Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Imagery And Atrocity: The Role Of News And Photos In War

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Imagery And Atrocity: The Role Of News And Photos In War

    IMAGERY AND ATROCITY: THE ROLE OF NEWS AND PHOTOS IN WAR

    The Atlantic
    http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/imagery-and-atrocity-the-role-of-news-and-photos-in-war/255275/
    March 30 2012

    Technology is changing the 150-year-old relationship between a war
    and the images it produces

    Last week, I was fortunate to attend a workshop at the U.S. Holocaust
    Memorial Museum, "Power of Witness: The Use of Technology in Preventing
    Mass Atrocities." Among the topics discussed were the current and
    potential use of journalists, victims' reporting, satellites, aircraft,
    and drones (presented by myself) to reveal to the outside world what
    is happening on the ground. It was remarkable to hear from a wide
    range of dedicated people who utilize innovative technologies and
    collaborative arrangements to document prospective war crimes for
    dissemination to the media, people in the target country, foreign
    leaders, criminal tribunals, the global public, and others.

    Of course, harnessing the power of witness is not a new endeavor. As
    Martha Finnemore notes in her book, The Purpose of Intervention:
    Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force, the domestic debate
    surrounding intervention for humanitarian purposes is highly
    contested. Finnemore describes the influence of the media to "arouse
    public opinion and influence policy...by increasing exposure and
    creating familiarity where little existed previously."

    Over the past 150 years, intervention proponents have increasingly
    relied on vivid and graphic imagery from the target country to rally
    support to their cause--including U.S. policymakers, for better or for
    worse. In 1995, U.S. ambassador to the UN Madeline Albright fought to
    declassify three CIA satellite photographs of Srebrenica in order to
    show them to a closed session of the UN Security Council. Of course,
    such imagery is subject to interpretation and exploitation by internal
    opposition groups, exiles, or foreign governments to justify military
    interventions. On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell
    briefed the UN Security Council on "Iraq: Failure to Disarm," which
    included photographs (remember the "mobile biological warfare agent
    production plants?") and audio clips that purportedly confirmed the
    existence of Iraq's WMD program, which did not exist.

    Consider this brief survey of how powerful imagery emerged from foreign
    conflicts or major wars, and the impact it had on the homefront,
    policymakers, or the international community.

    Crimean War (1853-1856)

    The Crimean War is considered to be the first media war, in which
    the telegraph and camera enabled news and images from battles to
    be transmitted to the homefront in hours instead of weeks. For the
    first time, the British public saw photographs of the front line that
    brought far-off battlefields to life.

    Armenian massacres (1915-1916)

    The Ottoman Turks deported hundreds of thousands--some argue more
    than a million--of Armenians to the desert of Syria. Western news
    organizations captured the unfolding events, as many Armenians died
    en route from starvation or were killed by Ottoman forces. Today, most
    scholars and historians consider this a clear act of genocide, although
    the Turkish government strongly rejects the claim and resists the
    use of the word by any government to describe the Armenian mass deaths.

    New York Times, December 15, 1915

    Times of London, 1915

    World War II (1939-1945)

    World War II was a watershed in the global understanding of atrocities
    and genocide (a term coined in 1943 by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin,
    which combined the Greek prefix genos, meaning family or race, and
    the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing), largely due to the horrific
    images that emerged from concentration camps in Europe after the
    arrival of Allied soldiers. The construction of a new global human
    rights regime was a direct response to the Nazis' Final Solution, in
    the hopes that signatories to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention
    and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide would ensure that the five
    specific acts that comprise genocide wouldn't happen again:

    (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or
    mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on
    the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
    destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to
    prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children
    of the group to another group.

    Vietnam War (1960-1975)

    The Vietnam War was the first fully televised war, in which the
    American public received regular updates on the conflict through
    photographs and videos. (For just one example, see the real-time CBS
    News video that captured an Army platoon under fire from mortars and
    sniper.) Photojournalism played a large role in shaping public opinion
    on the war, particularly through its more graphic images. Now-infamous
    images, such as the photograph by Eddie Adams of a general shooting an
    unidentified man in the head, defied the U.S. government's portrayal
    of the war effort fueled the Vietnam protest movement in the United
    States.

    This photo ran on front page of the New York Times under the headline
    "Street Clashes Go On in Vietnam, Foe Still Holds Parts of Cities;
    Johnson Pledges 'Never to Yield.'"

    Cambodian genocide (1975-1979)

    The Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot carried out a widespread
    and systematic genocide, killing approximately 1.7 million people,
    or roughly 20 percent of the population. In its policy of internal
    "purification," the regime deported the urban population to the
    countryside where brutal labor conditions, disease, and starvation
    killed hundreds of thousands. The government also targeted and executed
    political groups and suspected opponents or rivals.

    The killing ended when the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia in January
    1979; the first images of the atrocities committed were taken by
    Vietnamese soldiers.

    Images of victims from the Tuol Sleng Prison, also known as the "S-21"
    interrogation and extermination center. In total, there are over five
    thousand photographs of prisoners at the facility; the vast majority
    of victims are unknown.

    The exhumation of the Choeung Ek killing fields in 1980 offered some
    of the first concrete evidence of the atrocities committed by the
    Khmer Rouge regime (Yale Archives/Ben Kiernan).

    Bosnian War (1992-1995)

    In August 1992, a number of Western newspapers, including Newsweek
    and Time Magazine, called for intervention by publishing images as
    proof of a "new Holocaust" occurring in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over
    the course of the conflict, an estimated 200,000 Muslims were killed
    by Bosnian Serb forces.

    Rwandan genocide (April-June 1994)

    Over three months, Rwanda witnessed an ethnic cleansing campaign that
    killed an estimated 800,000 people, largely carried out by the Hutu
    majority against the Tutsi minority (although moderate Hutus were
    targeted as well). The international community reeled at the speed
    and scale of the genocide, which defied all conventional norms of
    conflict prevention and early warning.

    Horrific images emerged from Rwanda over the course of the genocide
    as the world stood paralyzed.

    Kyrgyzstan (June 2010)

    On June 10, 2010, violence erupted in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, between ethnic
    Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities. Over the next four days, it is estimated
    that between 500 and 2,000 people were killed as well as over 400,000
    displaced. Satellite images (as seen below) tracked and mapped the
    conflict as it escalated. In particular, such images captured "SOS"
    signs written on roadways and buildings.

    Map of "SOS" signs throughout Osh (© 2010 Digital Globe).

    For most of recent history, news and images of conflicts and atrocities
    reaching the outside world were dependent on reporters, photographers,
    and a small number of activists on the ground. However, technology
    and social media such as camera phones, blogs, YouTube, Facebook,
    and Twitter have permanently and dramatically altered the way the
    world communicates and receives news.

    During the so-called "Green Revolution" in Iran in 2009, the brutal
    suppression of non-violent protesters by the regime was extensively
    documented by ordinary people organizing demonstrations and sending
    updates, photos, and videos on Twitter. An excellent report by the
    RAND Corporation describes the power of social media as a particularly
    effective tool to "generate political opposition, shape political
    discourse, and facilitate action in the face of a powerful regime"
    in Iran and beyond.

    Today, news reports on the protracted conflict in Syria rely heavily on
    reports from citizens on the ground via Skype, videos taken on phones
    uploaded to YouTube, and updates posted on Facebook. According to
    one estimate, 80 percent of the videos of the Syrian conflict that
    have been broadcasted by mainstream news organizations were shot
    by amateur videographers. In addition, unmanned U.S. intelligence
    drones have flown over Syria, collecting information and monitoring
    the Syrian military's movements. Due to technology and social media,
    there is unequivocal evidence of atrocities committed, but still
    amost no on-the-ground access for UN or human rights investigators
    to better verify the accounts.

    In 2009, former British prime minister Gordon Brown reflected on the
    emerging power of social media: "You cannot have Rwanda again because
    information would come out far more quickly about what is actually
    going on and the public opinion would grow to the point where action
    would need to be taken." While we hope that will be the case, it is
    the responsibility of the international community to use the power of
    technology to better inform and shape its decision-making process in
    order to take actions commensurate with the political will, available
    resources, and potential to make a real impact.

    This article originally appeared at CFR.org, an Atlantic partner site.

Working...
X