Focus on the Family

I'm sure you've heard by now that there are reports that the two missing soldier's bodies have been found. A statement by General Caldwell that the military is not confirming this news, and a thinly veiled explanation that the families deserve the dignity and respect of receiving this news from the Armed Services and not from the media is, of course, spitting in the wind. (Correction: while I was working on this post the General confirmed the news.)

I missed the Today Show interview with one of the soldier's uncles: one hopes he was brought on because the news was out, not brought on and given the news, but you never know.

You can't imagine what this family is going through, will go through, but you certainly can imagine -- since we've been through it all before -- how the media will seek to use their grief if at all possible.

And here, in the very first interview with the very first family member, we see precisely the problem with making the families of hostages the focus of the coverage. (The media presumed these troops to be hostages, whether they were or not, and so the hostage template is what is being applied.)

This man is right now very, very angry. You can understand that, of course: the military failed to bring his nephew home, and whether or not that anger is reasonable we can all determine in the days and weeks to come, right now, his nephew is gone, and he's damn well going to be angry at somebody.

What he's demanding should have been done is what every family member of every hostage always wants done: that the government do anything and everything to bring their loved one home. You can't blame them because, if you're going to be honest, you know that if it were ever one of yours you'd be screaming even more loudly (and more publicly -- this family has been quiet until now.) But this man is on a crusade -- it isn't even 9:30 and he's just been live on MSNBC making the same arguments, which suggests to me, he'll soon be everywhere. Pay $100M when soldiers are taken he says -- after all, it's only money. (By the way, I don't at all blame him for giving multiple interviews. You watch this: Producers can smell him coming. They'll see his grief is manifesting in anger, recognize he'll take any platform, and by God, if the man wants to speak, they're going to give him that chance!)

But that's why we don't let family members of hostages set policy, and that's why it's extremely irresponsible, when emotions are running high, for the media to make the family the focus.

Because, damn, that sounds good, what he's saying -- after all, it is only money, right?

Wrong.

Pay those kinds of sums, and you pretty quickly put a big, fat, target on the back of every one of those kids' backs. As I've noted before, we have some evidence for this in today's Iraq. And there's no reason to believe we'd get them all back alive just because we paid, by the way.

Trading Iraqi detainees is, if possible, an even worse idea. Aside from convincing these groups that the one condition they've typically bandied about on hostage videos when they've threatened to behead people might now be actually within their grasp (except that they've often asked for numbers to be released that were just beyond discussion) we're trying to stand up a soverign government. Telling groups holding hostages that we'll trade detainees under Iraqi control that the United States will trade those prisoners for American troops would be an invaluable propaganda victory for these groups -- because it would serve as proof for them that the government of Iraq really was a sham, that it had no real power of its own but simply did what we told it to do.

There is a reason it has been the policy of administration after administration, regardless of party, never to negotiate with terrorists. The press wants the families involved because it's great TV, but the families, by definition, will see nothing as more important than the lives of their loved ones. The government has to see beyond the lives of a particular set of hostages. The best example of how all this can work is still Bruce Hoffman's analysis of the coverage of the hijacking of TWA Flight 847. By the way, Hoffman has finally, finally updated that book, and the update is superb: it's a genuine update, not a slapped on new intro but so much new material that the book is almost twice as long, and -- bonus -- the new edition is also in paperback. It's actually cheaper than the first edition. But the new edition has tons of great new material about the media -- which you'd expect -- and therefore the 847 section has been cut down a bit, so if that's what you're interested in, check out the older version. (But look at that in the library, buy the new edition!)

One last thing, when you hear it said, as I just did, that the "families of the dead soldiers are saying there wasn't a plan" keep in mind what the uncle is saying is there wasn't a plan for when a soldier was kidnapped. It's a relatively narrow argument. Of course, first, we still don't know that's what happened -- that's what this group is claiming what happened -- we need to wait for autopsies. (Or at least for a bit more information to be released, it sounds like.) And second, it sure looked like a plan to me. It isn't the plan this uncle wanted, but that's a very different argument, isn't it? He's upset because he thinks the money offered for tips and so forth was too low, but that isn't the same thing as evidence the military didn't have a plan for what to do when it became clear they had personnel missing.

8,000 troops swarmed into that area.

Sometimes plans don't work, and that's tragic. Now, maybe that's because your plan isn't good enough. And maybe that's because what you're trying to do is damn hard. That's a question that needs to be asked, to be sure, but we don't come to conclusions because a grief-striken family member makes an assertion that something is so.

Comments

[Ron Hardin]

The producers would give no coverage if the TV audience was male, and behave differently.

Important to get the dynamics right in what they play up and what they don't.

The hostage template is for women. Men are mostly repulsed by it.

Once the template puts the story out, politicians pander to the same audience, showing that they care as much as the most deranged soap opera addict.

The story stays around until everybody is sick of it, which is a very long time.