Defacing
Democracy
or WSET—“It’s Not
MY News!”
Written
by Constance Merritt to the
Lynchburg, Virginia News and Advance, August 20, 2007.
The
following essay responds to Lynchburg, Virginia’s local ABC
affiliate's coverage of a MoveOn.org press conference on the cost
of war at home. The press conference and news story appeared on
Thursday August 16th. The initiating story can be found at www.wset.com.
At
noon on Thursday, August 16th a dozen or so concerned citizens of
the city of Lynchburg (and of the world) gathered at City Hall “to
publicize the damage that the massive spending on war in Iraq has
done to the sixth congressional district of Virginia.”
Based on a report “The War at Home: What the Iraq War Has
Cost Virginia’s 6th Congressional District,” commissioned
by the political action group MoveOn.org, the statement the group
issued focused on the $861 million sixth district taxpayers have
shelled out for an un-winnable war that is hurting our communities
and making all of us, not more, but less safe. The group called
on Rep. Bob Goodlatte to vote NO on any future funding of the U.S.
occupation of Iraq and to support legislation that would reallocate
the $861 million in sixth district residents’ tax dollars
to adequately funding domestic priorities such as education, healthcare,
affordable housing, and premium benefits and services for the mean
and women who have valiantly served this country. Further they urged
six district taxpayers “to say loud and clear that, for the
$861 million we are paying out, we want the peace, the security,
and the funding for education programs, healthcare coverage, affordable
housing, and much-needed veteran services that this community and
its returning soldiers deserve.”
The Event Was Not Covered
Perhaps because its City Desk editor was out of the office last
week (at least, that’s what we’d like to think) the
News and Advance failed to cover the story, though columnist Darrell
Laurant filed an article leading up to the event Thursday morning.
Roanoke-based public radio station WVTF was there, and its reporter,
Marie Keane, filed two unimpeachable stories, the first airing that
evening on “All Things Considered,” and the second the
following day on Morning Edition. (In fact, if not for the memory
of my voice speaking out of the radio, I would still be wondering
if perhaps I had issued our statement in Yiddish or Yoruba or Parseltongue
which would then account for the story I am about to unfold). WSET,
Channel 13, on the other hand, also supposedly there, contrived
to miss all of the salient points presented at the press conference:
from the central thesis that the $861 million in sixth district
residents’ tax dollars currently being spent on an un-winnable
civil war in Iraq would be better spent on domestic programs here
at home, to the four-foot laminated $861 million check made out
to “Iraq’s Unwinnable Civil War,” to the almost
six-foot tall black woman acting as the group's spokesperson. You
can read WSET reporter Leigh Forrester’s unprofessional hackwork
at www.wset.com
(trust
me, the newscast was no better).
Unprofessional
hackwork, I know those are strong words, but I stand by them. There
are two separate, but related, problems with Ms. Forrester’s
story, and both shelter under the larger umbrella of censorship.
Black and Disabled Spokesperson
Deemed
Unfit?
Presumably (I discussed the grievances being aired here with a WSET
producer on Friday, but have yet to receive either redress or response),
because the group’s spokesperson, the writer of this editorial,
is black and visually impaired, Ms Forrester did not deem it fit
to include me in her story at all though I was the only speaker
at the press conference and delivered an eight to ten minute speech.
After the formal press conference, after our group had taken the
War at Home report to Rep. Goodlatte’s office, where I presented
it to his able assistant Clarkie Patterson, after the event was
essentially over and we were gathering up the things we’d
brought to City Hall, Ms. Forrester approached my friend Jennifer
Abbassi, a white woman currently passing as human, as I am, as all
who were gathered there are, asking sotto voce in a circumspect
manner if she could speak with her outside. Without me, Ms. Forrester
had no face shot, no sound byte, and this was her last chance to
get it.
During the planning for the press conference I had strongly resisted
assuming the spokesperson role, fearing that what has happened might
happen: prejudice against the particulars of the messenger might
distract, detract from, and ultimately impede the transmission and/or
reception of our vital message. But for those whose hearts are pure
it is often hard to fathom the depths of murkiness and stagnation
still watering so many hearts, so eventually I gave in. Still I
am saddened to learn firsthand that the old clichés are true:
black people chiefly appear on local news as perpetrators or victims
of crime and disabled people are fit for the news only when they
are busy being disabled and can be offered up to viewers as objects
of pity or as superheroes to be praised for simply living. In my
meeting on Friday with WSET producer Christine Price, I offered
her the opportunity to clarify whether Ms. Forrester’s apparent
bigotry accurately reflects WSET editorial policy or a case of one
misguided reporter going astray. I am still waiting to hear, and
I would like to extend the invitation again this time publicly.
Sign of the Times
Before
I headed out on the 1.34 mile trek from my home on Euclid Avenue
to the WSET station on Langhorne, I hand-lettered a sign with the
simple questions: WSET WHOSE NEWS?, and I was surprised to receive
a few affirmations as I made my way down Memorial Avenue / Martin
Luther King Jr. Boulevard, several motorists honking their horns
and one woman leaning out of her car window to yell emphatically
“It’s not my news!” So perhaps, willy-nilly, I
have stumbled up a dialogue our community needs to have especially
as we launch our community-wide dialogue on race and racism.
But I said there are two issues at stake here, huddling under the
umbrella of censorship. The first, as I’ve discussed, asks
who can be seen on the news and answers that question so narrowly
as to deface our community and the democratic principles upon which
our nation rests. The second issue asks what can be seen on the
news and is answered so narrowly and (I hope) thoughtlessly that
there is scant chance that an informed citizenry will be able to
enter into free and open dialogue and effectively bring its will
to bear on issues and policies that affect it most, a capability
upon which the good repair of our democracy depends.
At the risk of stating the obvious, our country is at war. Or, more
precisely, our country, for some years now, has been occupying a
sovereign nation, a nation that never attacked us or offered a creditable
threat to our national security, a nation that is itself, in large
part due to our interference, currently embroiled in a sectarian
civil war. As of 10:00AM on August 20th 2007, 3,701 U.S. soldiers
have been killed in the Iraq war and occupation and 27,409 soldier
injured, to say nothing of the untold traumas, addictions, and strained
and broken familial relationships. Estimates of Iraqi civilians
killed range from 68,470 to 74,900. And if the human costs of this
war are not enough to stagger your heart and move you to ask some
hard questions, then, first, let me say God help and, second, let
me direct your flinty-hearted attention to this war’s $456
billion price tag and its estimated long- term cost of 2.3 trillion.
To that $456 billion, Virginia taxpayers contributed $12.35, $861
million from sixth district residents alone.
A Better Use for $861 Million
According
to the National Priorities Project, for the $861 million we’ve
spent on a sectarian civil war that can’t be won (if you disagree
please put forward first what “winning” the Iraq occupation
would look like and then tell us how the stated objective(s) can
be won — how much more money? how much more time? how many
more soldiers? will a draft be involved?), residents of Virginia’s
sixth district might have had any of a number of things:
·Healthcare coverage for 238,823 adults or ·429,890
children
· Head Start for 119,388 additional kids
· 13,012 new elementary school teachers
· Renewable electricity for 711,109 homes
· 5,622 affordable housing units
And the list goes on.
But somehow none of this — the cost of war in our district
and the tradeoffs we are being forced to make at home — seemed
relevant or newsworthy to Ms. Forrester or the WSET news team. Never
mind that in the same newscast in which the bastardization and trivialization
of our press conference appeared, also ran stories about Roanoke
mayor Nelson Harris’s State of the City address which —
focused on three areas which the mayor feels “need work”
— recreation and environment, culture and arts, and our schools’;
about the re-inspection of two area bridges, “similar in design
to the one that collapsed in Minnesota,” that had been rated
in “poor” condition in an inspection last September;
and about the suicide rate among U.S. Army members being at its
highest in 26 years, a story that WSET did make a feeble attempt
to connect with our press conference, though the only link that
they could manage was that Rep. Goodlatte could offer comment on
neither report.
Schools that need work. Bridges in disrepair. The anguish of having
to choose between good schools and safe bridges. I think we may
have had something relevant to say about that in our little press
conference:
“When I heard how much money our district had spent on this
war,” said one teacher in the Lynchburg City Schools,“I
couldn't believe it. I know how hard it was to get the extra five
million dollars it would take to build a new Sandusky Middle School
as opposed to renovating [the existing school]. I also know that
one of the major concerns was how the city could afford to repair
a crumbling bridge in Rivermont and build a new Sandusky out of
its budget. I felt so guilty pressing for a new school when I knew
that other needs in the city would be neglected if we were to get
a new building. What I want to know now is who feels guilty about
all the schools and bridges in this country that are being neglected
to fund this war?” the teacher concluded.
U.S. Presence in Iraq Counterproductive:
We Are Less Safe
In addition to the cost of the war and the tradeoffs we are being
forced to make at home in order to keep it going, our press conference
highlighted just a few of the ways our presence in Iraq has proved
counterproductive to the stated goal of making Americans safer at
home:
Contrary to promises, we are LESS SAFE here at home since the U.S.
invasion of Iraq: al-Qaeda is more active and dispersed than before
the war; the U.S. presence in Iraq breeds extremist violence and
puts our service people in harm’s way. According to figures
from the Brookings “Iraq Index” and the Institute for
Policy Studies, as of November 2003, the number of resistance fighters
in Iraq was estimated at 5,000; as of March 2007 the estimate is
70,000.
We further provided this pithy analysis of the strategic problems
an invasion of Iraq would likely entail, issued on April
15th, 1994 by Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense in the George
H. W. Bush administration:
Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should
have moved into Baghdad?
CHENEY: No.
Q: Why not?
CHENEY: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad
we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else
with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of
the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were
willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took
down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going
to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and
if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very
easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off — part of it the
Syrians would like to have to the west, part of eastern Iraq the
Iranians would like to claim, fought over it for eight years. In
the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and
join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial
integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire if you go that far and
try to take over Iraq.
The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the
fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had.
But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families,
it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms
of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties
in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead
Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and
I think we got it right. (Video and transcript at
www.tinyrevolution.com)
But
none of this is anything that sixth district Virginians need to
know. Never mind that, like everyone else in the Bush administration,
Gen. Petraeus cant say how long our troops will need to remain in
Iraq, but has said that
“many, many challenges” would not be resolved “in
a year or even two years.” Similar counterinsurgency operations,
he said, citing Britain's experience in Northern Ireland, “have
gone at least nine or 10 years.” He said he and Crocker would
be making “some recommendations on the way ahead” to
Congress, and that it was realistic to assume “some form of
long-term security arrangement” with Iraq. (http://sfgate.com)
Never
mind that Lt. Gen. Doug Lute in an August 10th interview broadcast
on NPR’s “All things Considered,” citing the personal
and professional and broader strategic implications of the high
levels of stress our soldiers and their families are laboring under
as a result of repeated deployments, asserts that:
“I
think it makes sense to certainly consider it [reinstating the draft],
and I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table,
but ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands
for the nation’s security by one means or another.”
(www.npr.org)
Whether
a decades-long military engagement in Iraq, with its concomitant
investment of American lives and treasure, is acceptable to citizens
of Virginia’s sixth district feels like a question it is time
for all of us to ask. Are U.S. objectives and interests in Iraq
such that we are even willing to consider the taking of our sons
and daughters through the apparatus of a military draft? If the
answer to either of these questions is NO, it might be time for
each one of us to stand up and say, “It ends in September.
No more lives. No more money. No more slow, but steady progress
toward the ruin of us all.”
—Constance Merritt
—Lynchburg, VA
Comments
will be reviewed and
posted on a daily basis.
| AUGUST
25, 2007:
The News & Advance's failure to cover the news conference,
and local public radio's disregard for the spokeswoman (Ms.
Merritt) who failed to conform to some expected stereotype,
are shameful derelictions of duty. It should be the job of
local media to tie local
events into the national and global picture, to show concretely
how we are affected locally by decisions and actions on the
larger map.
As well, news reports should be breaking down stereotypes,
not ignoring them or reinforcing them.Why should a spokesperson
for any cause have to be a Barbie doll, or a Ken? Old, young,
black, brown, disabled, most of us are not Barbies.
Inadvertently, i'm sure, Ms. Merritt left out a zero in reporting
the loss of Iraqi civilians. The number of dead is estimated
to be between 600, 000 and one million, another three million
seeking refuge in other countries, and three million displaced
inside Iraq.
It's too great a crime for any news source inside the U.S.
to ignore, or treat half-heartedly.
—Paul Bloom
—San Francisco Bay area |
|
