Media Bias - The Seattle Times Is At It Again

As I’ve said many times before, most people get their news and form their opinions based on newspaper headlines because they are either too busy or too lazy to read the articles. Because of this phenomenon, the people who create headlines can greatly influence public opinion.

Case in point:

Today’s Seattle Times has a front-page article about the execution of Saddam Hussein that once again illustrates the paper’s bias. The headline for this article is:

“Saddam defiant to the very end”

The sub-headline is:

“‘I am not afraid. I have chosen this path.’ Standing at the gallows with a noose around his neck, the former dictator comes face to face with today’s Iraq.”

Regardless of what the article says, the headline has created two images in the reader’s mind:

1) An image of a strong, heroic Saddam Hussein.

2) An image that “today’s Iraq” is a nation that puts nooses around people’s necks.

The Seattle Times had a choice when creating the headline. The headline could have been:

“Hussein Executed for Shiite Massacre”

with a sub-headline of

“The end of a dark chapter in Iraq’s history”.

It could have been anything. Yet the Seattle Times chose “Saddam defiant to the very end”.

Also, we know the Seattle Times created their own headline. The article was written by Sudarsan Raghavan of the Washington Post. The headline for the same article in the Washington Post is:

“In Hussein’s Last Minutes, Jeers and a Cry for Calm”

The question readers should ask themselves is, “Why did the Seattle Times choose their particular headline?”

The Largest Case of Arrested Development In History

I think it’s a common adolescent experience to be idealistic. At some age, we become aware of the broader world around us, with its many beauties - offset by the ugliness of its cruel realities. Shocked, we wonder, “Why does the world have to be like this? Why can’t we all just get along?”

We then imagine a world where everyone gets along - where we sit together around a campfire and sing songs about peace, love and understanding. All we have to do is talk to the other guy and everything will be all right. Right?

Even I experienced this idealism. Yes, me, the lifelong Republican. I came of age during the Reagan years, when tensions with the Soviet Union were high and there was a constant threat of sudden nuclear holocaust. In my teenage mind, I became convinced that if I could just talk to Leonid Brezhnev, I could persuade him to disarm. After all, didn’t the Russians love their children too?

But then I grew up.

I realized that there was a power struggle going on in the world. It wasn’t primarily a physical struggle, but an ideological one.

One side was led by the United States. Our side believed in the power of the individual. The state existed to serve the people.

The other side was led by the Soviet Union. It believed in the power of the state. The people existed to serve the state.

The Cold War, with its occasional hot outbreaks, was the physical manifestation of this ideological struggle.

Today, the teenagers of the 1960s are in positions of power. The problem is, the hippie generation never grew up and out of their adolescent idealism. They still look at the world with the view of high-school kids – it revolves around them, they know all the answers, and anyone in positions of power (except them) is an idiot. We can all still get along. All we have to do is sit down, talk, smoke a few joints, and sing some Bob Dylan songs.

Now in their fifties and sixties, the hippie generation still can’t let go of their glory days “fighting the man” and protesting the Vietnam War. (They have however, faced with the irony of their age, revised their famous slogan from “don’t trust anyone over the age of thirty” to “don’t trust anyone who’s a Republican or Christian.”)

For them, the war in Iraq was a godsend. Here was the chance to show us they still had it. They still mattered. They were hip (or at least had hip replacements). They had the chance to do what many of us dream of doing – relive the best years of their lives. So they took to the streets, chanting, marching, carrying signs, making peace signs. They were “fighting the man” again and it felt good!

But what we’re witnessing today, in the rantings of the anti-war crowd, isn’t the rebirth of the hippie generation. Instead, it is the largest case of arrested development ever seen.

Maybe it’s time for them to grow up, let go of their childhood, and take on the tough responsibilities that come with being an adult.

Maybe Osama’s Right About One Thing

Osama bin Laden has a habit of telling the West what’s wrong with us. One of his recurring accusations is that we are an immoral civilization.

In his November 24, 2002 “Letter to the American People”, Osama states, “You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom.”

I think Osama’s a terrorist murderer who needs to be hunted down, but I have to admit he has a point–and nowhere has it been made more clear to me than in an advertisement in today’s Seattle Times for “Bodies-the Exhibition”.

In case you haven’t heard of it, “Bodies-the Exhibition” is a traveling show that displays actual human bodies, preserved via a process called “plastination” which replaces human tissues and fat with polymers. The bodies are skinned, which displays the underlying muscles, fat and tissue. It might seem the exhibition could be educational from a scientific standpoint, except for two things:

1) The bodies are unidentified or unclaimed corpses from China. None of the people whose bodies are now on display gave their consent.

2) The show is being marketed like an art exhibit. The bodies are displayed in different poses, such as kicking a soccer ball, playing basketball, and even conducting an orchestra.

It was bad enough when Damien Hirst created a sensation with his prize-winning art showing dead animals in formaldehyde, but this is far worse. The bar has been raised. What’s next - live murders while art connoisseurs watch “the cutting edge of performance art”?

When the exhibition of human corpses is seen as art, it is a sign of an ill civilization.

Further reading:
“Cadaver Exhibition Draws Crowds, Controversy in Florida”, John Roach, National Geographic, August 29, 2005

”Who is Running Man?”, Kevin Graham and Bill Duryea, St. Petersburg Times, July 28, 2005