Media barred from covering soldiers' return.
Media barred from covering soldiers' return.
Otte Rosenkrantz
May 3, London, Ont. The decision by the Harper government to bar the media, and through them, the public, from the Canadian Forces Base in Trenton, Ontario, where planes carrying the remains of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan arrive, comes at the same time as Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor’s policy to not lower flags on government buildings to half-mast every time a Canadian soldier is killed.
Both decisions echo the attempt in 2003 by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush to keep the reality of the casualties of war from the American people by imposing a publication ban on images of coffins carrying the bodies of American soldiers coming home.
The successful muzzling of the American media grew out of the Americans’ experience in the war in Vietnam where the media had unfettered access to soldiers in the field. The uncensored and often quite gruesome images of the death war invariably brings to combatants and civilians alike shocked an American population out of its complacency, and did much to stir up the massive anti-war protests across the country that eventually forced President Nixon to reconsider his country’s role in Vietnam, and led to the ignominious retreat from Saigon in April, 1975.
Both the American government and military learned that lesson very well. Never again would the media have that kind of access to things military. In subsequent overseas military adventures the media would be strictly controlled and censored. This was especially evident in the first and second wars on Iraq where access was granted only to members of the media either selected from a carefully chosen pool of journalists or “embedded” with specific military units, and only censored reports from those unit reporters were released to the public.
The images from the wars in Iraq seen on American and, in most cases Canadian, television, were “sanitized” to remove images of dead or wounded US soldiers, and to make sure that no images of the almost 2400 flag-draped caskets that have arrived at Andrew’s Air Force Base near Washington, D.C. so far are seen by the public at large.
For the most part, the American media has acquiesced to these restrictions on their reporting. No such restrictions, however, have been applied to the images of dead Iraqi soldiers, of which there have been some 35,000 to date, although it is impossible to get an exact count. Seeing “the enemy’s” dead will not, apparently, shock the delicate sensibilities of the American public. Seeing dead American soldiers, however, either on the battle field, or coming home in caskets, is, so the reasoning goes, bad for national morale, and might undermine the war effort – Vietnam has not been forgotten.
Now that Canada is at war in Afghanistan, with a Canadian population about evenly divided on the whether or not we should be there as combatants, Harper’s Conservative government has decided to follow the unfortunate example set by the Americans by restricting media access, and by refusing to recognize the death of Canadian combatants by lowering the Canadian flag on government buildings every time a soldier is killed.
The attempt by the Harper government to screen the Canadian public from the realities of war is both transparent and clumsy, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor’s protestations about trying to protect the families of the dead soldiers “during this emotional time” notwithstanding. And the policy is not nationally accepted. Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, for instance, says that flags at the Alberta legislature will be lowered to half-mast as an act of respect for fallen soldiers on the day of the funeral.
The fact is that Canada is a country at war, and as long as that state of affairs continues, there will be casualties. To imagine that Canadians don’t know about the grim realities of war, or somehow need to be sheltered from those realities, is patronizing at best, and state-sponsored censorship at worst. Canadians are surely mature enough to make up their own minds about the value of this war, and the price the country is willing to pay for being part of it.
Fifteen Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have died so far. Their deaths were not gentle; their deaths should not be ignored or hidden. Respect should be paid, and the Canadian public should be encouraged to pay attention.
Otte Rosenkrantz
May 3, London, Ont. The decision by the Harper government to bar the media, and through them, the public, from the Canadian Forces Base in Trenton, Ontario, where planes carrying the remains of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan arrive, comes at the same time as Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor’s policy to not lower flags on government buildings to half-mast every time a Canadian soldier is killed.
Both decisions echo the attempt in 2003 by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush to keep the reality of the casualties of war from the American people by imposing a publication ban on images of coffins carrying the bodies of American soldiers coming home.
The successful muzzling of the American media grew out of the Americans’ experience in the war in Vietnam where the media had unfettered access to soldiers in the field. The uncensored and often quite gruesome images of the death war invariably brings to combatants and civilians alike shocked an American population out of its complacency, and did much to stir up the massive anti-war protests across the country that eventually forced President Nixon to reconsider his country’s role in Vietnam, and led to the ignominious retreat from Saigon in April, 1975.
Both the American government and military learned that lesson very well. Never again would the media have that kind of access to things military. In subsequent overseas military adventures the media would be strictly controlled and censored. This was especially evident in the first and second wars on Iraq where access was granted only to members of the media either selected from a carefully chosen pool of journalists or “embedded” with specific military units, and only censored reports from those unit reporters were released to the public.
The images from the wars in Iraq seen on American and, in most cases Canadian, television, were “sanitized” to remove images of dead or wounded US soldiers, and to make sure that no images of the almost 2400 flag-draped caskets that have arrived at Andrew’s Air Force Base near Washington, D.C. so far are seen by the public at large.
For the most part, the American media has acquiesced to these restrictions on their reporting. No such restrictions, however, have been applied to the images of dead Iraqi soldiers, of which there have been some 35,000 to date, although it is impossible to get an exact count. Seeing “the enemy’s” dead will not, apparently, shock the delicate sensibilities of the American public. Seeing dead American soldiers, however, either on the battle field, or coming home in caskets, is, so the reasoning goes, bad for national morale, and might undermine the war effort – Vietnam has not been forgotten.
Now that Canada is at war in Afghanistan, with a Canadian population about evenly divided on the whether or not we should be there as combatants, Harper’s Conservative government has decided to follow the unfortunate example set by the Americans by restricting media access, and by refusing to recognize the death of Canadian combatants by lowering the Canadian flag on government buildings every time a soldier is killed.
The attempt by the Harper government to screen the Canadian public from the realities of war is both transparent and clumsy, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor’s protestations about trying to protect the families of the dead soldiers “during this emotional time” notwithstanding. And the policy is not nationally accepted. Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, for instance, says that flags at the Alberta legislature will be lowered to half-mast as an act of respect for fallen soldiers on the day of the funeral.
The fact is that Canada is a country at war, and as long as that state of affairs continues, there will be casualties. To imagine that Canadians don’t know about the grim realities of war, or somehow need to be sheltered from those realities, is patronizing at best, and state-sponsored censorship at worst. Canadians are surely mature enough to make up their own minds about the value of this war, and the price the country is willing to pay for being part of it.
Fifteen Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have died so far. Their deaths were not gentle; their deaths should not be ignored or hidden. Respect should be paid, and the Canadian public should be encouraged to pay attention.
posted by Millie Beagle at 2:42 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home