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Abu Ghraib in US Media

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Abu Ghraib in US Media 1 Turning Torture into a Blameless Blunder: Abu Ghraib in U.S. Media __________________________________ A Thesis Presented to The Honors Tutorial College Ohio University __________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation From the Honors Tutorial College With the Degree of Bachelor of Science in Journalism __________________________________ by Amy E. Rubenstein May 2015 2 This thesis has been approved by The Honors Tutorial College and the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University __________________________________ Dr. Aimee Edmondson Assistant Professor, Journalism Thesis Advisor __________________________________ Dr. Bernhard Debatin Professor, Journalism Director of Studies, Honors Tutorial College __________________________________ Dr. Jeremy Webster Dean, Honors Tutorial College 3 Table of Contents Introduction 4 Chapter 1: Literature Review 10 Chapter 2: Theory and Method 37 Chapter 3: Newspaper Analysis 48 Conclusion and Discussion 82 Appendix A 91 Appendix B 104 Appendix C 111 Appendix D 116 Bibliography 128 4 Introduction Each photograph depicts a new humiliation, a new hooded figure posed naked with his fellow inmates, forced into uncomfortable positions, tortured at the hands of American soldiers.1 In some photos, the men and women assigned to watch over the prison signaled their excitement to the camera through thumbs-up signs and wide grins. Within the walls of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq these scenes played out regularly, documented by soldiers through pictures and video as if they were tourists visiting Ellis Island and posing with Lady Liberty herself. It was in mid 2004 that these sick souvenirs flashed across TV sets throughout the United States on the CBS news program 60 Minutes II. For most Americans, this broadcast was the first time they had seen the images, but it was not the beginning. Five months before, on November 1, 2003, the Associated Press published a lengthy article detailing accounts of American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners on site at Abu Ghraib.2 Almost no media outlet ran the AP story. The news lay dormant for over two months, until there was brief interest shown into the matter when the military announced in January 2004 that they had ordered an investigation into allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq. It wasn’t until April of that year that the infamous pictures surfaced, along with the findings of that investigation, through a document commonly 1 See Appendix A for photos (retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/gall/0,8542,1211872,00.html) 2 Charles Hanley, “Former Iraqi Detainees Tell of Riots, Punishment in the Sun, Good Americans and Pitiless Ones,” Associated Press, November 1, 2003. 5 known as the “Taguba Report,” named after the Major General Antonio Taguba who headed the investigation.3 It is clear from the images that U.S. soldiers committed heinous acts in their command of Abu Ghraib prison. However, in the years since the scandal broke, the response from the United States to the abuse has been questioned. As a country, did we acknowledge these acts of torture or was the scandal given its 15 seconds and then swept under the rug? One of the institutions in the line of fire during this questioning is the American press. In documentaries, journal articles, and books alike, the response of media in the United States to the emergence of this scandal has been criticized for its delay and for the way it seemed to glance over the depth of the issue, as if a glossy finish might make those in charge less responsible.4 This scandal has been one of the most noteworthy in modern American history, just one part in a war so controversial that polls were regularly being taken about the public’s opinion of it.5 This polling continues, even several years after President Barack Obama ordered the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the area in 2011 3 U.S. Army. Taguba, Antonio. Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade. 2004. 1-50. http://www.npr.org/iraq/2004/prison_abuse_report.pdf. 4 For example, see: Mark Major, “Following the Flag: Nationalism, the News Media, and Abu Ghraib,” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, 2008); Tim Jones and Chuck Rowling, “Abuse or Torture? How Social Identity, Strategic Political Communication and Indexing Explain U.S. Media Coverage of Abu Ghraib,” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, 2006); Lance Bennett, Regina Lawrence and Steven Livingston, “None Dare Call It Torture: Indexing and the Limits of Press Independence in the Abu Ghraib Scandal,” Journal of Communication, 56 (2006): 467-485. 5 “Iraq,” Gallup, Inc. http://www.gallup.com/poll/1633/Iraq.aspx#4 6 and even longer from the height of the conflict in that region. From the time President George W. Bush declared war against Iraq with Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003 to the time President Obama announced the removal of U.S. troops from the country, media were entrenched in the story, bringing developments home to where the American public was waiting to understand what this war would mean for the country. As it has been with every modern war since 1980, information can be disseminated immediately through the 24-hour TV news cycle, daily newspaper coverage and constant online updates. Even over a decade ago, when the Iraq War was just starting, the technology allowed for audiences of every kind to know exactly what was happening, in what seemed like the moment it happened. When it concerns war, mass media are the only way for citizens to develop an understanding of the conduct of the effort. The average citizen is so far removed from the goings on of military planning overseas that we need mass media to give us on-the-ground updates in order to understand what is happening. Those at home rely on media to accurately portray what is happening overseas, as well as to gather information from sources who are inaccessible without a press badge or a security clearance. But what about the moments when media fall short of telling the truth? What do we do when media fail to report an account of torture at the hands of U.S. soldiers? How can we respond when journalists, whose profession has for a long time been regarded as the fourth estate, meant to check government and hold it accountable for 7 all its actions, hesitate to speak on such a huge breach of trust and morality? These are the questions that inspired the following research. I was 11 years old when the story about the torture at Abu Ghraib came to light. At the time, I had no real understanding of the gravity of the situation. I certainly couldn’t participate in conversations about the human rights abuses or speak on the legality of what happened in the prison. However, a decade later, as a junior in college, when I viewed a documentary on the scandal in a class about international human rights, I was better equipped to comprehend the severity of these actions.6 The documentary commented at length on the media coverage of the scandal, and all the ways in which it was lacking. It got me thinking about just how bad the coverage was, and how a deeper study of the coverage of the scandal could reveal some truths about the real functioning of journalism in American society. Using Ernest Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory and critical fantasy theme analysis, this research studies a total of 274 relevant articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post to decipher the latent and manifest content of messages, or fantasy themes, that exists within the coverage of a scandal as big as Abu Ghraib. Furthermore, this study attempts to understand how those fantasy themes create a rhetorical vision of the United States, as commentary on the effectiveness of media as a body that demands accountability. The goal is to contribute to the awareness journalists must have in order to effectively serve their purpose to the 6 Taxi to the Dark Side, directed by Alex Gibney (2007; New York: THINKFilm; 2008). 8 public. Exposing the way in which journalists communicate is the first step toward addressing any problems that process might produce. The first chapter of this study focuses on the history of the scandal, as well as the existing body of research into media conduct during the Iraq War in general and in this moment in particular. Using government and military reports among other primary and secondary sources, this paper will first present the facts of the scandal. In this chapter, the researcher will provide a timeline of the events up to the point of the story breaking. This thesis will also present the current body of research, including commentary both on the scandal and on wartime media. The goal of this chapter is for the reader to understand how a moment like this happened, what has been said about it since it was discovered, and how the research that follows fits into this critical analysis and provides a new understanding of media. The second chapter provides an overview of symbolic convergence theory and fantasy theme analysis. This section is meant to provide transparency to the research methods used in this study, and for the reader to understand how the conclusions were drawn. This chapter outlines the elements of this theory, also discussing how it has been used in the past and why its methods are useful for this kind of research. This section will also provide reasoning on how and why the sample of news content was chosen for analysis. The third chapter presents the original research of this study.
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