A list is just a series of items. They’re usually mundane and include chores or groceries. Lists tend to be so unexciting that it’s rarely used as a journalistic medium. Interviews, profiles, first-person accounts, and stories occupy most of the time within the binding of magazines, on flashing television screens, and inked on newspapers.
There’s one flaw with the media, however in that it is open to bias. Even the most fairly and accurately covered news story has a slant. The writer must choose words that have a positive or negative connotation, despite their yearnings not to skew the truth. It is interesting that the never-used list is void of these problems because it’s just a simple representation of the truth.
After a year into the war with Iraq, Ted Koppel and Nightline decided to alter their traditional stories to list the 721 military men and women who died while serving in Iraq. Nightline didn’t make up the names or the fact that these people died while the country is at war in Iraq. Koppel explained in the New York Daily News, “My first reaction was I didn't want it to be seen in any fashion as a political gesture.”
Despite these facts, the broadcast met severe attempts of censorship. In yet another example of the power exerted by corporate media, Sinclair Broadcast Group preempted the Nightline broadcast. In an official statement they explain of the list, “The action appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.” The group owns eight ABC affiliates leaving markets around the country without the opportunity to hear the names of fallen soldiers.
Some conservative talk show hosts described the list as anti-war propaganda. The funny thing about the list, without any other information besides the names, is that it forces people to form their own opinions without being swayed from the biases of the media.
Perhaps these people suggest the reading of names is anti-war because they agree that a tragic amount of lives have been lost due to inept leaders. Unfortunately these deaths are the truth. As a famous quote by writer Flannery O’Connor describes, “Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” Sinclair censored the broadcast not because it was politically motivated, but instead they were unable to stomach the truth.
In Philadelphia the list of names wasn’t censored. Busy with my life, I had forgotten about the broadcast until midnight, about 600 names through the broadcast. Luckily, I turned my radio to where the televised frequency meets that of the FM dial.
It was then driving home on the dimly lit streets that I heard real names. There was no liberal or conservative media making up stories, just names of real people that died in Iraq. Listening on the radio, I didn’t see any of the faces of the dead. Therefore, when I heard the names, I pictured the faces of these men. I pictured their families. I pictured the civilian counterparts in Iraq devastated by similar deaths.
I met someone a couple weeks prior. He was a friend of a friend. His brother had died in Iraq that week. I didn’t know his last name, but when I heard the list, his brother was on it. When I heard the name Matthew Laskowski, I thought of a high school classmate with a similar name. These were real people.
Most Americans like to live in ignorance. They tend not to worry about anything that isn’t immediately in their face. The reading of these names made an effort to bring these events back into the forefront of people’s minds. And as I arrived home and turned off the car engine, I kept the radio on. You can censor the media, but there is no denying that the list of 721 causalities sadly keeps growing.
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Copyright 2004, Kevin Semanick