Saddam Hussein and George Bush agree on one thing: the voracious American media will use human-interest stories to prey on the sensibilities of the American people, who are extremely sensitive to casualties. Saddam said as much in meetings with visiting Americans last year; the Bush administration, determined to present as antiseptic a war as possible, has designed its censorship program around preventing access to such stories. Even some reporters agree that an unfettered press would prevent the United States from sustaining a war. Steve Kroft, a “60 Minutes” correspondent, admits to feeling “relieved” by the Pentagon’s decision to close Dover Air Force Base to coverage of the arrival of body bags from the gulf. “We can’t help ourselves,” he says, referring to TV’s addiction to emotional pictures.
But if TV can’t help itself, perhaps the public can. It doesn’t take extraordinary faith in people to believe that they will make their decision about support for a war independent of any pornography of grief they might see on TV. By that standard, the government should be allowed to censor only stories affecting military security, not those that might be inconveniently affecting.
Historically, it has censored both. In World War I, according to Phillip Knightley’s “The First Casualty,” censorship was so tight that even reports of a gift of wine cases to American troops by the French were deleted for fear of making the Americans look unsavory. In World War II, not only was any negative reporting censored, but no photographs of dead American soldiers were allowed to be published until 1943, more than a year after Pearl Harbor. Reporters covering the Korean War, still very much on the team, actually requested censorship to help them stay on the right side of the authorities. Only the undeclared Vietnam War lacked censorship, though the networks voluntarily avoided airing the goriest shots.
Does that help explain why Vietnam was also the only war the United States lost? Not really. Traditionally, Americans’ initial reaction to damage inflicted by the other side is anger, not defeatism. A 1967 NEWSWEEK survey, for instance, found that the vast majority of viewers said the televised images of death actually made them more hawkish on Vietnam. A similar dynamic was at work when the Iraqis displayed mistreated American pilots.
Obviously, large-scale casualties eventually diminish public appetite for war. In the gulf conflict, the deaths may generate reminders of Vietnam that are unhelpful to the war effort. But low tolerance for casualties in fact predates both Vietnam and bloody TV pictures. The popularity of the Korean War dropped in half in just one week after heavy casualties–in an era before TV. Clearly it is the results of war, not the esthetics, that in the long run sway public opinion.
Whatever TV’s true power, the perception of that power carries great weight. That’s why the gulf war restrictions on access to combat (as distinct from censorship as such) are greater than in any previous major war. The military says it cannot accommodate a horde of reporters, but it did during World War II. On D-Day, 558 journalists were accredited to travel with the invasion forces. In all major wars until this one, reporters like Richard Harding Davis and Ernie Pyle mingled freely with troops, who mostly liked the attention.
It may be, as author David Halberstam says, that this country is “extraordinarily ill-prepared emotionally for this war.” But if it is–if doubts about the war’s purpose, length and human cost come bubbling forth–the explanation will lie a lot deeper than the airing of maudlin, exploitive footage on television.
