Collateral

 On July 12, 2007, two U.S, AH-64 Apache helicopters in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, New Bagdad conducted an attack known as the Bagdad airstrike after the Iraq War during the Iraqi Insurgency. 

In 2010, videos of the attack were released on WikiLeaks by an U.S Army Soldier named Chelsea Manning, and was spread worldwide. The video shows, what was said to be classified, 39 minutes of gunshot footage. Manning in 2013 testified that the videos were not classified. The video showed the crew killing several civilians including two Reuter Journalists and laughing at the casualties. 

WikiLeaks is n international company that has created a space for news leaks and classified media to be posted anonymously. Creator, Julian Assange became responsible for the videos and was tracked down by the U.S Government. He is not a U.S citizen and so the government has pinned false allegations on him to keep him locked up in London, England. Assange has been labeled a whistleblower. 

Reuters demanded an investigation after the attack and losing Namir Noor-Eldeen, Iraq War photographer for Reuters, and journalist Saeed Chmagh. Authorities of the U.S Military saw the murders to be the Law of Armed Conflict and their rules of engagement. 

While watching the videos in class the silence spoke for itself. In the room you were able to hear a pin drop. What happened was not okay. The U.S military has claimed the camera Namir was using looked like a gun. Through the video you are able to tell that this did not look like a gun and the attack was unprovoked This was a collateral murder and the actions are indescribably wrong. 

Power can lead to greatness or less than. A concept that has been around forever. We spend a lot of time praising our military, however, it is important for us to to keep them in check when the power goes to their head. The bottom line is, these men had no right to do what they did and their actions should have consequences. This is real life , not a video game. 

Christiane Amanpour

 

Christiane Amanpour was born in London, England on January 12, 1958. She grew up in London and went to New Hall School. She then moved to the United States for college. She went to the University of Rhode Island where she majored in Journalism. She graduated summa cum laude in 1983. During her time in college she worked for a local television station in the news department. After college she went on to work for an NBC affiliate in Providence, but then was hired as an assistant for the international news desk.

By 1986 she was working at CNN's New York City bureau as a producer/correspondent. She received her big break in 1989 when she was promoted to a post in West Frankfurt, Germany. She arrived there right at an opportune time when the pro-democratic movement was sweeping eastern Europe and Amanpour quickly became CNN's on-the-spot reporter. She gained distinction in Europe during the Persian Gulf War and she covered the conflict from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Her reporting was credited with bringing the savage nature of that conflict to the attention of the world. In 1992, she became the chief correspondent. 

In 2010, Amanpour left CNN to join the news division at ABC and became the host of ABC's political affairs show called This Week later in the year. She steeped down from the position, however, in December 2011 and in a special arrangement, she resumed her role at CNN while continuing at ABC as their global affairs anchor.

She returned in 2012 on the CNN International channel and in 2017 it began airing on the Public Broadcasting Service. 

After being off the news for a couple of weeks due to "illness" she came on air on February 7, 2022, and Amanpour told viewers that she has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She said surgery had been successful and that she was undergoing chemotherapy. She said she was sharing the news because she wanted to be transparent, but mostly to emphasize the importance of early diagnosis. 

Amanpour has received numerous honors including an Edward R. Murrow Award (2002), 11 News and Documentary Emmy Awards, and in 2007 she was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. 

Good Night, and Good Luck

 

George Clooney's 2005 award-winning film "Good Night, and Good Luck" takes place during the early years of Broadcast Journalism in the 1950s. Clooney's work based its story on the true events and broadcasting conflict that occurred between Edward Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy in the mid 1950s. Murrow, a CBS reporter, concerned himself with reporting strictly the facts, taking the emotion out of journalism in order to convey the truth. Senator McCarthy a man responsible for the coining of the term "McCarthyism," wanted to "expose" all "communists" living in the U.S. and use fear to sway journalism and sway American sentiments. 

As the film follows the CBS news crew and their response to McCarthy and the fearful society, it shows journalistic heroism at its essence through the efforts of Murrow, producer Fred Friendly, and other team members like Joe Wershba. But, more than anything, the movie shows a relationship between the press and government that existed in the 50s and still exists almost 75 years later. 

The term "the chilling effect" was gained when we heard McCarthy try and call Murrow a communist on national television. He tried to turn all of society against him. The term is characterized by fear and intimidation tactics employed by the government in order to silence their opposition in the fourth estate. 

Murrow and his team show what being a part of the press is truly about. If writers and broadcasters sat in fear, letting others control what they wrote or said, then journalists would simply be a tool in a political handyman's chest, waiting to be called on to advance someone else's agenda. The actions of CBS ultimately set a precedent for journalism in decades to come and displayed the sacrifices that were necessary to achieve the overall standard of accuracy and transparency that reporting requires.

EOTO #3 Trial By Media

Trial by media is a popular phrase that has been used in the late 20th century and early 21st century to describe the impact of television and newspaper coverage on a person’s reputation by creating a widespread perception of guilt or innocence before or after a verdict in a court of law.

The media conducts a separate investigation that builds up thew public opinion against the accused before the case even reaches the court. In recent years the media has been seen as a "public court" and has began to interfere in court proceedings.

The problem with trial by media is that the media misuses freedom of speech and expression which creates an interference in the process of the justice system. In the past there have been multiple occasions when the media has been accused of conducting a trial of the accused and passing the verdict before the court passes their own judgement. 

This has a major effect on the accused because as a result of the exposure by the media, the individual whether guilty or innocent will have to live under intense public scrutiny. Their social image is also ruined by it. 

Under the sixth amendment, every defendant is entitled to a trial by an impartial jury, but due to extensive media coverage, jury selection in a high profile case is extremely difficult. Jurors will likely have developed some biases or knowledge about the case based on media coverage. Potential Jurors are assessed during the void dire process. 

There are numerous ways that the court can address pre-trial publicity. Despite the biasing effect of pre-trial publicity, the Supreme Court has ruled that courts cannot stop the press from publicizing truthful information about criminal trials and in doing this it would be a violation of the First Amendment right too freedom of the press. Pre-trial publicity cannot be prevented, which means that courts must find ways to minimize its impact on the fairness of the trial. 

There are some famous trials that have "trial in the media" involved. These are: Ted Bundy (1980), OJ Simpson (1995), Casey Anthony (2011), and Jodi Arias (2015). Out of all of these, the trial of OJ Simpson is probably one of the most famous.

 OJ Simpson was a former NFL star who was acquitted in 1995 for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. On the night of June 12, 1944, Simpson's ex-wife and her friend Ronald Goldman were found murdered outside of her home. Simpson soon became a suspect and instead of surrendering to the police, he hid inside the back of a sport-utility vehicle driven by his friend A.C Cowlings. After law enforcement was notified that Simpson had a gun, they followed the car for over an hour.

Because OJ Simpson was a known NFL player, many individuals viewed him as a good guy, not being able to commit such a crime. This automatically caused conflict because so many people already had different views on him whether it was good or bad. The trial was then turned into a racial issue. Coverage began to turn further away from the truth and began to report lies instead of facts. The media published stories before confirming any of the facts and they had people write stories that did not know what they were talking about in actual court proceedings.

EOTO #2 Mary Ann Shadd

Mary Ann Shadd was born in 1823 in the slave state of Delaware. Her parents were dedicated to helping the refugees and were dedicated to abolitionism. They then moved to Pennsylvania, when Shadd was 10 and she got an educated and became a teacher. 

When they got to Pennsylvania, her parents helped freedom seekers, but when the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 passed, which said that anyone that was caught trying to help a runway slave could be fine or punished, it became very dangerous for them. 

In 1850, after the Act was passed, her and her brother moved to Canada. She met and married a barber, Thomas J. Cary. While living in Canada, she decided to open up a school for black and white students. She also wrote and lectured about the importance of freedom while living in Canada with her husband. 

Because of her writings and lectures, she wanted to start a newspaper. So, on March 24, 1853, she became the first black, female newspaper editor in North American history when she published Canada's first antislavery newspaper called The Provincial Freeman. Their slogan was "devoted to antislavery, temperance, and general literature". 

During the Civil War, she decided to move to Washington D. C where she helped in the war effort. She also kept teaching at public schools. In 1863, she worked as a Recruiting Officer for the Union Army and encouraged African Americans to join the war.

She then wrote for a local African American newspaper The New National Era and gave speeches to African Americans to recover from the slavery era. She is also the founder of the Colored Women’s Progressive Franchise Association.

In 1998, Mary Ann Shadd Cary was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Also for her work as a newspaper editor and for her community leadership, she was recognized as a Person of National Historic Significance by the Government of Canada in 1994. 

Press and War

For decades, the media has been very prominent in wars that have gone on around the world. From World War I to the Civil War, the press has always covered the events that unfolded. After World War I, the world was changed and people were seeking answers to how to continue living in this new uncertain world. In an article in The Harvard Gazette, a Harvard historian discusses the role of war journalism after the War and how journalist took the new world to their advantage. 

Historian Nancy F. Cott, focuses on in her new book, “Fighting Words: The Bold American Journalists Who Brought the World Home Between the Wars.” The book focuses on the work of four American journalists, Dorothy Thompson, Vincent Sheean, John Gunther, and Rayna Raphaelson, between the two World Wars. One point that people today should take from her book is one parallel that she find true in the book and in the world today is that "international journalists then, including the ones in this book, by making it a major issue that Americans had to be concerned about these failings, showed that Americans could not take their constitutional system and its continuation for granted. I think that’s very true today, too."

Not only was journalism present in the two World Wars, but the Iraq/Vietnam War as well. The Atlantic has an article about The Iraq War and how the media is present in that and how the media actually changes what the public can see and know. Cullen Murphy talks about his experience as a journalist for The Atlantic while the Iraq War was going on. 

Nothing about the fundamentals had changed for the better since Vietnam. War was still war. The White House still insisted on its version of facts, with questionable evidence to back them up. The press corps was larger and more fragmented than it had been in 1968, and the news moved at a faster pace. TV crews didn’t need to wait for an airplane to carry film canisters from Saigon to Tokyo for satellite transmission. Print journalists could write stories that would be published online within minutes. Cable channels aired news programming around the clock, and their reach was global. None of this fostered a spirit of calm analysis.

Unlike in Vietnam, few of the reporters who went to Iraq were military veterans. Many came to the war without much relevant experience. It wasn’t just Iraqi culture that was unfamiliar. In an experiment, the Pentagon allowed some 600 journalists to embed with military units. Soon after arriving in Iraq, Michael Kelly wrote back about an orientation briefing for the embeds where the colonel in charge had to explain certain realities to a reporter from Japanese television, who wanted to know if instead of a backpack she could bring a roller-board suitcase.One takeaway from his article is that "the conflicts change, but the factors influencing the quality of the coverage, including ignorance, confusion, or competition, stay consistent."

News and press to go hand in hand with the coverage of wars has been a prominent issue for so long that even in 2007 the United States Institute of Peace contributed an article about the role of media in conflict.

There were three themes that were prominent in this article: international media has the potential to influence governments and international organizations, and as such can have an agenda-setting effect, these reports however are not always the most accurate reflection of the relative severity and risk of a particular conflict; donors that are interested in conflict prevention and sustaining stability should support local media, as it yields non-tangible results in war-torn communities, such as increased levels of trust, increased hope in the future of the country, and the ability to contribute to a peaceful society; and guarantees regarding the media and freedom of the press, as well as efforts to promote professional, objective, unbiased reporting, should be an integral part of any successful peace agreement.  

Extra Post 1

“I’ll love you forever,

I’ll like you for always,

As long as I’m living,

My baby you’ll be”

That is the repetitive verse from the book “Love You Forever” by Robert Munsch. My mom used to read this book to me every night when I was a little girl. 

The story is about a boy and mother and how her love for her son continues through the stages of life. On the end of every page, she sings the song to him while she rocks him. In the end, the boy is now a grown man, and the mother is elderly. The roles switch and the son rocks the mother and sings “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my mommy you’ll be”. 

The bond that my mom and I made because of this book fills my heart. On the last day that I was home before moving into college, we sat together and read this book. It is a memory that I will cherish forever and a tradition that I want to have someday with my future family. 

Having such a close bond with my mom made it difficult to go far away to college, but now the memories that we make when I come home are that much more special to us. I think growing up having a book or song to look forward to or to connect you to someone is important. 

It was important to me and my mom because of that fact that I’m her adopted daughter, so we didn’t have that skin-to-skin bond when I was a baby and she got to see me for the first time in an orphanage at 6 months old. It doesn’t matter who you share DNA with, its who loves you unconditionally, and will always be there to support you. That is my mom.