On April 5th, 2010 a site known as wikileaks, infamous for releasing classified material to the public, published a video of two American army apache helicopters opening fire on a dozen innocent citizens in the city of New Baghdad, Iraq. Among the victims were 6 men, two Reuters news staff members named Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, as well as two children. The News reporters were killed along with the other 6 adults and the two children were severely wounded and sent to an Iraqi hospital. The instance itself occurred on July 12th, 2007 and was pursued heavily by Reuters in an attempt to find out what happened to their reporters. Reuters tried to obtain the video under the Freedom of Information act in 2007 but failed. When Wikileaks released the video under the title “Collateral Murder” a worldwide controversy began over the actions of the pilots and their potential violations of the Rules of Engagement and immediately sides were taken. The main points of controversy in the 39 minutes of unedited footage are in regards to a camera, a van, and the diction of the pilots.
The media became a political battleground with sources like rightpolitics.net (a large Jewish Conservative website) offering politically charged statements like “Liberal fucktards, to liberals and all those who slander the military, every death is murder, and every soldier is suspect.” The Guardian, MSNBC and The Huffington Post all took the sides of the victims and, in their articles about the video, spoke very harshly against the actions of the soldiers while on the other hand The Weekly Standard, NY Times, and the Jewish conservatives took their stance and offered their sympathy towards the troops.
The van that was a major point of controversy was being driven by two men attempting to collect the wounded and dead when the helicopters opened fire on the van and the unarmed men despite identifying the two children in the back of the van. The Huffington post criticized this portion of the video and a pilot heavily when he was quoted as saying “Well, it’s their fault bringing their kids to a battle” while the right side and the weekly standard called the van “fair game even if the men weren’t armed.”
The dialogue between the pilots was also a large factor as to why stances were taken in this issue. The dialogue can be seen as questionable to say the least and provides insight as to what the pilots were thinking. It was extremely interesting to see how the soldiers’ intentions came into question mainly due to their conversation. It was easy to tell certain things were taken out of context in certain articles in order to cater to a sources motives. The Huffington post for example used a quote from one of the pilots that read “come on let us shoot” and described the pilot as “bloodthirsty.” The tonality of the text also helped add cues as to which direction these variables swayed the story. For example, sources that sided more with the soldiers, such as the NY Times, described the reporters and other adults that were killed as “insurgents,” whereas those that took the “insurgents” side chose instead to describe them as “victims.” So Samuel Harris’ themes of purpose, audience, and author do apply here. The bias created by an author does in fact manifest a purpose behind the story and in fact, that bias is generally directed for a specific audience.
The camera being carried by the Reuters camera men Chmagh and Eldeen was supposedly mistaken by the pilots as an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) and was thus, supposedly, seen as a threat. The point brought up by those criticizing the Pilot was that he was viewing the situation in full color, not black and white like in the video, and was clearly able to identify the camera despite what his descriptions to his superiors stated. This point surprisingly wasn’t discussed much in the mainstream media when compared to the destruction of the van but it dominated the comments sections of every article. Everywhere comments flared up from both sides attacking and condemning one another, but these comments were not useless contradiction. The people that commented were insightful in their postings. One poster by the username of Sean6399 wrote “Anyway, the callous disregard for human life exhibited by the soldiers may be disturbing, but it should not be surprising. That mental attitude towards "the enemy" is cultivated in military culture. It is necessary, because it's rather difficult to motivate soldiers to stick their bayonets in fellow humans that they feel empathy towards.”
These ideas are shared in the comments sections and forums of every article and viewpoints and opinions exhibit strong emotions. In this enviroment sharing of information occurs between all of those involved. What this means is that people are learning, discussing, and thus cultivating more accurate and truthful stories than before. The collective is now overtaking the mainstream media. 60 years ago the only way to receive news was through picking up a newspaper but with the technological advancements of communicational devices information is more readily available than ever. Now anyone can make information public through the Internet at any point in time they choose. People are becoming informed through sources other than the mainstream media and this story is also proof of that fact. When examining the dates of the articles published the smaller blogs had first heard of this story, it then spread to the Huffington Post and The Weekly Standard and they published articles the day the video was released on April 5th, 2010. The NY times and MSNBC were both a day late and reported their first stories on the subject on April 6th, 2010.
In my personal opinion I believe that the pilots in this situation were aware of their actions. This appears to me to be a blatant misuse of force. It is astonishing to see media sources like the Weekly Standard defend the atrocious actions of these troops and call this gruesome video a “sensational gimmick that succeeded in driving tons of media attention and traffic to wikileaks site.” It seems that the followers of these sources have not watched the video for themselves. The video highlights the tragic, gruesome, and often times merciless nature of war. It shows two pilots murdering nearly a dozen innocent civilians by misrepresenting the situation to their superiors. The fact the media can even label these victims as “insurgents” makes me sick to the core. It is important though to show how information can be kept secret from the public and more importantly how incredible powerful the collective is becoming. Groups like Anonymous and the 99% are growing like wildfire and are becoming so incredibly advanced that they can hacking government databases. Anonymous is even said to be approaching the point where they could hack into the power grid. We are in a time where the truth has become a powerful weapon of exploitation and the people are sick of being lied to and so citizens have developed ways to uncover the truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment