Note

Anyway.

What was really interesting was not the actually images being shown on the news channels, but instead the variety of them. The hotel room came equipped with about fifteen channels, and maybe three of these were British. The rest were French, German, Italian, Polish, Japanese, and Arabic. And then the obvious CNN because Americans just can't handle watching the BBC (I still don't get why people prefer CNN to the BBC).

At one point I turned on the tv to see the update on the war situation, and was struck by the contrasting viewpoints given between Al-Jazeera and CNN. I figured it would be somewhat different, but that the differences would be in the wording of the news itself. Normally I can't understand a word on Al-Jazeera, but I happened to stumble upon a subtitled bit of footage that had a voiceover in English, and it was fascinating to see. While CNN was showing pictures of cheering Iraqis along the roads as the troops worked their way into Baghdad, Al-Jazeera was showing a group of American marines terrifying an Iraqi family. The Americans had heard gunfire coming from a certain part of a residential neighborhood, and were going house by house looking for the shooter in order to secure the area. The Americans only spoke English, and it was of course impossible to communicate to the family that they weren't there to hurt them. The children walked out with their hands up, got on the ground and silently sobbed and shook with fear. The father desperately plead with the marines not to hurt his family, but the marines couldn't understand and the father began getting frantic. The mother worriedly put her arms over her two terrified daughters while she herself trembled and cried from fear.

The marines weren't doing anything wrong, and they weren't intentionally trying to be threatening. But the picture given of the American military was by no means a pretty one. It was obvious that this family certainly did not have the same feelings toward the marines as was being shown at the exact same moment on CNN.

Then I wondered: would an image like that - which totalled about two minutes of film footage - EVER be put on American television? I doubt it.

In one sense, we'll never be allowed to form our own opinion about current events because we'll always only get half the story. By feeding us half of the information, we are naturally being swayed to think a certain way. And if another part of the world is only being fed the other half of the same information, the two opposing sides will never understand how the other could possibly feel that it is in the right. Dialogue becomes impossible, opinions turn toward the outrageous, and people eventually get killed.

The media are not entirely to blame for war and conflict, but I think a lot of good could come out of understanding where any given opponent is coming from. Yet I know I'd be dreaming were I ever to believe that CNN would actually present a story objectively. So I guess we'll all just continue living in our bubble where we're always right, and we'll just crush other bubbles that disagree. Seems a funny way to do things, though, doesn't it?

***along the same lines, although not really, I picked up this link detailing all the ways in which Michael Moore duped us in Bowling for Columbine (via Boogie Church). I guess many of us understood what Moore had wanted us to understand, even if it wasn't necessarily exactly based in truth. It's pretty interesting - although terribly upsetting. Worth a look.