NIGHTLINE GETS SENTIMENTAL

They're afraid that their reporting on the casualties in Iraq can sometimes seem as if it's "just about numbers." So . . . what to do . . . what to do. Lets see: do a better job of reporting the war? Make sure stories about Americans killed in Iraq are never so grotesquely incomplete again, but honor them by putting their deaths in full context and giving people an actual framework for understanding how they died?

Nah. That would be hard and take time and money and effort and stuff.

Lets just go for one big bang of cheesy sentimentality.

Oh, but rest assured, "There is no political statement intended."

Even less plausible: with sweeps week starting Thursday, Nightlines' Executive Producer says: "You may not believe this, but until you said this, I had no idea when sweeps start. At 'Nightline,' as a daily news broadcast, we usually do not do any special projects for sweeps." Don't do them when you have your special projects bumped by spot news, you mean. Every news show has special projects they hope to work in during sweeps period and don't tell me for a second this guy didn't know when it started.

Update: Glenn Reynolds is even more incredulous than I am about their sweeps week evasion. And actually, if you look at the real money graf, the Post article he links to is even more incredulous than that. Their TV columniist writes:

In its announcement yesterday, ABC News said the program was its way of paying tribute to the dead. And "Nightline" executive producer Leroy Sievers called it the program's way to "remind our viewers -- whether they agree with the war or not -- that beyond the casualty numbers, these men and women are serving in Iraq in our names, and that those who have been killed have names and faces."

That is good to know because otherwise we might be left thinking that Friday's broadcast, which ABC will simulcast on its Jumbotron in New York's Times Square, is a cheap, content-free stunt designed to tug at our heartstrings and bag a big number on the second night of the May ratings race.

You go, girl.

Update: And then there was the New York Times. On the one hand, they point out that the echo of a famous Life magazine issue is not accidental -- other coverage, you'll note, didn't mention that.

And yet, somehow, not a whisper of the word sweeps week, not even a hint. Well, you can understand why. They needed the time to emphasize the point about that famous issue of Life.

Although that issue is now remembered as a crystallizing moment for opposition to the Vietnam war, Mr. Sievers denied the program carried any political message. "There is no intended political statement," Mr. Sievers said. "If that was the intention, we would spell it out."

But William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, said the message was clear to him. "This is a statement with a capital S, and it's a stupid statement," he said. The program's conceit, he added, was a selective one, chosen to emphasize the controversy over the war in Iraq while neglecting to mention the casualties in Afghanistan or those killed by terrorists.

Mr. Koppel did not dispute that "Nightline" is looking for impact. "You can read the headlines every day - two soldiers killed, three Marines killed - and it doesn't have the same impact as seeing one page of these photos," he said. "All of a sudden you look at all those young people and it really hits you."

But he said "Nightline" was not taking political sides. "If the motivation to go to war is good, is justifiable," he said, "then the cost, whether it is 500, or 5,000, or 50,000, is something people will accept. Should the motivation not be good, then 5 is too many."

Kristol's point, also, is hard to dispute. If this is to memoralize and to honor only -- when will the night be scheduled for the Afghanistan tribute?

As to people being willing to accept casualties in a cause they think just, there's good truth to that. But they also have to believe the casualties serve a purpose, that there is meaning there. And when those casualties are ripped out of context in this way, determining that is impossible.

I'll say it again: if Mr. Koppel and the producers of Nightline want to truly honor the fallen, they wil stop reporting "two soldiers killed, three Marines killed" and, when one is lost, tell us their story. In the end, our stories are what define us. Did they fight bravely, and well? were they cut down accomplishing something towards the war goals? Or were they ambushed, taken from us by an enemy that dared not show its face?

We deserve to know, and they deserve to have their stories known. It is, in the end, the very least they could do. Reading the names and only the names tells us nothing we do not already know -- that they were happy once, and young, and alive, and now they're gone.

We don't need a condescending news anchor making millions of dollars a year to tell us that.

Update: Jeff Jarvis weighs in on the evocation of the famous Life issue.

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[Athena]

Sinclair Stations to Boycott 'Nightline' Tribute

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040430/tv_nm/media_nightline_dc_6