Abu Ghraib and It's Treatment in the Mainstream Press

When we look around the world that we live in, we realize that certain things are simply not as they should be. However, perhaps what should be one of the most important facets of our life has become something beyond recognition. There can be no argument that people have always looked to the news, regardless of it's form, to stay informed and on top of what is going on in their lives and around the world. While we have come to massively depend on the press for almost all aspects of new related information, we have failed to ask ourselves a very important question. We have failed to ask ourselves, "What happens when the press fails?" When our news organizations are no longer capable of transmitting unbiased fact to us, how are the people of the world to judge and be informed about what is going on around them. W. Lance Bennett, the author of the book, "When the Press Fails", has proposed an interesting idea indeed. Bennett feels that the closeness of the mainstream press to official sources of power, along with the use of indexing news stories based on power and the lack of press independence has made true, critical reporting of the news extinct. However, is this theory true? Perhaps we can find an excellent opportunity to test it in the abuse scandal of Abu Ghraib.

The Scandal, which began it's life as a series of pictures that came to be sent around the world has now become something with worldwide significance. Or, at least it should have. From the moment that the pictures detailing the abuse and mistreatment at Abu Ghraib were discovered, they were also repressed by the government and official sources. As Bennett writes, "Though it was ready to be broadcast on April 12, CBS withheld its Abu Ghraib story at the request of the Defense Department for two weeks" (Page 73). In fact, by the time that the story was actually made public, four months had passed since the initial discovery. These four months, while they may not seem significant, are actually vital to proving Bennett's theory, and for setting the stage for what was to eventually come of the Abu Ghraib Scandal. Those four months enabled the Pentagon and high level government officials to prepare for the situation; a confidential report was released and a private military investigation had already been done.

Despite government attempts to label the scandal as simple "mistreatment", and the work of a few unsupervised soldiers, the story still broke big. Immediately the Bush Administration began to spin the story, as Bennett writes, "Critical questions about [what] the photos really showed were quickly consumed by a summer-log information management battle that included congressional hearings; official apologies; high-level trips, investigations, and reports; indictments of low-level soldiers; and heavy administration spin emphasizing poor supervision and low level abuse" (Page 73). The treatment of the scandal by the Bush Administration further enforces Bennett's idea that, "Power is a prism through which facts are filtered and distorted to fit preferred versions of reality" (Page 177). As history has proved, though, despite the strong and almost one-sided evidence, including thousands of photographs, that made the evidence and claim that torture was being condoned and orchestrated by the United States, the press somehow failed to follow through on the story, and the spin of the Bush Administration was able to prevail.

Bennett makes the point in his book that the problem with the case of torture was not the lack of information to support it, but rather the lack of the press to create a new frame, and the ability of the press to hold the story against counter-administration spin. However, we must first consider what it takes to create a powerful and sustaining frame. According to Bennett, "A productive frame context exists in the news only when information independent of an administration is put on part with information obtained from that administration, and when the media present a coherent counter perspective" (Page 89). Bennett and his team conducted a study to analyze how prevalent news coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal was shortly after it's release in the press. The aim of the study was too see how often the incident appeared in the news and what label it fell under. Of course, it is obvious to see that classifying the events as "torture" would have been the most damaging to the administration as a whole. "Fully 91% of news articles and 82% of editorials in the Washington Post used abuse as the first or second label to describe events at Abu Ghraib, compared with 11%...that used the term torture" (Page 93). Compare this with the fact that, "Prior to April 29, only two stories mentioning Abu Ghraib had appeared in the Post, on March 21 and 22, noting that criminal charges had been filed against soldiers for abusing or mistreating prisoners" (Page 205), and we have a compelling case for proving Bennett's theory. "The press system in the United States is uniformly organized that it qualifies as an institution: the media, when it comes to news, is singular" (Page 177).

This information proves the fact that journalists were reluctant to behave independently, even insofar as using the term torture without approval from official sources. Of course, to fully account for Bennett's theory, we must also analyze how the alternative press was unable to make an impact, as it is generally suppressed and kept from breaking big by the mainstream media and the elites that hold news prominence. "During this early period, but to a very limited degree, torture also entered the news through alternative source channels such as former detainees, other foreigners, and human rights organizations such as the IRC. But once the language of abuse had settled in, it appears, nothing could dislodge it" (Page 95). The question remains though, how was the Bush Administration able to manipulate the mainstream media so that the story never really took root in the minds of the people, and that the actual political significance of the story remained unheard?

According to Bennett, due to the high priority placed on selecting the photos, many of the victims remained "invisible", and "news rarely described the detainees as anything more than simply 'prisoners'" (Page 113). Bennett writes that, "The press did not just shelter Americans from the world opinion on Abu Ghraib...From the beginning of the war, it filtered much of its stories' tone according to the political consensus in Washington, creating a considerable gap between U.S. news coverage and world news and opinion" (Page 116). Here we have perfect and conclusive proof for Bennett's theory that the framing of Abu Ghraib lead to the decreased emphasis in the mainstream press and the eventual spin that the torture which occurred there was nothing more than simple abuse. The mainstream press in the United States, due to administrative framing and spin never even published the right words to define the scandal, let along present the truth about what was occurring at Abu Ghraib, and what it meant for the United States. As the scandal was unfolding, important questions should have been asked that were not. Both the people and the press should have been asking how something like this could have happened, why the United States Government would condone and encourage such actions, and what these horrific pictures meant to the world as a whole. Instead, however, these questions were not asked, and the press fell right into the framing of the Bush Administration, they only reported what the Administration wanted them to report, and the damage done by such can perhaps never be calculated.

Perhaps one of the most common frames put out regarding Abu Ghraib was also the question of responsibility. "Yet although the responsibility question was raised fairly often in the news, it was not clearly answered" (Page 122). The high level officials of the administration simply refused to take accountability for the events, which occurred. However, while the press should have been trying to sort it out, they accepted the blame trade off of the Bush Administration. "It became clear that neither the White House nor Congress was going to hold top leaders accountable for the scandal, there was little place for the accountability story to go" (Page 122). Even when the soldiers and low-level sources who were blamed came out regarding being encouraged in such behavior, "those claims [did not] provide a lasting news hook for the story of higher-level responsibility" (Page 122). Thus, through careful framing and manipulation, proper responsibility even failed to find a source.

Time and time again, the evidence that is presented in "When the Press Fails" proves and proves again Bennett's arguments relating to news framing and spin by elite, powerful officials. The news coverage of Abu Ghraib never strayed from official sources, and even when it attempted to, the administration was able to counter-frame all possible arguments. Attempts by the alternative press to break the true story were crushed, and the administration went into spinning control stories as soon as they got wind that the story might be broken. The fact that the Abu Ghraib scandal was mislabeled, misrepresented and spun so inaccurately is simply further proof that Bennett's ideas and theory are true. While the rest of the world stared in horror and disgust at the events of the Abu Ghraib, the American people fell into every lie and reassuring word that passed the lips of the Bush Administration, never stopping to ask so much as a single, objective, independent question.

Sources:

Bennett, W, Lawrence, R, & Livingston, S (2007). When the press fails. University of Chicago Press.