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EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION
view may do wonders for CBS’ ratings but not for
the all-but-vanished prospect of a peaceful solution
to the crisis.”
The New York Times places the interview in
the context of a more mundane media war: “This
is the last night of the all-important sweeps
period, when networks broadcast their mosthyped
programming, and TV news is increasingly
hijacked to report on the results of manufactured
“reality,” as if the bachelorette’s choice
of suitors or the latest expulsion from the island
were events of global consequence. The appearance
of Mr. Hussein in the midst of it makes for a
truly eclectic, if not peculiar, mix.
“The nation may be cruising toward one of
those moments of cultural humiliation when the
world compares the number of people who
watch the Hussein interview with the 40 million
who last week watched Joe Millionaire pick
wholesome Zora over Sarah, the presumed golddigger.
CBS may be hoping only to match the 27
million viewers who watched ABC’s Michael
Jackson documentary earlier in the month —
and even then it’s unlikely that Fox will be rushing
in to air unseen scraps of the Baghdad interview.
But it’s hard to imagine how Mr. Hussein,
who claimed 100 percent of the vote in last October’s
referendum in Iraq, would react to news
that he lost the ratings battle to Barbara Walters’s
visit with the jailed ex-star of “Baretta.”
This reference to Walters calls to mind a juicy
“exclusive” one-on-one she snagged years ago
with Fidel Castro, then Washington’s most hated
evil-doer. That interview, shot by ABC News, was
carefully edited to leave out most of Commandante
Castro’s more political points. The full text
was later released by the Cubans to be published
side by side in an alternative paper showing how
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politicized U.S. TV editing can be. Sanitizing
media is not just the province of dictators.
One of the more fascinating propositions in the
interview is said to be Hussein’s offer of a televised
debate between him and George Bush. The
White House immediately shot this down,
revealing that the President may be authorizing
a covert assassination team to take its own shot
at the man who has said he would rather die
than leave his country. Such a debate is already
grist for the comedy mill, with all the makings of
one of those World Wrestling Federation
“smackdowns,” and could probably make millions
as a Pay TV event. That is, if MTV doesn’t
scoop its competition with a special edition of
“Celebrity Death Match.”
The winner of this latest episode in the media
war remains to be seen and it will be shortly.
Whatever Saddam says is still a first in giving the
Iraqis real “face time.” For the moment, they
achieved parity in a media war which has until
now, had a ‘rather’ one-sided spin.
(At the war’s end, the conservative Media
Research Center in Washington gave Dan
Rather an award for the best war coverage.
Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reported
that Rather’s boss was dismissive of media critics.
“CBS News President Andrew Heyward dismisses
criticism that media outlets were too jingoistic‚
in their coverage. American journalists
are rooting for America to win,” he said. “You’re
not going to find a lot of Americans rooting for
Iraq. That doesn’t mean they’re not objective
and fair in their reporting.”) ●