Despite a part of my black plastic heart agreeing with Lisa DeMoraes that ("On 'Nightline,' a Grim Sweeps Roll Call," April 27, 04) that the decision to read the names of the people killed in Iraq may be "a cheap, content-free stunt designed to tug at our heartstrings and bag a big number on the second night of the May ratings race" as well as an effective way to put faces and names to the people dying in combat, I see no reason why it shouldn't air. I imagine many of the people who lost a loved one in the fighting would want the world to see and know their loss.
However, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which has gone on the record as being "sick and tired of all that supposedly 'bad news' coming out of Iraq," has decided that its eight ABC stations will not air the broadcast because "the action appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq."
Again -- I think Nightline's motives may not be among the purest, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in that someone, somewhere in this thing may have said, "Why not put faces and names to the people dying? They're doing it in our name. Let's see who we sent over to die."
(And I also wonder if maybe, as a ratings stunt, this is a bad idea, if only because Ted Koppel reading names reminds me of a piece of performance art I saw as a grad student, where the artist sat in a corner and read the names of death-row occupants for 16 hours: kind of interesting from an abstract perspective, certainly a statement on attaching individual identities to a phenomenon spoken about in mass generalizations, but not all that riveting.)
To write the whole thing off as a political stunt -- mind you, Nightline is reading names, nothing more or less, much like memorial services do -- is a cheap and cynical justification for pushing its own political agenda. The people affected by Sinclair's unilateral decision vis a vis the appropriateness of programming should be furious that the decision to watch has been taken out of their hands.
On the war issue, one side talks about the people who are true patriots doing their all for the U.S., and the other talks about people being killed in our name. Both sides should get a chance to see who these people they talk about are. It may help them clarify their convictions.
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And as an extra P.S. ... the Sinclair bulletin gets shirty with, "We would ask that you first question Mr. Koppel as to why he chose to read the names of the 523 troops killed in combat in Iraq, rather than the names of the thousands of private citizens killed in terrorists attacks since and including the events of September 11, 2001. In his answer, you will find the real motivation behind his action scheduled for this Friday." There are several answers to this:
1. The 9/11 victims got a print treatment from the NYT's "Portraits of Grief" project, a medium that seemed exquisitely well-suited to handling the scope of the deaths and hammering home what was lost.
2. There's a distinct difference between people dying in combat in our name and people killed in a terrorist act. One group died in the service of what was supposedly the will of the people; the people should see who's dying for them. We haven't yet, unless we're Army Times readers.
3. ABC already broadcast the names.
4. Nightline ain't an all-night marathon. There's a difference between 500-and-rising names, and a couple thousand.
Also, guys -- playing the 9/11 card is hardly a politically neutral argument. Nice.
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