Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime

Abstract

Allan, Stuart and Barbie Zelizer, eds. Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime. London: Routledge, 2004. 374 pp. $29.95. To borrow one chapter's metaphor, this provocative anthology is a Minotaur, a mythological character with a bull's head and man's body. As employed by Adel Iskandar and Mohammed El-Nawawy in a fascinating examination of the three stages of development of Al-Jazeera, the creature represents the internal tension and turmoil of contextual objectivity: Like the Minotaur who struggles to maintain equilibrium between his beastly and human qualities, the try to strike the balance between audience appeal and Objective' coverage . . . to meet their dual duties of being balanced (objectivity) while reflecting the views of their public constituency (contextualization). The internal tension permeating Reporting War stems from the bullish insistence of several contributors to ground their chapters in cultural theories of hegemony and otherness, while others analyze human qualities of journalists and their consumers and point out fissures in the global media's dominance. Among the latter is an excellent piece by Patricia Aufderheide on informal sectors of journalism. She presents convincing examples of how big media influence public opinion and how the informal sector, little media, is reaching beyond the box through do-it-yourself expression and blogs. She senses the pulse of change and calls for filters, indexing, and tools to help users manage informational noise. Susan Moeller contributes an insightful philosophical analysis of the media's culpability in echoing the language of the war on terror, evoking America's manifest destiny belief as rephrased in President George Bush's ultimatum either with us or you're with the terrorists. She debunks the suggestion that all universally bought the president's argument but also warns against organizations being caught up in the administration's language. Two pieces do a particularly good job of recognizing dominance without being hamstrung by hegemonic theory. Douglas Kellner gives a blistering account of complicity in the first Bush's propaganda campaign leading up to Gulf War I, and Piers Robinson reveals how the war on terror has replaced the Cold War journalism template. Howard Tumbcr employs Falklands War history and ethno-methodology to show the nature of Gulf War coverage and makes a compelling case for reporter safety. Of the three parts dividing Reporting War-War in the Twenty-first Century, Bearing Witness, and Reporting the Iraq War-the first contains the darkest provocations that create the internal tension mentioned previously. Oliver Boyd-Barrett warns about suffocation by U.S. economic hegemony but sees hope through alternative media; Richard Keeble links the to Elsenhower's military-industrial complex as a co-conspirator and calls for more criticism and analysis; Tamar liebes and Zohar Kampf warn about aiding terrorists through journalistic forums; Barbie Zelizer talks about sacrificing probing column inches in favor of a simplistic photograph; and Stuart Allan discusses the gap between how Americans see the world compared to others. …

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