False History Gets Made All Day, Any Day,
The Truth of the New is Never on the News”
- Adrienne Rich
Recently, I wrote an essay for a class detailing the techniques journalists use in order to lead an audience in favor of a given perspective derived from whatever attitude is harbored by either the society it’s reporting to, or its ruling class or government. The paper focused on the article Immigration, Black Sheep, and Swiss Rage from the New York Times, which reported on a Swiss political party’s agenda and how their message has been accepted by the Swiss people and interpreted worldwide. The main focus of my paper was that the article’s stance wasn’t objective. The article instead utilized every method possible to foster in the reader a predetermined attitude, and one that disagreed with the political party in question. As I critically analyzed the article, I realized that every nuance of Immigration, Black Sheep, and Swiss Rage, including but not limited to the photograph used, the way the article was presented, and when the information was presented in the article, was loaded in one way or another, and they all conveyed the same opinion. During the discussion that supplemented the assignment, the class concluded that when one pays enough attention, he or she can find this editorial flair in most of the articles he or she reads, more so in political pieces, and that it’s almost unavoidable.
If this were true, the same political subject matter reported in three different newspapers from respectively different countries should result in completely different articles, with their own viewpoints apparent in the way they present the information. Perhaps one or two of the countries may actually approach the subject from an objective vantage, or perhaps the only way it is possible to be objective is to either be uncommitted to the issue or unrelated altogether. In any case, it’s undeniable that the article about President George W. Bush’s demands that Iran presents information their nuclear weapons plans (whether or not they really have any) on cnn.com will be completely different from the article reporting the same instance on the UK’s bbc.co.uk. Indeed, both of those stories will be just as different from the Middle Eastern one on aljazeera.net as they are from each other, as they are three different nations with different perspectives. While cnn.com and aljazeera.net represent opposing players in the story itself, bbc.co.uk could be assumed to be neutral due to the United Kingdom’s lack of direct involvement. The question is how will these articles be different?
The element with the most initial importance in all three articles is the home page of each respective website that the articles are on. Considering that the United States’ relationship with the Middle East and nuclear weapons are currently two of the hottest topics in politics today, it comes as no surprise that this is the top story that is most conspicuously presented on the home pages of all three websites. On cnn.com, the reader’s eye is directed to the upper left of the webpage, where it would find a serious-faced George W. Bush in warm but authoritatively formal dress, his white lapel barely peeking from behind a black scarf and black overcoat. His black patent-leather-gloved right hand is extended as if in mid-gesture, karate-chopping his point into the podium adorned with the presidential seal, implying a firmness projected by most American Republican presidents. In the blurry blue and white background, one could make out a jet, perhaps Air Force One itself, effectively suggesting a scene reminiscent of movies and films containing Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy, F. D. Roosevelt, and others—the suit-clad entourage of various members of his cabinet—personal bodyguards, FBI, CIA—all wearing Bluetooth headsets, then he, President Bush, descending behind them on a staircase directly from the plane, never setting foot into an airport, waving as a large crowd uproariously cheers, they having waited hours to cast sight on the illustrious president of the United States of America. In essence, the stance of this article is already clear: G. W. Bush, the iron-fisted, authoritative President exemplifying his leadership by putting his foot down. The headline is straightforward: “Bush to Iran: Come clean on nukes”. The statement is direct: President Bush is putting his foot down, as he knows there are nuclear weapons in Iran, and he only needs them to admit it. The synopsis under the headline states exactly what the article is about: “U.S. President George W. Bush has said Iran’s nuclear program is still a problem, after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared a U.S. intelligence report that downgraded Iran’s nuclear threat ‘a declaration of victory’.” In other words, the Iranian president somehow got his hands on a report by the U.S.’s Central Intelligence Agency and apparently misunderstood it to say that the United States would now be paying Iran and its nuclear weapons less attention, and president Bush has set out to correct him by stating that, no, the United States’ eyes are still wide open because the Iranian nuclear program is still, of all possible descriptions, a problem.
As English speakers (and the original ones, at that), the UK reads in the same way that the United States does, and therefore in order to grasp its reader’s initial attention, BBC News has put their version of the same story in the same place—in the upper left corner of the home page. The photograph used is quite smaller, but the photographs of the webpage are smaller in general in comparison to those on cnn.com. The picture is also of president Bush, but this time it’s from the side, his face amicable and hopeful. No gesturing at all is shown, but the same fuzzy airplane appears in the background. They were obviously taken in the same place as the photo presented by CNN, perhaps even taken near the same time, but the character of the photograph is obviously different. Bush appears more pleasant and less authoritative, with a nicer facial expression that communicates “progressive” or “visionary” and is angled out toward the edges of the suggested crowd. He’s placed to the right of the frame as opposed to on cnn.com, where he was placed in the middle of the frame, so he appears less imposing, less looming. It is an overall softer picture, casting George W. in a completely different light. The picture is accompanied by another succinct headline: “Bush urges Tehran to come clean”. This is a contrast to what was found on the CNN website. The American headline submits an order to Iran; a sharp and curt “Bush to Iran”, the “to” almost reading as “vs.”, especially when one sees the colon thereafter, and it concludes on the imperative “Come clean on nukes”, leaving no option for deliberation or even room to consider the possibility that there may not be anything relatively unclean in relation to the Iranian nuclear program at all. The British headline is conversely much softer, not unlike the picture they chose to harmonize with it, with a rational “urge” rather than what reads as a command. The headline is coupled with the summation: “The US president says Iran must still fully reveal its nuclear activities, or face further international isolation.” Without regard to what has already been acknowledged about the CNN report, this article appears to be about President Bush threatening Iran in pursuit of information about their nuclear program. The CIA report and the President Ahmadinejad’s response to it are left unmentioned, and while it may be understandable that Bush would want information on Iran’s nuclear activities, there is nothing that suggests that their activities are at all a problem. Essentially, this reads as a completely different article altogether, and one that approaches the situation rationally, but in a way that’s flattering to the UK’s younger sister, the United States.
The Arabic version of the aljazeera.net homepage is a far cry from those on cnn.com and bbc.co.uk, geared toward a culture that reads from right to left with much smaller pictures and thumbnails stacked in two neat columns starting halfway down the page with their brief descriptions to their left. The English version though, is a hyperbole of Western journalism, with enormous pictures, short headlines, and very succinct synopses, suggesting an assumption that Western culture has a very limited attention span married to a preoccupation with visual stimuli. It was also the only page to have photographs that changed to color from black and white when a mouse cursor is hovered over them, indicating an attempt to be as dynamic while remaining as formal as possible—further evidence that Al Jazeera assumes they need to implement as much as they can to keep English speakers’ attention. In consideration of what is already known about this story, the headline made Al Jazeera’s polarized stance implicitly obvious when it stated that Iran was “vindicated” by the nuclear report—complete with the quotation marks that communicated either “supposedly” or “allegedly”—but the summary below it single-handedly obliterated any predisposed notions about the story derived from either of the previous articles. It states: “IAEA chief urges diplomacy with Tehran as doubts are raised over fresh sanctions”. What does the IAEA, or the International Atomic Energy Agency have to do with any of this? What sanctions is the headline referring to? Who is being urged? If it’s referring to Iran, then it should be diplomatic with whom? Suddenly, these minor, inconspicuous, editorialist differences are becoming major and obvious. Indeed, while the British and American articles appear similar, the Middle Eastern article almost appears irrelevant. But, surely, the content of the actual articles will offer clarity?
Moving along to the headline of the actual article on cnn.com is “Iranian president calls U.S. nuclear report a ‘victory’”, complete with derisive quotation marks around “victory.” The article itself is surprisingly short, only two pages in length when pasted complete with the inset picture onto a word document. The photograph is large and of a smug-and-elated-looking Ahmadinejad waving to his constituents, perhaps to exemplify what could be his infuriatingly supercilious approach to Bush’s allegations. The article is written with a pyramid structure, the one most used in news articles and beginning with all of the “hard facts” before eventually leading to the narrative aspects of the story.
At the crux of this pyramid, the article is introduced with the U.S. intelligence report and President Ahmadinejad’s reaction, calling the report “’a declaration of victory’ for the Iranian nuclear program.’ It continues with Bush’s detraction, with him stating that Iran needs to “come clean”—or, in other words, contradicting the report by insinuating that it simply didn’t catch the Iranians doing whatever they’ve been doing with their nuclear program—and make apparent its “future intentions”. The pyramid then expanded slightly, indicating that this began with Bush’s delegation for Tehran to suspend their use of nuclear energy, suggesting that it could be clandestinely used militaristically, combatively.
The story proceeded in the same back-and-forth fashion, releasing more information with every rebuttal. Ahmadinejad cites the report that clearly absolves Iran of nuclear indiscretion. The article refers to the warnings the Bush administration has been making about Iran masking the development of an atomic bomb as “the development of nuclear power plants and enriched uranium,” and mentioned “top U.S. officials have called the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran ‘unacceptable’.” Then the article jumped to the other side again, bringing up the U.S. intelligence report once again and explaining the information that it contained, which, in short, deduces that Iran hasn’t dealt with nuclear weapons in almost five years and that they are currently unequipped to produce any. Finally, the article admits that this entire issue originated from accusations from the Bush Administration in an attempt to “maneuver the United States into a conflict with Iran, which it also accuses of meddling in the war with Iraq.” Then Iran refuses the U.N. Security Council’s “demand that it half uranium enrichment work”, then Bush accumulates the support of Germany, Britain, France, and Russia in continued pressure on Tehran.
The story concludes with Bush threatening international isolation unless Iran reveals its nuclear history and future plans. Essentially, that article illustrates the same non-sequitur paranoia Bush has harbored since he was first elected, but masks it behind coloring Iran’s response to the article as indignant and their intentions, dubious.
The BBC article has the same headline and subheading as it did on the homepage. The article, once pasted on a word document, is about the same length as the American story, but lacks a photograph. It was written in the same style, but begins instead with the U.S. intelligence and the Iranian president’s response, then proceeds to President Bush, referring to him as “Mr. Bush”, stating that he has said that “Iran still had ‘more to explain’ about its past actions, and that it must cease uranium enrichment.’ Then it rationalizes Bush’s stance by mentioning that Iran never acknowledged a covert nuclear weapons program that it ran until 2003, and further supports this stance with an allegation that the uranium Iran continues to enrich could be used for nuclear weapons in the future the article claims is stated in the report. This contradicts the American version of the story, though, which clearly states that the report denied that their uranium enrichment is unfit for nuclear weapon development and that they couldn’t possibly accumulate enough to develop any weaponry until 2010 if they began tonight.
The article runs its course by first expressing Bush’s stance in that he is threatening Iran with isolation unless they are willing to negotiate, and then Ahmadinejad’s, who firmly stands his ground. Somewhere in the middle, the article mentions that the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency claims that Iran has been “somewhat vindicated” and that the CIA report consisted with the same assessment by the IAEA, but neither of these points are positioned or utilized in a way that affects either perspective on the issue.
The news story reporting the same events on the Al Jazeera website was the longest, boasting three pages. The inset photograph is of Ahmadinejad, who looks triumphant and complacent, a profile of a calm and pleased facial expression, but with his fist in the air. The article opens with the vindication quote by the head of the IAEA, ElBaradei, but hilariously refers to him as the “head of the UN nuclear watchdog,” insinuating bitterness toward the UN. It follows with more quotes by ElBaradei from a speech he performed in the capitol of Brazil, an occurrence never mentioned in the prior to articles, that rather solidify his confidence in Iran, such as “The report gives me a sigh of relief because it is consistent with our assessment,” that the “Iranian authorities should now seize the opportunity to prove that they have peaceful plans for nuclear energy,” and most importantly, “You saw the report of the U.S. intelligence. They said clearly that the Iranian people were on the just path.” All this takes up about a third of the article, and indicates that Iran feels as if it’s being harassed unnecessarily, as they’ve already proven their innocence. While Ahmadinejad’s quote about the CIA’s report being a “victory” seemed like mockery in the CNN article, in this story it appears to be a sigh of relief as it appears as though Iran’s development is being hindered by Bush’s allegations. The next portion of the article is taken up by more quotes, detailing Bush’s assertions that Iran is still a threat, and Ahmadinejad indignantly replying that Iran will not give up their nuclear program, that the insistence of Western powers is not Iran’s problem, and that Iran vows not to “roll back Iran’s nuclear program.”
What struck me the most about this article was what was reported next. Whereas the article contained most of the information that the others did, it produced blatant evidence that some information was left out of the other articles. While the entire UN Security Council and Germany did in fact support Bush’s demands, China and Russia were reluctant. This casts doubt on what was otherwise concrete evidence that the entire world agrees with President Bush, which could definitely make or break public opinion. After reporting this information, the article gives a few more quotes summarizing what was already mentioned in the other articles about attempts and desires to curb the Iranian nuclear program.
The only article that had any comments was that on the Al Jazeera website, which sported only one. Ironically, a man from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, left it, which said: “I think the world will accept Iran’s nuclear energy programme now.” His handle, surfdog1958, suggests that he isn’t just some optimistic, early-twenties liberal, either.
When only considering each article by itself, they seem like viable, even objective reports of international events. But once they’re weighed against each other by the styles in which they’re written, the information that was focused upon, and the information that was presented, a political agenda becomes severely obvious. While the American version of the story sought to empower the image of our president and render him an iron-fisted hero attempting to avoid nuclear confrontation from a smug and sneaky foreign leader, the British version attempted to paint George W. Bush as a likeable and pleasant person with honorable intentions. The final version of the story from an Arabic perspective depicts the United States President as well as the rest of the Western World as pertinacious nuisances that insist on wrongfully accusing Iran of indiscretion and seeking to hinder Iranian development: “This report tried to extract America from its impasse but it also is a declaration of victory for the Iranian people against the great powers.” Shockingly, each article dramatically differs, even more than proposed. Unfortunately, this rises the question “Where’s the truth?”
Perhaps there is no truth. Journalism just may be subjective by nature.
~ P.
