26 Comments

1. m.g.:

I’ve seen this Stockholm Syndrome analogy on several blogs lately in connection with those opposing the Iraq war, and I don’t think it’s correct. The Stockholm Syndrome happens as a result of a captive-captor situation. The MSM are not Saddam’s captives — he’s more like their comrade-in-arms. Let’s not tone it up or give the MSM bastards any sympathy by putting them in the same boat as someone who’s been kidnapped or in a harrowing life-threatening circumstance.

Oct 19, 2005 - 1:11 pm 2. In Vino Veritas:

Er, what’s particularly wrong with Amanpur’s coverage? She described what actually happened in the Court (as opposed to the bloggers, who saw it on their TV…but I guess they really know what happened).

For weeks, conservatives have been whining about the “lack of coverage” of this trial. Today, when it is wall-to-wall Saddam, you have a problem with the tone of coverage, apparently. Next, you’ll be upset that Aaron Brown doesn’t scream “HITLER REINCARNATE” every time Hussein’s mugshot is on the screen.

Rather than putting up a post about the proceedings itself, the trial of the young century, you’d rather attack the coverage of the trial. Conservatives in general are fast becoming the Boy who cried “Liberal Media!” It’s fast losing whatever effect it may have once had.

Oct 19, 2005 - 1:26 pm 3. Ed Driscoll:

In Vino,

Gee, I missed the memo where Roger became a conservative; he hardly ever shows up at the VRWC meetings!

In any case, I can’t fault him for being skeptical: CNN will have to do much to regain the trust of their viewers after admitting they spent the better part of their history serving as a propaganda arm of Saddam’s regime. And the rest of the media is no great shakes either in this regard. Their comments about Saddam’s final “election” in 2002 are sadly ironic to look back on–as they pretended that a man who claimed to have received 99.96 percent of the “vote” was a legitimately elected democratic leader.

Oct 19, 2005 - 1:57 pm 4. Bostonian:

Roger, certainly Iraq the Model’s reporting is more interesting.

Vino guy, your posts lost their effect long long ago.

Oct 19, 2005 - 1:58 pm 5. byrd:

Vino Guy:

Do you really not see anything objectionable in CNN’s story? Like how the whole focus is on how tired and beleagured Saddam is? How “Saddam Hussein kept trying to have his day in court, have his speech, but was eventually asked to sit down, which he did.”

CNN knows full well Saddam will have his day in court and they also know that’s not what Saddam was trying to do here.

All the sympathy generated by the story was for Saddam. His victims? Mentioned once, in passing.

“[D]escribed what actually happened in court”–that’s very funny.

Oct 19, 2005 - 2:16 pm 6. Paul:

Look, everyone knows Saddam had a terrible childhood and therefore was a victim himself. His mommy whacked his pee pee for misbehaving many times, we hear, so who can blame him for acting out? Besides he showed great courage and is justly regarded as a great hero to the left for standing up to the big bully Bu$hitler.

Oct 19, 2005 - 2:41 pm 7. Terrye:

The day I found out that Eason Jordan fessed up to covering up for Saddam so that he could get access I stopped watching CNN.

Oct 19, 2005 - 2:43 pm 8. Terrye:

And besides all that those Iraqi bloggers are not just watching stuff on TV, they live the reality of Saddam and what he did to Iraq each and every day of their lives.

Oct 19, 2005 - 2:44 pm 9. tefta:

From Iraq, the model’s friend:

?I prefer the trial goes like this:

Q:Are you Saddam Hussein?

A:Yes.

Then take this bullet in the head.?

I like how this guy thinks.

Oct 19, 2005 - 2:47 pm 10. kenneth:

Saddam the Model: If there is a syndrome in play, it is from the other direction. Anyone who uses the euphemism “insurgent”, knows exactly what they are doing. The MSM has no real feeling for the images they show or the statements they make. Terrorism, Saddam, Iraq, etc. are metaphors they use to comment on their private war and they consider themselves to be better evolved, more sophisticated versions of those whom their reporting favors.

Oct 19, 2005 - 3:37 pm 11. Kevin P:

Roger:

CNN Report, excerpts, “Frail…defiant….”kept trying to have his speech but couldn’t….hair black…..older……weaker…..frail (in case you didn’t catch it the first time, he looks frail))…. weak(do you get it yet he looks weak!)……. , (by the sixth paragraph they list the charge against Saddam, one might think that would be a tad more important then the multiple descriptions of his weak appearence and black hair, but then I am not a proffessional journalist, who am I to question CA) “a description of the headgear complaint…. Saddams statement regarding the authority of the court………another mention of the accusation against Saddam.

If I was a Fitness magazine reporter I would like the frail, weak, frail weaker, frail, black hair song but as a reader of news I would like a bit more info on the charges rather then his salt and pepper locks. Was that for CNN or the E! Network? What did Joan Rivers think of his suit?

Kevin Peters

Kevin Peters

Oct 19, 2005 - 4:09 pm 12. neo-neocon:

I’m not sure what to call the syndrome–Stockholm, Schmockholm–but I do know it’s getting really old and tiresome. I spent a good portion of today reading the NY Times coverage of the opening of the trial, and being outraged. Hitler himself might be a media darling nowadays if he’d somehow managed to survive long enough to get himself into the Nuremberg dock.

I think the media has far too much at stake in their disapproval of the war and of Bush. They have dug a hole way too deep to climb out of now, so all they know how to do is to keep on digging.

Here’s my take on today’s Saddam trial coverage. Excerpt:

To paraphrase Sylvia Plath (of all people), in her poem “Daddy”:

Every [left-leaning journalist] adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

Well, it doesn’t scan well as poetry, and yes, it’s hyperbole, but it comes to mind these days when I read things like the NY Times editorial…

Oct 19, 2005 - 4:21 pm 13. jedrury:

The sad state of media respectability is evident. Reading the palpable outrage of Iraq The Model is far more real, relevant, and important news than the impressions of the Hermes scarfed, tres chic Christine, or, NPR’s attempt to obtain balanced reporting and the crowd reaction from the streets of Baghdad.

Human rights groups are demanding some Ramsey Clark approved due process to this trial when the sensibilities of the average Iraq and the Sharia fulfill “their” due process.

This trial will drag on for months; while the Iraqi people probably need a quick resolution from this monster. As Denzel, as the tortured John Creasy, says in his underappreciated “Man on Fire;” “a bullet always tells the truth.”

Oct 19, 2005 - 5:02 pm 14. jedrury:

The sad state of media respectability is evident. Reading the palpable outrage of Iraq The Model is far more real, relevant, and important news than the impressions of the Hermes scarfed, tres chic Christine, or, NPR’s attempt to obtain balanced reporting and the crowd reaction from the streets of Baghdad.

Human rights groups are demanding some Ramsey Clark approved due process to this trial when the sensibilities of the average Iraq and the Sharia fulfill “their” due process.

This trial will drag on for months; while the Iraqi people probably need a quick resolution from this monster. As Denzel, as the tortured John Creasy, says in his underappreciated “Man on Fire;” “a bullet always tells the truth.”

Oct 19, 2005 - 5:02 pm 15. ShoreMark:

Terrye said: “The day I found out that Eason Jordan fessed up to covering up for Saddam so that he could get access I stopped watching CNN.”

Better late than never Terrye, you surely have a stronger stomach than I to last that long!

I can’t remember any particulars now, from the first Gulf War, but I seem to recall that the coverage by CNN back then was more palatable — I think I even liked Blitzer back then.

Oct 19, 2005 - 6:55 pm 16. Terrye:

Shoremark:

Same here, but I think I changed…not Blitzer.

Oct 19, 2005 - 9:47 pm 17. thibaud:

“Frail but outspoken“?? Are they joking? Emily Litello was “frail but outspoken.” You don’t describe a mass murderer’s posture at his trial as “outspoken.”

It’d be interesting to compare the relative sharpness, drama, and punch of CNN’s first accounts of the Milosevic trial with Amanpour’s (deliberately?) tedious and unbelievably blase account of Saddam’s trial. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more rambling, incoherent piece on a major trial than this CNN mess. Even a cub journalist on a college paper could wring more sizzle out of this story than Amanpour.

Consider these gems:

“Saddam Hussein kept trying to have his day in court, have his speech, but was eventually asked to sit down, which he did”

No, moron, he is indeed having his “day in court”. This is his trial, remember? However much you may loathe the concept of an Iraqi democracy made possible by US troops, this is a real court appointed by a real and representative government. This is an extraordinary event, more important than the Hague trial of Milosevic or the Spanish trial of Pinochet. This is teh spectacle of Saddam’s own former subjects granting him the justice that he never dreamed of providing them when his boot was at their throats for all those decades.

he basically said that he did not recognize the jurisdiction of the court. He said, ‘this was false, whatever is built on something false is itself false.’”

No, it’s not about “jurisdiction”– as you yourself seem to grasp, which explains the weasel modifier “basically.” The punch line here– and the most important quote of all, buried for perhaps not-so-mysterious reasons halfway down the article– is that this man is delirious. He’s nuts. He says ‘I’m still the president of Iraq.’ This is as rational as claiming that he’s the reincarnation of Saladin. This, not “frail but outspoken”, is the headline of the story, whose arc would, if professionally and intelligently arranged, paint a picture of a madman whose particular lunacy is as sinister as it is bathetic.

“His main point of defense is that he does not recognize this tribunal. His lawyers have told us that they do not recognize it and that will be his main point of defense, that he is being tried essentially illegally. Nonetheless, the judge proceeded.”

Perhaps the above attempt at prissy evenhandedness is oh-so-delicate irony, but here again, the result of such a banal retelling effect is to deflate the story and minimize the trial’s importance. And with it, to cock a subtle sneer at the Iraqi courts and with them, the new Iraqi democratic government.

Oct 19, 2005 - 10:39 pm 18. neo-neocon:

The banality of CNN.

Oct 19, 2005 - 10:47 pm 19. thibaud:

Wonder how CNN International covered it for the European and Arab, or maybe we should just say, Eurabian, audience.

Oct 19, 2005 - 10:53 pm 20. thibaud:

Why is it that Anderson Cooper was encouraged to get “angry” ie hysterical at officials in Lousiana, while Amanpour yawns her way through Saddam’s trial as if it were a PTA meeting?

Oct 19, 2005 - 10:58 pm 21. Jamie Irons:

thibaud and neo-neocon

What superb comments! Thank you.

Jamie Irons

Oct 19, 2005 - 11:16 pm 22. Stankleberry:

Baathetic.

Oct 20, 2005 - 8:57 am 23. Michael_B:

Banality, studied and premeditated banality, is spot on. And the comparison with Anderson Cooper’s umbrage is laser-like spot on as well.

Similarly, see Ralph Peters via WindsOfChange, excerpt:

“A herd mentality has taken over the editorial boards. Ignoring all evidence to the contrary, columnists write about our inevitable “retreat” from Iraq, declaring that “everyone knows” our policies have no chance of success.

“That isn’t journalism. It’s wishful thinking on the part of those who need Iraq to fail to preserve their credibility.”

Oct 20, 2005 - 11:14 am 24. Anthony (Los Angeles):

Just how many times could Amanpour say Saddam “looked weak and frail?” God forbid she should mention any but teh least crime he’s accused of. I’ve long suspected she’s sympathetic to dictators because they, seeking legitimacy, grant her special access to them, which in turn feeds her ego.

Sort of like CNN as a whole. :/

Oct 20, 2005 - 11:16 am 25. IceCold:

Concerning Christiane and the non-event, non-”scuffle” in the courtroom …. at a point earlier she yelled so loudly at a press officer assisting the reporters in the gallery that people on the other side of the thick bullet-proof glass heard and noticed it.

She also berated a US Marshal who was part of the security in the courthouse, and if she’d done so again (I was told over the radio by the guy in charge of the building security) she’d be immediately evicted and never get back in the place.

And when the non-scuffle happened, she said with considerable emotion “oh, that’s so cruel!”, referring to the efforts of the bailiffs to simply guide Saddam to the exit during a break. Even a few other reporters in the gallery shook their heads or smirked when they heard that.

And he did look a bit thin, but not exactly frail.

I haven’t had time to catch most of the western coverage, but it seemed, oddly enough, that the wire service reporters were being the most reasonable about things, based on their comments in the gallery as things progressed. Though I’d probably be disappointed if I forced myself to look at the wire stories ….

Oct 20, 2005 - 11:44 am 26. zefal:

Please excuse Christine’s behavior she’s(it is a she isn’t it?) been genuflecting for murderous middle-east dictators so long she doesn’t know how to do anything but.

Oct 21, 2005 - 1:48 am

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