The Poet's Eye 
                    commentary by Lightning Rod

the Poets' Eye is skeptical
without being cynical, innocent
without being naive and
critical without being
judgemental

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05-20-04

"You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." William Randolph Hearst to Fredrick Remington.

By now we are used to media-driven wars. Korea was the first televised war. I remember, as a child, watching pictures on the old televisions that were as big as washing machines with tiny screens, of soldiers firing Howitzers in the snows of Korea. The announcer said something about the Cold War and I thought it was because all the soldiers were in the snow and you could see their breath.

By the time of Vietnam we had color pictures and the grunts and groans of wounded soldiers were in our living rooms. Pictures were a large part of that war. From the image of the naked girl with napalm sizzling on her skin to the shot of the monk burning, to the one of the man being executed in the street, they were pictures that brought the war home.

By the time of the first Gulf War, television and technology had progressed. It was more like a video game. You could see grainy pictures of missiles vaporizing tanks. We had Norman Schwarzkopf standing in front of his theater operations charts like a stern but jovial weatherman describing cold fronts and high pressure areas and desert storms.

The current Iraqi war is not the first one to be inspired by sensational pictures. In 1898 America embarked on its first imperial war, with Spain. In the 1890s, the yellow journalism of Pulitzer and Hearst did much to fuel the public's passion for war. The sinking of the Maine, like the razing of the Trade Towers was the spurious justification for a blatantly imperialistic war. The Spanish were probably no more responsible for the sinking of the Maine than the Iraqis were for the tragedy of 9/11.

"The media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly."--Noam Chomsky

After the wholesale domestic carnage of the Civil War, which was the lastmilitary spectacle that Americans had witnessed, the Spanish American War must have seemed as harmless as a video game. There was no bloodshed on American soil and the public knew about it mainly from the media reports. In those days the media were newpapers, and it was likely that the newspaper that you were reading was owned by Pulitzer or Hearst. It was an era very much like today, when
five media companies own the sources for almost all the information that we consume.

Disney(ABC)
Viacom (parent of CBS)
General Electric (which owns NBC)
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (Fox), and
Time Warner.

Now we have a war of pure pictures--the charred remains of American mercenaries hanging from a bridge in Fallugah, flag draped coffins in Dover, an Iraqi standing on a box hooded and wired for sound, a feisty female private with a cigarette pointing at the privates of her prisoners, severed heads. It's a Hollywood war of Shock and Awe. Special Ops and Photo Ops.

Those who control the pictures, control the hearts and minds. (list above) Whether it be William Randolph Hearst or Viacom, when the opinions of an elite are impressed upon the populace, wicked things ensue. We are hooked on monopoly broadcast journalism the same way we are hooked on oil. Call it Electric Bread and Circuses.

Concentration of media power, like concentration of wealth, does not serve the commonweal, it serves the interests of a few. But The Poet's Eye sees that the power of pictures is great. They can stop a war almost as quickly as they can start one.

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