle July 3, 2007.
63. Global Islamic Media Front: Media Sword Campaign Defending the State of Islam, available from Lauramansfield.com.
64. Guild.
65. Weimann, Terror on the Internet, p. 66.
66. See for example, "Behind Enemy Lines: Inside the Insurgency," ABC News: Nightline, February 14, 2006, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=15e7e48b7027fb21ccd3fe52bf464b48&_docnum=9&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkVA&_md5=b7530bbb317816b48fdc453cb32cf5b2; Glaser and Coll.
67. "Insurgent Video Shows Burning Body of American Pilot," NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams, April 5, 2006, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=b64947e1c416ff6c0492b7c1afa67c72&_docnum=3&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkVA&_md5=0d79dd40bd6139016cd7a797f384305d.
68. See "Chopper Down Commercial Aircraft Attacked," ABC World News Tonight, April 21, 2005, available from Lexis Nexis Academic, http://web.lexisnexiscomlibproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=ca7f7e7a9f83b32bf1f9a820ef6c3c1d&_docnum=3&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkVA&_md5=91703314a928adea3dfd1889d0df326b.
69. Lee Cowan, "Recent Surge of Violence Continues in Iraq," CBS Evening News, April 22, 2005, available from Lexis Nexis Academic, www.lexisnexis.comlibproxylib.unc.edu/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T5437708677&format=GNBFI&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T5437708680&cisb=22_T5437708679&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=166768&docNo=1.
70. See "Video Released of Downing of Commercial Helicopter in Iraq," NBC Nightly News, April 22, 2005, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=0998bed156ba807e4567d428594c0b0e&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkVA&_md5=31cacdb320a900ea08d3a5553290d5f1.
71. Cowan, "Surge of Violence Continues."
72. Although it went nowhere, one lawmaker, for example, demanded the Pentagon end the ability of CNN's reporters to participate in their program for embedding reporters with military units in Iraq. See Anne Plummer Flaherty, "Lawmaker Faults CNN for Sniper Video," SFGate.com, October 23, 2006, available from www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/10/23/national/w161647D63.DTL7.
73. See for example, Ashraf al-Taie, "US Nabs Website Producer," MSNBC.com, October 16, 2005, available from msnbc.msn.com/id/9720497/, accessed July 2, 2006.
74. "Hidden Killers in Iraq?" Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, October 18, 2006, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=d3f40ef6665b6a4326d3024b652a2274&_docnum=10&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVA&_md5=1307c13a5e18c79ce7b7012d2ed5307f. My emphasis. This includes all subsequent quotations.
75. Ibid.
76. CBS, at least, has several people on its staff responsible for monitoring the relevant websites for both claims and footage that are pertinent, although they claim that they have procedures in place to ensure that additional confirmation is developed before either makes it onto the air. Lara Logan, phone interview from Baghdad with the author, January 14, 2007.
77. It is possible, as Dorrance Smith suggests, that at least some of the time the segments are not accessed by the American networks but are provided by cooperative arrangements with al Jazeera. See Dorrance Smith, "The Enemy on Our Airwaves: What is the Relationship Between al-Jazzera, al-Qaeda and America's TV Networks?" OpinionJournal.com, November 4, 2005, available from www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007498. CBS, according to Lara Logan, has individuals specifically tasked with monitoring the pertinent websites, so that network, at least, is taking the material directly from the terrorists and insurgents, not using any intermediary. Interestingly, that process is located in London. Lara Logan, Interview with the author by phone from Baghdad, January 14, 2007.
78. An additional problem is that too often footage shown with some form of identification one time often has the identifying material edited out in subsequent airings, particularly when the footage is used as file footage in later stories. Because even when the source of the footage is clearly identified in the reporter's narration in the original story, (which I would argue is still insufficient cuing) it never is in subsequent uses of the footage. If the original material were marked with a chyron, there would be no mistaking the source, important when the Arabic writing alone will not serve as sufficient visual cue to an American audience that this is not normal news footage.
79. The music is often based on MP3 options left on websites made for that purpose. See Kimmage and Ridolfo, The War of Images and Ideas, pp. 31–33.
80. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dirty Politics, Deception, Distraction, and Democracy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 147.
81. Campaign Reform: Insights and Evidence," Report of the Task Force on Campaign Reform, Pew Charitable Trusts, Princeton, NJ: Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs, Princeton University, 1998.
82. All quotes are from Susan Walsh, President White House News Photographers Association, Letter to Members, www.whnpa.org/join/walshletter111605.pdf.
83. It is well known that the White House press corps was very upset to have been excluded (except for several print reporters representing the regular pool) when President Obama retook the oath of office. In that case, however, the event was of genuine historical significance—and indeed, because they were excluded, we lack footage of the event, but have only stills and an audio recording (and only have that because one reporter had a digital tape recorder with them).
84. Ben Venzke, "Jihadi Master Video Guide, JMVG) v1.1," May 18, 2006, IntelCenter, Alexandria, VA, available from www.intelcenter.com/JMVG-V1-1.pdf.
85. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, p. 202.
86. The source for these figures is the data base, "Iraq Coalition Casualty Count," generally considered to be accurate and trustworthy. "Fatalities by Cause of Death Detail," available from icasualties.org/oif/stats.aspx.
87. Lara Logan, Interview with the author by phone from Baghdad, January 14, 2007.
88. John Yang, "Seven Die in Helicopter Crash," NBC Nightly News, February 7, 2007, available from video.msn.com/v/us/v.htm?g=3795a63b-b721-40ac-8025-79d121277490&f=34&fg=rss, via The Tyndall Report, tyndallreport.com.
89. Martha Raddatz, "Helicopter Fatalities in Iraq," ABC World News Tonight with Charles Gibson, February 7, 2007, available from abcnews.go.com/Video/videoEmbed?id=2858030&challenge=&authenticated=true&start=Y2RhdWJlckBlbWFpbC51bmMuZWR1A&end=bGF1ZHB1cw%3D%3D&save=ON&save=OFF, via The Tyndall Report, tyndallreport.com.
90. Lara Logan, "Enemies in Iraq Know US Military Relies on Helicopters," CBS Evening News, February 7, 2007, available from Lexis/Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=7ff9daae1cb2147a26b08a0f9f531a62&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLzVlz-zSkVb&_md5=32a5571b4afbc2de94bbc1151a58eaf5.
91. Pedro Vega Colon, Media Chief for J3 under Combined Media Processing Center, Qatar, Interview by phone, December 3, 2007.
92. See the discussion in, for example, Jurgen Trimborn and Edna McCown, Leni Riefenstahl: A Life, London, UK: Faber and Faber, January 2008.
93. Schleifer, "Psychological Operations," p. 6.
94. A number of bloggers claimed that footage used in Logan's report on Haifa street that CBS shunted to their website rather than air, came from an al-Qaeda website and that she did not—and should have—note that in the report. CBS responded that even if the footage also appeared on the al-Qaeda site, that was not Logan's source. See Brian Montopoli, "Questions Surround Haifa Street Video," Public Eye, January 30, 2007, available from www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2007/01/30/publiceye/entry2414754.shtml.
95. NBC and CBS had footage that could not possibly have been of a particular attack under discussion—and they knew it—yet aired the footage anyway, even though they explained the footage didn't match the attack being described. For further discussion, see Cori E. Dauber, "The Truth Is Out There: Responding to Insurgent Deception and Disinformation Operations," Military Review, Vol. 89, January–February 2009, pp. 13–24.
96. Interview with the author, Pamela Hess, then the Pentagon-correspondent for UPI, March 9, 2007, Washington, DC.
97. For an example of particularly well done analysis of visual images taken from news coverage, see David D. Perlmutter, Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Icons of Outrage in International Crises, Greenwood, CT: Praeger, 1998.
98. Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, October 18, 2006.
99. Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, October 18, 2006.
100. Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, October 18, 2006.
101. Sally Buzbee, "Zarqawi said to be sidelined by new 'coalition of insurgents'," The Age, Australia, April 5, 2006, p. 13, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic. They have also taken civilian hostages. See Stephen Farrell and Charles Bremner, The Times, London, September 1, 2004, p. 1, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic.
102. Although that is not the only way and it is, to be sure, not a guarantee. See Dauber, "The Terrorist Spectacular."
103. For a discussion of the criteria that will determine whether a particular bombing will make the news, and, if so, how much attention it is likely to receive, see Dauber, "Terrorist Spectacular."
104. In point of fact, the Islamic Army of Iraq was at the time one of the most important Sunni insurgent groups.
105. For the year 2007, for example, the Tyndall Report, which monitors the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) notes that:
The War in Iraq was Story of the Year by a wide margin. The networks monitored the progress of Commander in Chief George Bush's troop build-up—the so-called surge—in Iraq and the simultaneous debate on Capitol Hill about bringing troops home. That storyline effectively ended in September when Gen David Petraeus testified to Congress that violence in Iraq was moderating and the President ordered the extra troops home. Before that testimony, the Iraq War averaged 30 minutes of coverage each week; in the year's final 15 weeks the average was a scant four minutes. Non-war coverage of Iraq continues its steady decline.
Notice, however, that those totals combine coverage of the war itself with the debate in Washington. Tyndall calculates that actual combat coverage over the course of the year was only 61 percent of the total. See tyndallreport.com/yearinreview2007/. The networks' ability to report much more than casualty reports is now deeply compromised, as their regular bureau operations have all but shut down. See Brian Stelter, "TV News Winds Down Operations On Iraq War," New York Times, December 28, 2008, nytimes.com, available from www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/business/media/29bureaus.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink. The press outlets constantly repeat the refrain that the American people are tired of the war and will not sit for continued war news, but produce no evidence in support of the claim. What is clear is that they have little interest in continuing to foot the growing bill for covering the war, when reduced violence reduces the number of easy-to-cover-stories, in the sense that they can be produced via a well-worn, time honored template, rinse, lather, repeat, but instead require some degree of creativity. By 2 weeks before the 2008 election, coverage of Iraq had plummeted to a mere 1 percent of all stories, across not only broadcast TV, but also cable, newspapers, radio, and online news sources. See Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, PEJ News Coverage Index, October 6–12, 2008, available from journalism.org, www.journalism.org/node/13204.
106. Dan Harris, "News Headlines," ABC World News Tonight Sunday, April 17, 2005, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, www.lexisnexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T5381421803&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=376&resultsUrlKey=29_T5381421806&cisb=22_T5381421805&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=8277&docNo=400.
107. In fairness, the press is often limited by the information provided by the military, which is intentionally kept to the bare minimum to deny the enemy what could be its only means of battle damage assessment. While the desire to keep critical information out of enemy hands is certainly understandable, in a war where information is itself so often a key battleground, the military needs to reevaluate how this is done. In earlier conflicts there were no opportunity costs—nothing to balance against the benefit of withholding information. Today there is. The benefits of releasing information on casualties may not be enough to outweigh the risks, but the calculation needs to be made, and it may be the case that more information ought to be released earlier, or that mechanisms to release information without doing harm can be explored. I discuss these trade-offs at greater length in Cori E. Dauber, "Winning the Battle But Losing the War: the Relationship Between the Media Coverage of Iraq and Public Support," May, 2005, Chapel Hill, NC, unpublished ms.
108. It should be noted, however, that reports of American combat casualties per se is not what reduces public support for a given military operation, even though that is widely assumed to be the case, particularly by the press. Support will hold so long as the public continues to believe there is hope for the success of the mission; in other words, if the public continues to be optimistic. It is only when the public loses faith in the mission, begins to believe that there is no hope—in other words, that American lives are being lost for no reason—that continued casualties will erode support in a substantial way. In other words, to erode the will to fight, these groups need both types of stories, and both types of images, stories about continued (and continuing) American combat casualties, and stories that suggest the mission is not and will not in the future be successful. For an elaboration of the argument on the relationship between optimism and public support in the face of combat casualties (along with substantial empirical data), see Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver, and Jason Reifler, "Success Matters: Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq," International Security, Vol. 30, Winter 2005/2006, pp. 7–46, available from www.duke.edu/~gelpi/success.matters.pdf.
109. Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, October 18, 2006.
110. The military, it should be said, made a tremendous mistake in refusing to respond to CNN's story. While it was understandable that they did not want to discuss the sniper threat per se for operational reasons, they needed to at least try to get someone on camera making the case that the fact that these were propaganda tapes made a difference in the weight people gave them and how people looked at them.
111. In fact, enemy sniper teams are far more at risk from our own than they are capable of doing damage, an argument, to be fair, addressed by CNN in their story. Reporting on one unit, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, but a unit stationed at Ramadi when it was the heart of the insurgency and therefore in heavy contact, Michael Fumento notes that, "Meanwhile enemy snipers, though generally the most skilled of the enemy fighters and armed primarily with good 7.62 millimeter Soviet Dragunov sniper rifles, have killed 1 member of the battalion. The battalion plus its support units have lost a total of 8 men while killing about 600—a stunning ratio of 75:1." "Return to Ramadi," Weekly Standard, November 27, 2006, available from weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/985qugel.asp.
112. Anderson Cooper 360, CNN, October 18, 2006.
113. David Doss, "Why We Aired the Sniper Video," October 19, 2006, Anderson Cooper 360 Blog, available from www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/archives/2006_10_15_ac360_archive.html.
114. 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.
115. Those outlets that did less cropping of the photograph of the mutilated bodies of the contractors in Fallujah received a very strong negative reaction from their audiences, for example. See the oddly mistitled Paul Nussbaum, "Reaction to Graphic Images Somewhat Subdued," Philadelphia Inquirer, April 2, 2004, p. A-6, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, www.lexisnexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T5437716499&format=GNBFI&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T5437717602&cisb=22_T5437717601&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=144577&docNo=1. This may be in part a function of the shock value of seeing bodies of American soldiers, when the press so rarely makes those images available. The Los Angeles Times surveyed 6 months of coverage, running from September 1, 2004, through February 28, 2005, a period that included the marine assault on Fallujah. During that period, "readers of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Washington Post did not see a single picture of a dead serviceman. The Seattle Times ran a photo 3 days before Christmas of the covered body of a soldier killed in [a] mess hall bombing. Neither Time nor Newsweek … showed any U.S. battlefield dead during that time." American publications were more willing (and this is not unusual) to show non-American dead, the New York Times, for example, printing 55 photos of dead or wounded Iraqis over the same time period. That said, the LA Times also provided polling data indicating the public as a whole is supportive of such photos being published (which will continue to be irrelevant, since outlets respond to the number of complaints they receive, not the number of readers or audience members who do not respond directly). The article includes a breakout of the number of images of dead, wounded, and grieving by outlet for the period, which is quite interesting. See James Rainey, "Unseen Pictures, Untold Stories," Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2005, available from latimes.com, www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-nairaqphoto21may21,1,5119073.story.
116. One would have thought that after ABC anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman were hurt in an IED explosion, the networks—at least ABC—would have had to confront the fact that whatever these images may look like, they are, in fact, pictures of someone's loved one being killed or hurt. Not only did this practice not change, but all three networks used such footage in their coverage of Woodruff's being injured—and ABC's piece on the nature of the roadside bomb as a weapon, which ran as part of their coverage that night, may have been the one that used the most individual segments of this type that night, I counted six as it aired: 5 explosions, and one of a bomb being assembled. See David Wright, "Roadside Bombs, Greatest Cause of Injury, Death," ABC World News Tonight, January 29, 2006, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=43a1e91c51ce240f0f40e3967fd8d51b&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVzz-zSkVA&_md5=6b0b937dbe48b1ab144991efbce0a289. (This story aired several months before the Tyndall Report began cataloguing reports.)
117. See Sean Aday, "The Real War Will Never Get On Television: An Analysis of Casualty Imagery in American Television Coverage of the Iraq War," Paper presented at the International Studies Association, March 18-20, 2004, Montreal, Canada, available from ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/pmt/exhibits/1537/Aday.pdf.
118. A reporter surveyed metro dailies and found that the photograph of the corpse (he does not specify which of the series) ran on the front page of only 11 out of 34, including the New York Times and USA Today. Fifteen put the photograph inside the front section, while another eight, including the Baltimore Sun and the Dallas Morning News, declined to use the image at all. Lou Gelfand, "If You Ran the Newspaper," Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 19, 1993, available from Lexis/Nexis.
119. This became the subject of a small controversy on the web when an email circulated from Ms. Logan asking people to reach out to CBS and ask that the piece be aired on the news, rather than the less visible outlet of the Internet venue. See www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2007/01/24/helping-lara-logan/#logan-letter, accessed October 28, 2007. As was probably inevitable, given heated feelings about the war and the way feelings about the way the war was being covered became a proxy for those feelings, this rapidly became a target people could use to fight through larger issues.
120. "Pixellation" is the high-tech blurring used by television networks when they break an image down to the "pixels that are used to create it, reversing the process in such a way as to make it impossible to tell what it is supposed to be.
121. For a list of which newspapers presented the photograph in what way, see David D. Perlmutter and Lisa Hatley Major, "Images of Horror From Fallujah," Nieman Reports, Vol. 58, Summer 2004, p. 73.
122. This attitude towards the display of the dead body in news images is very much an American one. While it is shared to a lesser degree by the Canadian media, and an even lesser degree by the British, most countries' news outlets, print and broadcast, would display as a matter of course extremely graphic images that would never be seen in the United States.
123. One of the most powerful and memorable photographs taken that day has been called simply "the Jumper" or sometimes "the Falling Man," and although it is taken from a great enough distance that the man's identity cannot be determined (a number of reporters have subsequently tried), what is striking about it is the impression that the man is in a casual, even graceful pose as he falls. Yet the photo has essentially gone down the memory hole, appearing in none of the collections of images that appeared in the aftermath of the attacks, probably because when it did appear there were tremendous numbers of complaints. The photographer who took the shot also took shots of Robert F. Kennedy moments after the assassination, photographs far more graphic, yet they were published without controversy, and continue to be reprinted to this day. He suspects that the reason for the different reaction is that we did not and do not identify with Kennedy. Not being presidential candidates, we do not look at the photographs of him lying bleeding on a kitchen floor and think, "that could have been me." We have a different emotional response to a picture of an unidentified office worker, killed without warning while sitting at his desk (we assume). See Richard Drew, "The Horror of 9/11 That's All Too Familiar," The Los Angeles Times, September 10, 2003, p. B-13, available from latimes.com, articles.latimes.com/2003/sep/10/opinion/oe-drew10.
124. ABC was the first to announce this policy (ostensibly based on the comments of a psychiatrist during a special about the effects of the tragedy on children), and the others followed within days. Howard Kurtz, "ABC Stops Endless Replay of Tragedy," September 19, 2001, Washington Post, p. C-01, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=e7dd5273408013d9c390ed352968b494&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLzVzz-zSkVb&_md5=b7cdaa1314e01c74d3c154a9376fd7e9.
125. "Herald Editor Apologizes for Publishing Shooting Photos," Boston Herald, October 23, 2004, p. 002, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, www.lexisnexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/us/lnacademic/search/homesubmitForm.do.
126. Joan Deppa et al., The Media and Disasters: Pan Am 103, Washington Square: New York University Press, 1994, p. 91.
127. When a California paper published a photograph of a sheep that had been badly burned in a wildlife fire, it received complaints precisely paralleling those that papers receive when they publish graphic war images, and their public editor wrote a column describing the decision to publish the image that precisely paralleled the columns that are published when papers are criticized for publishing combat images readers find to be too graphic. See Armando Acuna, "Bee Went Too Far with Burned-Sheep Photo, Some Say," Sacramento Bee, October 1, 2003, p. E-3, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic.
128. Weimann and Winn's research suggests that the more sanitized coverage is, the more audiences' opinions of terrorists had changed after viewing it, becoming more positive. Gabriel Weimann and Conrad Winn, Theater of Terror: Mass Media and International Terrorism, New York: Longman, 1994, pp. 166–167.
129. Lee Cowan, "Al-Qaeda Linked Group Claims Three US Soldiers Were Killed in Revenge for Rape and Murder of Iraq Girl," CBS Morning News, July 11, 2006, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=f0e49596a9d35393413517cf0ca21088&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVtz-zSkVA&_md5=c093139c0bda2fad3c248e604cd05f9a.
130. Mike Boettcher, "Al-Qaeda Linked Group Claiming it Killed Three US Soldiers For Revenge for Rape and Murder of Young Iraqi Woman," NBC News Today Show, July 11, 2006, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=36c6b0551396f88db14e3b87440cd0bf&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVtz-zSkVA&_md5=89a12813e52f03794ec4732b390b35a3.
131. I believe there is evidence that such a rhetorical appeal would have been successful after the appearance of the famous photographs from Mogadishu. See Cori E. Dauber, "The Shot Seen 'Round the World: The Impact of the Images of Mogadishu on American Military Operations," Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 4, 2001, pp. 667–671. I believe since then there has been a shift in public discourse so that "support the troops" really means, in many cases, "protect the troops," so that there is a theme running through much of public argumentation suggesting that it is not so much their job to protect us, as it is our job to protect them—for example, by supporting candidates and legislation that will get them out of harm's way. Perhaps that would have made it easier to use a story like this to rally support for removing forces from Iraq, but it may also have made it easier to support an effort, if it were well enough resourced, to go after those who so grievously harmed those we were supposed to protect—yet failed to.
132. Daniel Pearl, reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was lured to an interview in Pakistan, kidnapped and decapitated. There was essentially no serious discussion or consideration given to the idea that any images would be shown from the video by mainstream media outlets, and only CBS did so. The most controversial choice at that point was one made by a single, alternative weekly, which provided its readers with a hyperlink to the video. See "Freedom to Choose: Why We Linked to the Video Released by Daniel Pearl's Murderers," The Boston Phoenix, June 6–13, 2002, thephoenix,com, available from www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/editorial/documents/02299081.htm.
133. Osama bin Laden's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, wrote Zarqawi a letter in which he suggested the beheadings were hurting the cause. He suggested hostages be shot instead. See Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Kyle Dabruzzi, "The Next Generation of Jihad," The Weekly Standard, June 28, 2007, weeklystandard.com, available from weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/805fbvze.asp.
134. Peter Johnson, "A Death Caught on Tape: Should It Run or Not?" USA Today, May 12, 2004, p. 4-D, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=de45ce18111dbc86cb3c50934f5f4ba8&_docnum=17&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkVA&_md5=26e9ec69bab8723707ebd2b670132c49.
135. Barry Peterson, "Al-Jazeera Airing Video of Two Americans and a British Man Taken Hostage in Baghdad," September 18, 2007, CBS News, The Saturday Early Show, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=e7e67f79005c9342621b4655d1384ef2&_docnum=12&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVA&_md5=c0440b37b05326bfe31fb02a8a193404.
136. Obviously this is not always true, but in those cases when tapes have been made of Iraqis being killed, the point being made has centered on the number of Iraqis being killed, and quite frequently also on some relationship of the victims to the government (thus implicitly highlighting the weakness of the government, their inability to protect their own, and thus the danger in cooperating with—or perhaps even supporting—the government.) See "Iraqi Group Posts 'Execution Video'," Al Jazeera.net, March 4, 2007, available from english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2007/03/2008525125854381924.html.
137. Paul Eedle, CNN, "Live From …" 13:00, May 13, 2004, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=35ff7c18e0230d82e00f3c45c32061b8&_docnum=26&wchp=dGLbVtz-zSkVA&_md5=f80c8917a602713e56124be3b3d1255a.
138. Matthew B. Stannard, "Beheading Video Seen as War Tactic; Experts Say Terrorists Employing Grisly Form of Propaganda," San Francisco Chronicle, May 13, 2004, p. A-1, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=bd51d2965428d7c5bff6c453ce996571&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVzz-zSkVb&_md5=2f27cf28e00b1403016ea2a30f80cddf.
139. Brian Rooney, "Pleading for Mercy, Ken Bigley Video Addresses Tony Blair," ABC News, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, September 24, 2004, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=c79a5f7f20e985d1adce6ba425588672&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVA&_md5=3b3832cdba3f6d268337f6f2e4e90b23. NBC mentioned the video's release, but did not show a clip or quote from it. Tom Brokaw, "New Video Today of British Hostage in Iraq," NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, September 29, 2004, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=1a3349971e33283505b7358851e75bc9&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVA&_md5=b327ba196d2624fbd80004061abc60c9.
140. In the wake of the Nick Berg beheading, the Dallas Morning News published one shot frame grabbed from the end of the video, showing the terrorists holding the severed head aloft, however, they printed it on the editorial page, not on the front page, and the head itself was hidden, covered by a black rectangle "out of respect for the dead man's family and the sensitivities of our readers." They received 87 letters, every one in support of publication, many demanding more such images be shown. The editorial and photo are no longer cached, but the editor’s comments are available at Rod Dreher, "DMN Publishes Berg Pic," NRO's The Corner, May 12, 2004, available from www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_05_09_corner-archive.asp#031706. A full discussion of the debate over the Berg images can be found at Jay Rosen, "News Judgment Old and News Judgment New: American Nicholas Berg Beheaded," Press Think, May 16, 2004, available from journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/05/16/berg_video.html.
141. Matt Zoller Seitz, "What TV Doesn't Show and Why," Newark Star-Ledger," May 14, 2004, p. 63, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=92941542167782bc2a052390060d5580&_docnum=10&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkVA&_md5=8f04cde6e9836941d93695439c31c5a6.
142. Stannard, "Beheading Video Seen as War Tactic."
143. See Mary Bosworth and Jeanne Flavin, Race, Gender, and Punishment: From Colonialism to the War on Terrorism, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007, p. 207. They refer to the picture as showing the detainees as "kneeling in submission" and note that the goggles "brought allegations of torture," citing Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
144. "Donald Rumsfeld Holds Defense Department Briefing," January 22, 2002, FDCH Political Briefings, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=cbee207ae9d7a6d282ccc92919330798&_docnum=5&wchp=dGLbVtz-zSkVA&_md5=124020ab09c4fee6c44075a000573e4a.
145. I am indebted to Carol K. Winkler of Georgia State University for this insight.
146. Elizabeth Palmer, "S. Korean Hostage is Killed by Iraqi Militants," CBS Evening News, June 22, 2004, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, accessed June 24, 2007.
147. Dexter Filkins, "Iraq Tape Shows Decapitation of American," New York Times, May 12, 2004, p. A-1, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=0da114b31a377521c8debf8d3b0a3a8e&_docnum=2&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVA&_md5=62d7af944b12f7b39b6313cbfdf3fd5b.
148. Stannard, "Beheading Video Seen as War Tactic."
149. See, for example, Leonard Pitts, "Because America Should Know Better," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 15, 2004, p. 17A, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=f14719a71233a8638da7dce03bdafc8e&_docnum=8&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVA&_md5=7a3af61693a7b50 ae2bad00d8fbe23c4. USA Today simply accepted the link between the two events, covering the release of the videotape as "a bloody scene that appears to mark the first violent response to U.S. abuse of Iraqi captives at Baghdad's Abu (sic) Ghraib prison." Bill Nichols, "Video Shows Beheading of American Captive," USA Today, May 11, 2004, available from usatoday.com, www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-05-11-iraq-beheading_x.htm.
150. Barry Peterson, "American Civilian Beheaded in Baghdad," CBS Morning News, September 21, 2004, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis- nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=be341fb253ab40b1855876329a7ec114&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVtz-zSkVA&_md5=31b04d97d94f039026024e6c5db81b5e.
151. Unfortunately, in the superb updating of Hoffman's book, much of the case study of the media coverage of TWA 847 has fallen away, presumably because the media environment is so different today. (After all, that hijacking took place in a world dominated by three broadcast networks, no cable, no Internet.) All the same, it is worth tracking down the 1998 edition of the book for the chapter, "Terrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion,", pp. 131–155, for a great deal of it remains relevant.
152. Barry Peterson, "Iraqi Kidnappers Allow British Hostage Kenneth Bigley to Make Videotaped Plea for His Life," CBS News, The Early Show, September 23, 2004, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.eduuniverse/document?_m=e7e67f79005c9342621b4655d1384ef2&_docnum=8&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVA&_md5=48487373802ed27cd06c96545af96487.
153. Ned Colt, "Another American Hostage Beheaded By Insurgents in Iraq," NBC Nightly News, September 21, 2004, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=1a3349971e33283505b7358851e75bc9&_docnum=5&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVA&_md5=cea0f35531309aeb51bc8a0e394f0b8.
154. Dan Rather, "Al-Jazeera Airs Video of Kidnapped Briton Kenneth Bigley," CBS Evening News, September 29, 2004, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc. edu/universe/document?_m=a5b1f47c49f1f8f028cb06eb8cf01605&_docnum=3&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVA&_md5=1347aa597e239de945903741113f9a15.
155. Preston Mendenhall, "New Video Emerges of Four Hostages Held in Iraq," NBC Nightly News, January 28, 2006, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=f12e1daba2d050b42d51da31893f3ca6&_docnum=3&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVA&_md5=a6c448335d154cf922d59ea0109a2f2c.
156. Lara Logan, "Kidnapped American Peace Activist Found Dead in Baghdad," CBS Evening News, March 11, 2006, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, web.lexis-nexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/universe/document?_m=80c6cb3eb138dd62e8b0a70d80fc836c&_docnum=2&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVA&_md5=1921b8660c7a1c681e95a1a01577a222.
157. It is also important to consider the possibility that there will be a revisioning of older forms of hostage taking for the purpose of gaining media attention given the amount of coverage given the attacks on the Mumbai hotels. See Cori E. Dauber, "Mumbai Memo," unpublished manuscript, Carlisle, PA, November 28, 2008.
158. One of the last Westerners taken hostage, for example, was Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor when she was kidnapped on January 7, 2006, and held for 82 days before being released.
159. Carroll's family appeared when they had a prepared statement they wished to read—and when they did so, they were essentially given the air time they wanted, and briefly asked questions that directly fed the family's goals; for example, of using CNN as a platform for sending a message directly to the kidnappers. See "An Interview with Jill Carroll’s Mother," CNN American Morning, January 19, 2006, available from Lexis-Nexis Academic, www.lexisnexis.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T5457678761&format=GNBFI&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T5457678764&cisb=22_T5457678763&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=271063&docNo=10. Some aspects of the media were absent; for example, no satellite trucks were camped out on their lawn. The distinction in the way they were treated, compared to the way the families of random kidnap victims (be they truck drivers, soldiers, or civilian contractors) were treated, was so stark as to be unavoidable.
160. When Carroll was kidnapped, her identity was effectively "embargoed," kept out of press reports, for 48 hours, at the request of the Monitor. This seems entirely reasonable. (By the same token, when two Fox News personnel were kidnapped in Gaza, the story was downplayed at the request of Fox News, on the theory—apparently correct—that if less was made of the story, the kidnappers would conclude they had taken men of little value and eventually release them.) The question is how prepared the press is to participate in such embargoes when the victims are not reporters. See Jack Shafer, "The Carroll Kidnapping: What Information Should Reporters Suppress?" Slate.com, January 10, 2006, available from www.slate.com/id/2134093/.
161. John Dillin, "NBC News President Defends, But Revises, Terrorism Coverage, Christian Science Monitor, August 5, 1985, p. 3; Eleanor Randolph, "Networks Turn Eye on Themselves: In Crisis, Restraint Viewed as Important but Dismissed as Impossible," Washington Post, June 30, 1985, p. A-25; America's Ordeal by Television: With the Beirut Hostages Free, Videoland Forgets Oh So Quickly," Washington Post, July 2, 1985, p. C1. On a related instance, NBC's interview of the lead Achille Lauro hijacker, which they secured on the grounds that they keep his location secret, see Philip Geyelin, "How to Protect a Terrorist," Washington Post, May 19, 1986, p. A-15.
162. Again, in the updating of Hoffman's book, much of the case study of TWA 847 has fallen away. But it is worth tracking down the 1998 edition of the book for the chapter, "Terrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion," pp. 131–155, for so much of it remains relevant.
163. Brigitte L. Nacos, Terrorism and the Media: From the Iran Hostage Crisis to the Oklahoma City Bombing, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994 ed., p. 50. She also quotes CBS's Tom Fenton as reporting that during the embassy siege in Tehran, reporters were offered unpublished classified documents from the embassy in return for 5 minutes of unedited air time.
164. Raphael Cohen-Almagor, "Media Acts of Terrorism: Troubling Episodes and Suggested Guidelines," Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 30, 2005, pp. 400.
165. It was reported during this time period that the soldiers' IDs were found. "ID Cards of Missing Soldiers Found," CNN.com, June 4, 2007, available from www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/06/04/missing.soldiers/index.html. I was told about the discovery of the video by a reporter from a major national media outlet who covered Iraq extensively and is in a position to have this information.
166. Hassan M. Fattah, "Militia Rebuked by Some Arab Countries," New York Times, July 17, 2006, nytimes.com, available from www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/world/middleeast/17arab.html?fta=y.
167. The report was released in the United States (in sections) by the American Jewish Congress. See Reuven Erlich et al., "Hezbollah's Use of Lebanese Civilian's as Human Shields: the Extensive Military Infrastructure Positioned and Hidden in Populated Areas," n.p.: Gelilot, Israel: The Intelligence and Terrorism Center at the Center for Special Studies, November 2006, section 1, available from www.ajcongress.org/site/DocServer/part1.pdf?docID=701.
168. Greg Myre, "Offering Video, Israel Answers Critics On War," New York Times, December 5, 2008, nytimes.com, available from www.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/world/middleast/05mideast.html?ex=1322974800&en=b8b25a9e380122ff&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss.
169. Go to www.youtube.com/user/idfnadesk, accessed January 2, 2009. Apparently YouTube has removed some of the uploaded videos, which—given their response to complaints about Islamist videos, noted above—some commentators are calling a double standard. See Noah Pollack, "What YouTube Doesn't Want You to See," Contentions.com, posted December 30, 2008, available from www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/pollak/48462.
170. Noam Cohen, "The Toughest Q's Answered in the Briefest Tweets," New York Times, January 3, 2009, nytimes.com, available from www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/weekinreview/04cohen.html?ref=weekinreview.
171. More combat footage, however, seems to be posted to the site Liveleak.com. I have done no numerical analysis, that is simply this author's impression.
172. Compare virtually anything posted by American personnel to Liveleak to, for example, "Ruins of Nineveh in Mosul," posted to the MNF-I channel on December 15, 2008, which doesn’t even have a narration. Available from www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTforK9Jc1k.
173. Jim Krane, AP, "US Forces Storm Fallujah," Washington Times, November 8, 2004, available from www.washingtontimes.com/world/20041108-125353-3217r.htm.
174. Jim Miklaszewski explicitly reported on November 8, "At the same time, the US military will be fighting a propaganda war. As their first target last night, US and Iraqi troops seized Fallujah's general hospital to keep the insurgents from inflating the numbers of civilians killed or wounded." NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, NBC News, Lexis Nexis Academic. Interestingly, there was no suggestion in the report that there might have been a reason the marines would consider such a possibility, for example, that prior numbers might have been inflated and erroneously reported.
175. The ways in which the press suggested that what had been accomplished in Fallujah was not that important shifted over the course of the operation. The bottom line was that, since terrorist attacks continued in other parts of the country, even appeared to increase in the short term, and since the need to telegraph the operation to permit civilians to get out of the way also permitted terrorist leaders to leave, the operation (if not an out and out failure) was not portrayed as being a complete success, either. Thus Jamie McIntyre of CNN on November 10: "Mosques, used by insurgents as command posts, have come under heavy attack. But with most of Falluja resembling a ghost town, it is now growing more apparent that along with much of the population, many of the insurgents fled in advance of the assault. What is left appears to be a small number of desperate and disorganized remnants." Wolf Blitzer Reports, CNN, Lexis Nexis Academic.
176. In response to the question, "Do you think the US should keep military troops in Iraq until a stable government is established there, or do you think the US should bring its troops home as soon as possible?" In a Pew Research Center Poll on November 3, 58 percent of the respondents said "keep troops there" and 39 percent said "bring troops home." However, on the next polling period beginning on December 19, 63 percent said "keep troops there" and only 32 percent said "bring them home" Reprinted in Pollingreport.com, available from www.pollingreport.com/iraq4.htm.
177. Sean Edwards, Complex Environments: Battle of Fallujah I, April 2004 (Classified), Charlottesville, VA: U.S. Army National Ground Intelligence Center, March 31, 2006, pp. 13–14. I quote only paragraphs marked U, or Unclassified.
178. Edwards, Complex Environments, p. 14.
179. Bacon.
180. Ibid.
181. Ibid.