Trivializing war!

War reporting has become sensationalized and trivialized through high-tech reporting and a video-game format making war a largely virtual and bloodless.

This is how Thussu (2003) sums up the role of high-tech reporting in an article by Simon Cottle and Mugdha Rai: Global 24/7 News Providers: Emissaries of Global Dominance or Global Public Sphere? Since the 1990 Gulf War almost all wars, in which the United States is one of the partners, electronic and digital media in combination with high-tech war weaponry have turned wars into video-games. A case in point is the spate of drone attacks that the CIA has unleashed on areas of Pakistan that border Afghanistan. Al-Qaida and the Taliban are presumed to have taken shelter there for staging attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The CIA uses pilot-less aircraft, which are commonly known as Drones, that are equipped with hell-fire missiles to target suspected people and their hideouts. These aircraft are remotely controlled and thus can be called human extensions. Since extensions dehumanize humans, the drones have masked the bloody face of the human casualty on the ground by terming the killing of scores of people for 'taking out' a single target as collateral damage.

The human loss is further dehumanized by the mass media by delivering 'thin' accounts of drone attacks without context, background or competing definitions and accounts. By subjecting such news stories to the dominant frame (that Cottle and Rai talks about) the mass media become accomplices in turning wars into video-games and human losses into collateral damage.

The following news item reported by AFP shows how a dominant frame is used for stories about killings, blood-lettings and material damage:

Drone attacks house in North Waziristan

A US drone has fired two missiles at a house in the Mir Ali area of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan.

There are no reports of casualties as yet, but many are feared.

Earlier in the day Foreign Office said that the United States should change its policy on drone strikes inside Pakistan.

On Wednesday, two US missile strikes killed at least nine people in North Waziristan.

Drone attacks reached unprecedented levels this month. Since US President Barack Obama came into office, there have been more than 143 drone attacks, with about 58 strikes in 2009 (after January 20) and around 85 in 2010.

Drone attacks have stoked anti-American sentiment in the country with many saying they violate Pakistan’s sovereignty.--AFP

The role of the media should be to report every news as a complete story instead of an abstract and impersonal account. Just like a story is always grounded in a context with a human face, news items should also be an account of human sufferings in such situations instead of counting the the so-called success of the war machinery. Joseph Campbell has so aptly said that media has changed though into it. Human casualties are referred to in digits--and digits are always lifeless. For example, a common newspaper or even radio/TV headline normally says:

20 killed in drone attack

Such headlines give an impression that these 20 are not human beings. The victims are being dehumanized by turning them into mere figures. The use of modern technology in wars and the 24/7 transmissions of global TV are tools of human extensions that take their toll on human society.