Iraq News without Heart, without Compassion

Yesterday, I was watching local news about a bus rollover. Every news station is working this story for maximal emotion content. The school bus is shown on its side, next to the very mangled car. The young kids are interviewed, talking about how frightened they were, expressions dancing across their faces. Even a father is interviewed talking about this has happened twice and how that makes him feel. Major emotional impact, yet no one had died and yet no child had been majorly hurt.The accident occurred on a dangerous bit of road, so it would be hard to say someone is to blame. Yet here it is, major emotional coverage for something that requires no public policy change nor consideration. While this is a true and painful for story those involved, the story should be ranked in coverage with the importance in everyone’s life. Yet we know that news service likes sensational emotional news. That is why the coverage of the Iraq war is so different from normal news. So why is Iraq news, without heart and without compassion?

Just a year ago, the Iraq war news would be covered in a line or two. No pictures, no interviews, no other reporters, just an neutral voice announcer saying the Iraq news. Not only that neutral briefness, the story before and after were rushed into the Iraq story coverage, so there was no time to absorb the news. The Iraq news was about death, war and destruction, you would think there would be maps, interviews, pictures and emotional impact. Here is the great lie about Iraq war reporting: no emotional impact. Not only were flag draped coffins not shown, but weeping family was not shown. I only recall "brave soldier stories". We never saw the faces of an Iraq person while they described the US bombing their house. In order for us to have empathy, we the news audience need to hear the pain in the voices and see the pain in faces. Otherwise the Iraq war has less emotional impact than a Star Wars movie. (Now, to be fair, recent reporting has been better. This happened only after the election!) A new book, "Social Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman says that we need to see the faces and hear the voices of those impacted by war, to empathize! Note that the lie of  NO emotional impact Iraq reporting is done while we know that sensational emotional news is preferred! And any reporting on the continuing Afghanistan war is very hard to find, it is the invisible war. Note that while we getting no emotional content, that all of the Middle Eastern media has been serving emotional content in super size doses. Is it then any wonder that we have problems creating peace and understanding?

So was this intentional? Does the media know about the emotional impact of news? While the book, "Social Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman is new, it has been a long academic research and certainly part of marketing from day one. Ten years ago, I called our local Fox news, the big eyed news. They would do the wide eyed expression of surprise, especially in the news teasers. So news organizations know the value of facial expressions in communication. Someone deliberately decided to take emotional content out of Iraq reporting.

Just to emphasize the importance of expression, pretend that you just announced the news of your wedding. Then your  family politely nodded  and expressed brief approval messages, and immediately went back to the previous topic. You would know that something was terribly wrong. That is exactly how the news has treated the Iraq war, with the briefest most unemotional reports.

So, OK, many of us have instinctively known Iraq new coverage was wrong even if we didn’t have the words. What can we do? What should we do?

First of all we should feel outrage and anger, we should feel the same way we feel when someone deceives us to sell us a bad car. Instead of letting us freely make a choice with all information, options and emotional content, someone tried to make our choices for us! And we should talk about it with our friends, family and co-workers.

Second, we need to bring this awareness into the public eye. Perhaps a film, "Walk in My Shoes", where we told the story from the Iraqi point of view, where we showed the pain and fear in the faces, where we told the stories of despair and desperation and where we made the emotional connections with everyday people just trying to live in peace. Truly, it is time for us to weep. Perhaps we could make this Iraq war compassion, a theme for all our spiritual traditions. Isn’t it time that we cared about people again? Let’s collect some real names and real stories to personalize the cold number of 650,000 Iraq dead.

Third, lets bring this emotional awareness back into our political discussions. When an administration talking head is defending the war on MPR, let call in with emotional questions like:
What is the US doing to repair homes that we bombed? What is the US doing to help orphans in this war? How does the speaker feel when innocent people die in the battles and do we, as does the US do anything for their families? How does the speaker feel about the war?  

Fourth, the only way that we can ensure fairness and completeness in media and in government, is for we, the people to take our power back. We the people need to take back and own our politicians and our media, Media should never be owned by big corporations, the media should be owned by us. Politicians should not have to beg from money from big contributors, the campaigns should be paid for by us. We the people, need to take back our country.

Every long journey is done with tiny steps. So pick one thing that you can do each day. It can be as simple as having a conversation or asking a question.  Awareness and action should be our theme.

Cross posted at mnblue.