VOICES
American
Idol
The
press finds the war's true meaning
By
Christopher Hanson
According to prewar news
coverage, Gulf War II was about smashing an al Qaeda stronghold,
capturing weapons of mass destruction, and liberating a subjugated
people. Judging by what received the greatest media attention,
however, the war turned out to be as much as anything about the
rescue of POW Jessica Lynch, the spunky but delicate, God-fearing
West Virginian who braved bullets to be able to afford her dreams
of college and kindergarten teaching.
Central casting could hardly have contrived a better
symbol of wholesome small-town values and American purity. "For
many Americans . . . the face of Gulf War II will forever be the
smiling young woman under the camo-colored Army cap against the
background of an American flag," the Cleveland Plain Dealer
reported, without evident irony, in the lead sentence of an April
13 front-page news article.
Providing reporters with colorful details and dramatic
night-scope footage, Central Command in Qatar helped turn Private
Lynch’s fate into a block-buster suspense story with a happy
ending. Other informants added juicy details, many first reported
in The Washington Post. According to that paper’s widely
quoted narrative, Lynch, nineteen, fought desperately, shot enemy
soldiers, and was badly wounded when the Iraqis captured her on
March 23. In a prison hospital, she was beaten sadistically by
an Iraqi goon — then snatched from her bed in a daring April
1 commando raid.
As the Lynch rescue story broke, the press was preoccupied with
such questions as, Where is Saddam? Where are his weapons of mass
destruction? And why didn’t our generals anticipate guerrilla-style
Iraqi attacks? But Jessica, the plucky supply clerk, drew attention
away from those disturbing matters as news media instantly elevated
her to the status of cultural icon. Lynch was so much in demand
that CBS News raised the prospect of book, movie, and TV deals
with other Viacom divisions if only she would talk on camera.
There was even a semiotic analysis on The New York Times op-ed
page by an American studies professor, arguing that Lynch’s
saga descends in part from an account by Hannah Dunston —
a Haverhill, Massachusetts, captive who scalped ten Abenaki Indians
in 1697.
In the fourteen days after her rescue, Lynch drew
919 references in major papers, according to a Nexis search. In
that same period, General Tommy Franks, who ran the war, got 639
references, Vice President Dick Cheney 549, Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz 389. She stood with the giants.
Now that we have some distance, it’s worth
considering why her emotional saga drew so much ink and air and
what its impact was. The Jessica legend made troubling times more
encompassable at the expense of skeptical reporting and clear
thinking. It also reinforced some antiquated ideas about military
women.
Understanding the Jessica frenzy inevitably sends
us back to September 11, 2001. Since that day’s terrorist
attacks, the public, the press, and our national leadership have
struggled mightily to make sense of a very disquieting world.
The Bush administration wasted no time after 9/11 in publicly
linking the terror threat with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. By
one theory, the White House’s impulse — perhaps unconscious
— was to provide the public, the press, and even itself with
a simpler, less disturbing, more emotionally satisfying reality
in which evil-doers can be vanquished. The Iraq army, after all,
would not be hard to find or to wipe out.
But when the United States finally launched its
invasion, that story line did not unfold neatly. Neither a link
between Saddam and Osama bin Laden nor Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
materialized. Although the Pentagon drummed the idea that our
mission was to liberate the Iraqi people, many Iraqis saw our
troops as unwelcome.
But before doubts could fester, the Lynch rescue story broke.
It was a p.r. windfall for the military, the first successful
rescue of a U.S. POW behind enemy lines since World War II. The
announcement was a godsend to the press corps, which loves "firsts,"
lives for "people" stories, and goes crazy over any
rescue. Reporters at last could deliver the straightforward, emotionally
fulfilling saga of good beating evil that America expects.
Never mind that Lynch was unavailable for comment
(and reported to have amnesia). Never mind that reporters would
have to paper over big holes to deliver a coherent narrative.
Lynch’s capture. The Washington Post
reported that Lynch was shot during the ambush but dealt death
in return, fighting to the last bullet in her M-16 (April 3, page
A1). Headlined she was fighting to the death, the anonymously
sourced story read like a Hollywood script and in fact bore an
uncanny resemblance to a climactic scene in the Gulf War I film,
Courage Under Fire. Unable to confirm the story, major news outlets
nonetheless picked it up as a crucial piece of the narrative.
But ten weeks later, the Post acknowledged that the "waiflike"
Lynch did not fight to the death and might not even have fired
her M-16, which jammed. Her "bone crushing" injuries
were from a Humvee crash, and Iraqi doctors saved her life. The
June 17 A1 article begins as a feature updating Lynch’s condition.
Only after the jump does it reveal itself to be the journalistic
equivalent of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.
Lynch’s mistreatment. In a separate
April 4, page-one article, The Washington Post took at face value
the account of a self-promoting Iraqi lawyer named Mohammed, who
"risked all" to help rescue Lynch after seeing a security
thug dressed in black slapping and backhanding her as she lay
helpless in her hospital bed. The lawyer and his wife, a nurse
at the hospital, helped U.S. forces plan the rescue. Again, other
news outlets picked up the story. And again, the Post developed
late-breaking doubts. In its June 17 piece, the paper quoted Iraqi
doctors as denying Lynch had been slapped or that Mohammed’s
wife had worked at the hospital. By then, the Samaritan had political
asylum and a fat book contract.
Lynch’s liberation. Relying on military
sources, the press reported a dangerous operation involving a
diversionary firefight as Task Force 20 swooped down, kicked in
doors, set off stun grenades, and shackled Iraqis. The unit’s
mission had been to seize weapons of mass destruction. At least
they seized Jessica.
But on May 15, a revisionist BBC report aired interviews
with Iraqi doctors who said no Iraqi troops had been in the hospital
during the raid and they had been trying for days to release Lynch
to U.S. Marines. NBC News, Time, the Chicago Tribune, and other
American outlets began raising questions as well.
Like the Post, they certainly took their time. Journalists are
disinclined to puncture "feel good" stories, especially
those that they themselves have sent aloft.
Beyond questions of accuracy, the press’s Lynch
binge created two problems. First, it helped emotionalize and
confuse the question of why we are in Iraq. Given the torrent
of celebratory coverage when she was rescued, and the patriotic
rejoicing this inspired at home, her liberation almost seemed
to affirm the intervention itself. Yes, she needed her freedom
only because Americans were in Iraq in the first place. And yes,
the original rationales for this adventure were increasingly open
to doubt. But why rain on the homecoming parade?
Second, this coverage Lynched the image of the American
woman in uniform, perpetuating a pattern of distorted reporting
set out in these pages last year (See "Women Warriors,"
cjr, May/June 2002). As in Gulf War I, when two female America
POWs drew massive, disproportionate coverage, news media bombarded
the audience with a tale of female vulnerability in 2003. Lynch
was described hiding under the sheets as her rescuers burst in,
clinging to a military doctor’s hand and pleading, "Don’t
let anybody leave me."
Such a heavy focus on one vulnerable woman can only have warped
the overall picture. Male U.S. soldiers also were captured, but
their plight and liberation got much less attention. Meanwhile,
thousands of other American women were making history performing
bravely under fire in jobs that were once off limits. The public
heard less about them than about the broken bones of Jessica Lynch,
damsel in distress. Her dramatic rescue was very likely the one
memory most Americans had carried away from the war with Iraq.
How awkward to have to tell them she was a truck crash victim
saved by the enemy and not actually rescued by the same commando
unit that did not actually find those elusive weapons of mass
destruction. But that’s what happens when you write first
and ask questions later.
