Reconstruction 5.2 (Spring 2005)


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CNNing and "SHOWDOWN: Iraq": News, New Media, and Popular Culture / G. Kim Blank


Abstract: Kim Blank’s “CNNing and Showdown Iraq”, too, provides an innovative model for the interaction and mutual transfusion of case study and the work of theorizing. Although the backdrop to Blank’s essay is CNN’s cultural significance and the programming it ran under the “SHOWDOWN: Iraq” banner, it repeatedly returns to the busy intersection of media, technology, popular culture, and mass culture. Characterized by its author as “restless”, the piece strategically employs a non-linear discursive strategy deliberately mimicking the practices of channel surfing and the constant interruption of the commercial break. It re-contextualizes, in other words, the critical perspective by re-inventing it through the habitual practices of popular or mass culture. The vision of ‘CNN’ which emerges out of this strategy is that of a signifier established by means of the network’s practices reproduction, self-representation, and self-promotion, and of its saturated presence in hardware, software, and various conduits of transmission.

Stay Tuned

<1> From 25 September 2002 until 19 March 2003, all of CNN’s and CNN.com’s programming represented America’s dealings with Iraq under an ever-present banner of “SHOWDOWN: Iraq.” The words on the screen were often chiseled, in bold, and lit from behind, as if illuminated by an explosion. A staccato military musical score accompanied the banner; aspects of the rhythm and instrumentation seemed reminiscent of the musical themes to Jaws and Psycho, but this allusion is discernible only because we, the consumer of news, use popular culture as the knowledge base from which, paradoxically, to mediate the meaning of the world that apparently exists somewhere beyond popular culture’s pervasive representations. Although the backdrop to this essay is CNN’s cultural significance and the programming it ran under the “SHOWDOWN: Iraq” banner, its restless interests are drawn to the busy intersection where media, technology, popular culture, and mass culture pile up, and hence the term introduced in this essay, “CNNing”; the restlessness of this piece is also reflected in a non-linear, left-brained discursive strategy that irresistibly mimics channel surfing and the constant interruption of the commercial break.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

<2> The idea of a “showdown” harkens back to the mythology of the American wild west as promoted, once more, through popular culture: two gunslingers stand face-to-face in the dusty heat of high noon on a deserted road in some frontier town. The curious townsfolk watch the two combatants from a safe distance; the townsfolk know about stray bullets, though no one has yet come up with the term “collateral damage.” They also know that one will perish by the rule of a gun barrel. Two other figures observe the scene with different purposes, though both have commerce in mind: the undertaker will make a coffin (plans are ready), and the reporter will telegraph a story to his home office (he knows what he needs to write in order to sell the story, since he’s already filed one about the inevitably of the showdown). One of the gunslingers is the bad guy—the one with the big, black mustache and dark complexion—and he has been bullying and terrorizing the town ever since he arrived; the other is the good guy, who, with the square jaw of selfless morality, has come into town and is willing to liberate the townspeople from of the bad guy’s evil regime. At last the good guy tells it straight: “I’m giving you and your boys 48 hours to get out of town.”

<3> What Texan President George W. Bush actually said in a televised address on 17 March 2003 was “Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq in 48 hours.” That Bush’s rhetoric of the Old West gave CNN the inspiration under which to build up its US/Iraq narrative thematics is not surprising: six days after the 9/11 attacks, Bush, in fixing his sights on Osama bin Laden, said, “There’s an old poster out West, I recall, that says, ‘Wanted, Dead or Alive’.” As 2002 faded into 2003, the poster pinned to the cactus had Saddam’s picture on it, and as 2003 came to a close, we found that the bad guy was caught—more alive than dead, and found in something that has come to be known as a “spider-hole”—but the impressive black mustache had become a ragged grey beard.

“This is CNN”

<4> The resonating, baritone voice of actor James Earl Jones gives this pronouncement—“This is CNN”—authority and identifiability. The voice says, in effect, We are big, we are strong, and we know what we are about. Watch us. Once more, because of popular culture’s enveloping knowledge base, we also recognize that this is the same voice of ominous power behind Darth Vader, whose famous tagline tells us that “It is pointless to resist” the Dark Side.

<5> CNN, as part of the Turner Broadcasting System within Time Warner Inc., is, in its own words, “one of the world’s most respected and trusted sources for news and information. Its reach extends to 15 cable and satellite television networks;two private place-based networks; two radio networks; wireless devices around the world; seven Web sites, including CNN.com, the first major news and information Web site; and CNN Newsource, the world’s most extensively syndicated news service” (“CNN Pressroom”). We more generally know CNN as a cable television news station. That it is owned by Time Warner gives it corporate affiliation with a large number of media interests that, at the time of writing this piece, includes Warner Bros. Pictures, Comedy Central, New Line Cinema (New Media), HBO, TBS, Court TV, Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbara, DC Comics, Book-of-the-Month Club, Time Inc., sixty-four magazines (including MAD, People, Fortune, Outdoor Life, Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, Time, This Old House, Popular Science, Field & Stream), Atlantic Records, Columbia House Music Club, Elektra Records, World Championship Wrestling, AOL, CompuServe, Netscape, the Atlanta Braves (MLB), Atlanta Hawks (NBA), and Atlanta Thrashers (NHL) [1]. Their own corporate blurb (besides the subtitle they supply as “The World’s News Leader”) states, “Time Warner Inc. is the world’s leading media and entertainment company whose businesses include filmed entertainment, interactive services, television networks, cable systems, and publishing” (“Corporate Information”). That is to say, Time Warner is at the top of the media food chain and an example of the growing trend of ownership concentration in the media industry.

<6> A set of critical observations emerge when CNN is read within the general cultural fullness of what it represents as a mediator (creator/producer/marketer) of news, as it is part of a media and entertainment corporation, and as it intersects with the new media and media culture:

1. news media is an industry that falls between the production of information and entertainment;
2. because of this, news media has three possibly competing masters: a public that, at least in democratic circumstances, expects “truthful” representations of events; investors who, at least in a free-market economy, expect return on their investment; and an audience who, armed with a remote, expect to be entertained;
3. thus, news media content is determined by credibility, profitability, and consumer/audience behavior;
4. news media, as the conflation of form and content, is mediated by the changing technology that creates, supports, and distributes it;
5. news media is fluid: an event can be captured, produced, and disseminated in multiple forms from more than one place and one time—and, if necessary, in real time;
6. news media is often transnational and globalized: it can be imported, exported, and translated; moreover, it often has affiliate and connective relations with other stations or international bureaus;
7. news media business often has corporate ties to other forms of media business;
8. external control over news media content is minimal.

Das New Kapital

<7> CNN competes in a highly-competitive market place with general television programming, with similar styles of cable television programming (like FOX News and MSNBC), and with the larger scene of media production (which includes traditional media such as radio, newspapers, and magazines); it also has to keep up with and employ innovative reporting and distribution styles associated with the new media. Two observable manifestations of this competition are innovation and sensationalism. Two problems with these manifestations carry over into the realms of veracity and responsibility. Can the news under such conditions deliver information that approximates truth, achieves some semblance of balance, and, without compromise, aims for accuracy? Can the news in such a market place be expected to serve the interests of its viewers if it also necessarily sees them as consumers?

<8> The combination of media, economic, technological forces, what we might call determinants of “the new capital,” administers the news in terms of what gets seen, when it gets seen, where it is seen, how it is seen, how much will be seen, and who sees it. The news media thus establishes its orders of “truth” not just as a reflection of its particular conventions, codes, and forms of representation, but also by the need to turn a profit and to use technologies as they becomes available: the news can no longer afford to be behind the times, and CNN, as a technocapitalistic news company, expends considerable energy explicitly promoting its own prowess and success by letting its viewers know that it is constantly using new ways of delivery; in this McLuhanesque way, the technology, as a critical determinant of the medium, dictates the message. The news, and television news in particular, has become an increasingly complex system of knowledge/power that, within the realm of media culture, regulates our window to the world by creating a complex discourse by which we come to “know” an event—the lead-up to a war, for example. To repeat the obvious: television news, like other television programming, is governed by the market. Television news is, after all, just another a television program, and cannot be privileged any more or any less except in terms of what we like to watch.

The “C” in “CNN”

<9> “CNN” has transcended the initialism it once was; it has become a word. The proof: Ask most people what the letters “CNN” stands for and they can’t tell you. Communication News Network? Columbia News Network? Central News Network?

<10> The “C” seems to be the problem.

<11> But ask most people what CNN is and, echoing perfectly one of CNN’s many slogans, they can tell you: “The most trusted name in news.”

<12> When you tell them that the “C” stands for “cable,” you get the expected “of course.” What may be beyond everyone’s apparent ignorance is not just this bland, generic designation, but how “cable” has become the pervasive technology through which our most pervasive medium—television—comes to us. In the early 1970s, only about 15% of American households had cable; by 2002, this number approached 70% (Campbell, 2003, 195). “Cable”—as both a physical coaxial object and a medium associated with viewer choice—has come to represent a new form of dissemination that broadens the physical, demographic, economic, and technological scope of television: more locations, more stations, more customers, more bells and whistles. CNN, as one of the first single genre cable stations (and the first 24-hour news station), forged the way for others to specialize in particular areas, such as sports, music, movies, weather, comedy, cartoons, language cultures, science fiction, science, history, women’s issues, black issues, business, real-estate, children’s programs, game shows, home and garden, shopping, food, sex, and cooking.

<13> Cable can also carry the internet, and this has not been lost on CNN with the creation of CNN.com (launched in August 1995) and CNN’s corporate connection to AOL and Netscape. A few numbers to ponder:

0101the0100new1010media0110

<14> Because the technology of digital creation, dissemination, and reception have become increasingly accessible, the new media has, in many ways, come to represent the new, great global leveler; that is, in the same way 550 years ago Gutenberg’s moveable printing type press was central to the transition from the late middle ages to the Renaissance, and in the same way radio waves helped to re-shape the modern world, digitalization has been central to the formation of the postmodern world.

<15> The new media tends to disregard or blur not just the boundaries of traditional genre, but also continues to raise questions of identity, authority, and verifiability: Who created the information? What do they know? Is it reliable?

<16> The new media also challenges space, time, and opportunity—the space where information can be stored shrinks with every microchip innovation (megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes); the speed of access to that space increases with every new processor (megahertz, gigahertz, teraflops); and every new means of reception (cable, coaxial cable, fibre optic cable, wireless, satellite) expands the places where you can receive information (at home, at work, at the airport, in your car, in the coffee shop . . .). Thus, the new media is defined by the ease of information creation, transmission, and reception that is trumped with each new device, each new version of software; we witness the rush to create and market integrated, multi-functioning, mobile, hand-held devices that function as your telephone, your answering machine, your fax, your computer, your radio, your camera, your day planner, your calculator, your map (GPS), your voice recorder, your notepad, your gamepad, and your music source.

Item: CNN, Monday, 7 March 2003: Aaron Brown when CNN was showing three different screens at once during his television show: “We may have information overload, but that is the technology we have.”

The Medium is the Money

<17> While the American Government was, as they say, hammering out plans for its “war on terrorism” in the aftermath of 9/11, CNN would have been making its own plans on how best to represent—that is, market—that “war”: what graphics, which banners, which symbols, which story-lines, which reporters, which experts, which locations, which pundits, what music. And when the US Government decided to turn its political and military attention to Afghanistan, CNN, like all the news media, had to come up with its own way to best represent America’s new exercise in international relations, and together we all learned how to pronounce “Al-Qaeda.” The news is, after all, a story—and stories, as fiction, have their forms and elements that content can be poured into (Hall, 1984; Fiske, 1989, 293-96). We might say, then, that CNN had to make narratological decisions about thematics, its narrators, protagonists, antagonists, conflicts, plots, settings, leading actions, and, at some point, climax and resolution. But such resolution, like bin Laden, was hard to find. We would have to stay tuned.

<18> Having more or less secured Afghanistan, in the fall of 2002 America turned its attention to Iraq, where at least a bad guy could be found. A new narrative was called for. Importantly, it would also need a title, a banner under which to construct its stories and plot lines; and we can be reasonably certain the choice for the title was not taken without some consideration of production value and marketing potential. There would have been an awareness that, ten years earlier, CNN’s fortunes and status had turned on the significant new-market share it grabbed with coverage of the Gulf War. As a part of a company with its net worth largely determined by the publicly-traded value of its stocks, it is in the interests of those who manage the fortunes of CNN and those they serve (the stockholders) to produce a good narrative with all its attendant elements—that is, to produce ratings that bolster its net worth. The medium is the money, and the money is in producing a good story with a good title.

The New Media Credo

<19> The “global village” Marshall McLuhan conceptualized (McLuhan, 1964), resulting from what for him were the pervasiveness of radio waves that encircled and shrunk the planet, can be revived with new relevance when we turn it upon “the new media.” Internet and globalized telecommunications in particular, and the heavily marketed drive toward “easy access,” allow more information of a more complex nature to come to more people for less cost and at a faster rate via more devices. No longer do you go to the store, the library, the showroom, or even your place of work; they can come to you as the portably virtual. In the wonderful world of WiFi, we are networked, interfaced, logged on, on-line, roaming, hotspotting, streaming, surfing, uploading, downloading, blogging, blackberried, bluetoothed, text-messaging, getting hits, browsers browsing, search engines searching. Some suggested that we are suffering from an “infodemic.” Once upon a time, in the peacenik, counter-culture haze of the 1960s, the era was defined by Timothy’s Leary’s psychedelic credo of “turn on, tune in, drop out.” Today’s new media digital credo might be “log on, surf around, log out.”

Coca-Cola Culture + McDonaldization + WWE = CNNing

<20> The first of these terms—“Coca-Cola culture” (or its more ideologically aggressive incarnation of “Coca-colonization”)—refers to the globalization of a product through promotion, leading to cultural homogenization (Barker, 2002, 141; Warnock, 1991); “McDonaldization” refers to “the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world” (Ritzer, 2000, 1). For the third term, CNNing, I take my lead from these first two since they conflate marketing, management, globalization, consumption, and ideological concerns, and also from “professional” wrestling (in particular, the World Wrestling Federation, now known as World Wrestling Entertainment), when, a few years ago, it designated a new media genre for itself called “sports entertainment,” rather than “sports.” I propose to use the term “CNNing” [2] to describe the transformation from the traditional genre of “news” to new genre of news entertainment, where the style and content of news presentation is determined by

  1. the conventions, characteristics, and goals of commercial television (for example, quick moving images, attention-seeking sound, jingles, fitting the length and style of storylines and presentations around the commercial break, an emphasis on celebrity, the desire for good ratings);
  2. the rapidly changing conventions of the new media that relies on interactivity and technology;
  3. an interest in events that can be transformed into or captured as spectacle or the sensational [3];
  4. an explicit fascination with its own apparatus, site of production, and power; and
  5. overt connections to corporate-related products.

Further, CNN can, from a postcolonial perspective, be viewed part of an expansionary venture, an enterprise, always looking for new territories, new markets, where it can stake claims of media-market sovereignty, but also, whether implicitly or explicitly, reproduce the hegemony of its producer culture. This form of media colonization, or media imperialism, draws CNN into the new media’s agenda of connectivity. [4]

ITEM: CNN, 9 March 2003, on the ticker-tape (“crawl”) news that runs below the main images: Coca-Cola and McDonalds are concerned about world-wide anti-American reaction to the conflict with Iraq.

Hyper-Convenience, Hyper-Connectivity

<21> In the of realm of the new media where news is available twenty-four hours a day using a stockpile of ever-new devices, no longer is there a need to pick up a newspaper, tune in at the top of the hour for the radio news, or plunk down in front of your television with a cocktail at 6:00 pm for the evening news. You can get the same information—only more recent information—while you suck down a slurpee at 7-Eleven, double bogey the 18th at your local golf course, or pay your fines at the video store. Using, for example, the services of “CNN to Go,” “CNN Mobile,” “CNNlive,” or CNN AvantGo,” you can have e-mail alerts or messages about breaking news sent to your pager, cell phone, PDA, or laptop. The marketing challenge is to sell you on the necessity of information via continuous connectivity. In the case of “SHOWDOWN: Iraq,” the “sell” was based on anticipation and impending news of a major event—a spectacle: the hyper build-up to an event often constructs the public’s hyper-interest in an event, which, in turn, influences, at the least, the government’s management of information, and, at most, the government’s policies and actions. CNN’s approach to the event suggests that the public could hardly wait for the war, just like, at about the same time, it could apparently hardly wait for Matrix Reloaded to be released. No longer is it enough just to get the news; you must get it NOW and you must get it WHEREVER YOU ARE. Something must happen. Two of CNN’s marketing slogans promote new media paranoia: “Be the first to know.” and “The Need to Know Network.” Why do we need to be the first to know? Know what? Why do we need to know? And so we all waited for the war with Iraq, the toppling of Saddam, and the discovery of weapons of mass destruction; and we noted that the troop build-up seemed to go as smoothly as the plot build-up—or was it the other way around?

ITEM: “CNN Mobile, the first mobile telephone news and information service to be available globally with pan-regional content, is currently available to more than 90 million subscribers in 24 countries around the world” (CNN Mobile).

The Birth of a Station

<22> CNN’s in-house history, its “Milestones” chronology, reveals that, besides its growth, CNN is especially prideful of exclusivity and firstness: “the first live US telecast from Cuba since 1958,” “the only network to air live coverage of the space shuttle Challenger explosion,” “the only network to air live, continuous coverage of the Iran-Contra hearings,” “the first with news and live pictures of coup d’etat in the Soviet Union,” etc. (“CNN Milestones”). That is, as far as CNN goes, the best news scenario seems to revolve around exclusive coverage of a significant event; if it cannot have exclusive coverage, then at least it wants to be the first to “break” the news (though it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between breaking the news and making the news). This, of course, is terrific for ratings.

<23> The most significant moment in CNN’s fortunes came in January 1991: a couple of its reporters happened to be in Baghdad when the U.S. starting bombing and the 42-day Gulf War began. “Milestones” puts it this way: “CNN alone reports live from Baghdad on the night the war on Iraq begins, with a record U.S. audience and a worldwide audience of nearly 1 billion, the largest audience of a non-sporting event in television history.” At this moment, when the number of U.S. households tuned into CNN went from about one million to ten million, cable news in general, and CNN in particular, became a serious competitor not just with the established broadcast news of NBC, ABC, and CBS (Campbell et al, 2003, 209), but with events that are pure entertainment: sports telecasts. The viewing habit began: if a significant news event is happening, you tune into CNN.

<24> Sometimes, however, there is a lag in major events, or a particular event seems to be stalled. This lag in events combined with a stall of a potentially huge event seems to have been the case in late February/early March 2003, when CNN had us all waiting for the showdown to show up. Not much seemed to be happening. Even the sports scene seemed to be in limbo: no NFL, baseball in spring training, the NBA and NHL winding down toward playoffs, and Tiger Woods, of course, winning. So with arms inspections trundling forward, with Saddam occasionally disarming a weapon or two, and with peace protests ever present, in an effort to keep our thumbs off the remote, we were served up Robert Blake’s murder case, profiles of North Korea’s seemingly loony leader, Michael Jackson’s nose, and Joan Lunden’s eminent surrogate twins. The Canadian Broadcasting Company’s (CBC) premier comedy show, “The Royal Canadian Air Farce,” captured the stall in newsworthy events and CNN’s subsequent struggle with it. A comedian impersonating CNN’s news anchor Aaron Brown at his desk says, “If nothing happens, you’ll see it here first on CNN” (“CNN Nothing Report”).

“There’s something happening here, What it is ain’t exactly clear . . .”

<25> Television news influences both public perception and government policy. A profound example was the coverage of the Vietnam War, which is often referred to as the first “livingroom war.” Though delayed by the time it took to fly reels across the Pacific, that on-the-spot footage of wounded or dead GI’s being carted out of the impenetrable chaos of some foreign jungle for a cause that was, at the least, confusing and, at the most, objectionable, continues to haunt the American cultural psyche that struggles to come up with a narrative that offers closure. The news, that is, constructed a troubling narrative with a non-climatic ending that the public didn’t care for, and as such played a role of the US withdrawal from Vietnam.

<26> Years later, the influence of news in general, and CNN in particular, has become an even more problematically complex presence in the coverage of events. But if, in the early 1970s, the news constructed an early exit from Vietnam, in 2003, was it equally capable of constructing an atmosphere promoting a pre-eminent entrance to Iraq? A showdown, perhaps?

“You got fired? That reminds me of episode of . . .”

<27> Two loop-back phenomena are worth noting. The first has to do with the planning of an event if those who plan it are aware, in advance, it will receive television coverage. Because television has become the most important means to mediate events, these planners to some degree necessarily stage events to profitably “play” to the conventions of television coverage. In short, the medium constructs the event. And the medium, after it records the events, further re-constructs it, manufactures it, runs it through the gamut of programming, directorial, and filmic decisions. Anyone naïve enough to stand before television cameras without an awareness of what a television image can do risks all. Richard Nixon may have lost the election to John F. Kennedy because he didn’t pay enough attention to the power of the reproduced television image (telegenics) during the first ever televised presidential debate on 26 September 1960. Most of the 66.4 million viewers watched it favored Kennedy; those who heard it on the radio thought Nixon did just as well.

<28> The second loop-back points to a shift in how we gauge reality, our lives, our schedules. This goes far beyond saying, “Oh, I have to get off the phone now because [insert your favorite TV program here] is on.” A thoroughly postmodern citizen, saturated with the fragmented, surface stuff and fluff of popular culture, is likely to measure and compare experience to what is seen in movies and on television. When 9/11 took place, by far the most common immediate response was, “It was just like a movie!” No longer, then, do we call upon the great books or teachings of western culture to measure our words or gauge our actions. Again, popular culture becomes the baseline that constitutes the meaning of our experience. The Homer we know best is not the Greek epic poet who gave us the Odyssey, but the cartoon character who gave us “Doh!”

ITEM: The Oxford English Dictionary recently added “Doh”: "Expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has just said or done something foolish" (Libaw).

War is Good for the News Business

<29> Up until CNN’s coverage of US’s 1991 conflict with Iraq, CNN’s highlights were the live coverage of the space shuttle Challenger explosion and the Tiananmen Square student uprising. Sometimes this conflict is referred to as the “Gulf War” or “Persian Gulf War,” but the name associated with the conflict, and co-opted by popular culture via the media’s coverage, comes from the name given to the US military operation: “Desert Storm.” The phrase has a catchy and poetic ring, and not just because it echoes the name of the general in charge of leading the American troops: “Stormin’ Norman Schwartzopf.” “Desert Storm” also conjures up an unstoppable, powerful, natural force that destroys all that stands in its way, which, given the US and coalition forces’ high-tech weaponry and daunting military capabilities relative to Iraq’s, is not that far from the truth—except for the “natural” bit.

<30> In the same way CNN’s 1995 televised O. J. Simpson trial spun off media fame for those close to the action (like Greta Van Susteren, “Kato” Kaelin, Christopher Dardin, Johnnie Cochran, Jr., Marcia Clark, Alan Dershowitz, and Faye Resnick), the Gulf War did the same. Peter Arnett, Bernard Shaw, Christiane Amanpour and the aptly named Wolf Blitzer became more than newspersons on location. They were presented and promoted as celebrity journalists; and after 1991, their profiles (their media personality cachet) increased considerably.

<31> The Gulf War, it turned out, was not much of a war. The Americans, with 500,000 troops at the ready, lost 148 soldiers in battle deaths; the Iraqis losses are estimated at 100,000. As one writer put it, the war amounted to a “beautiful slaughter” (Atkinson, 1994). Nonetheless, Desert Storm was good for the fortunes of CNN. It “gave luster to CNN, which proved perfectly suited for the hour-after-hour, you-are-there narrative” (Moore).

<32> Then there are those who, at least theoretically, hold that the Gulf War did not, in a conventional sense, take place at all, that it was a “simulated” war, a conflict more “imagined” by the media than an actual event (Baudrillard, 1992, 192-96). The point at least makes us ask the question: What is the site where the meaning of an event—in this case a war—is constructed? One answer must have to do with the dominant form of how an event is reproduced, and in this case that dominant form was the media’s reproduction via television news. What do we know beyond that screen? How did that “war” enter the lives, the experience, of those, say, in North America and Western Europe? Today’s media-savvy postmodern is citizen of course aware that 1) the news is a production—a constructed, heavily mediated representation—and 2) there is nothing much you can do about it.

Talking Heads, Questioning Questions, and Wagging the War

<33> While “SHOWDOWN: Iraq” was the banner under which CNN paraded stories about America’s impending conflict with Iraq, it ran a seemingly inexhaustible series of experts, spin doctors, and pundits before its cameras: retired generals, weapons analysts, Gulf War veterans, foreign policy specialist, authors, professors, pollsters, think-tank gurus, former ambassadors, former secretaries of state, former speech writers, former journalists, and politicians. The questions (and following are a sampling of them) always pointed in the same direction: How long should it take to win this war? How prepared are our troops? What will the war look like? What strategy will we use? What kind of resistance should we expect? How will Saddam strike back? What weapons will serve us best? Do we need the help of others to win this war? What kind of casualties should we expect? If our soldiers are killed on the battlefield by biological weapons, should they be cremated right there? What will post-Saddam Iraq look like? How long should we stay? Will it be easy to find the Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction? What will a war cost? After 19 March 2003, CNN’s new banner quickly became “Strike on Iraq” followed almost immediately with “War in Iraq,” followed by “The New Iraq” when Saddam’s statues began to fall in the second week of April 2003. [5]

<34> Is it possible that the formulation of such questions solicit answers that suggest, in advance, a particular course of action? Does this kind of media discourse constitute an incubation period for a conflict?

<35> The various sub-banners that CNN ran under the “SHOWDOWN: Iraq”—for example, “Countdown to War,” “March to War,” “Road to War,” “Getting Reading for War,” “The Cost of War,” “The War of Words,” “The Questions of War,” “Target: Saddam,” “Saddam in the Cross-Hairs,” “On the Brink”—created, through a grammar of mediated inevitability, what might be called a public predisposition for an event. In this case, that event would be a war with Iraq. When “the most trusted name in news” puts its discursive sights on an issue, which, in this case, for them was an event-to-be, then the rhetoric of inexorableness operates as both the promotion and the formation of public opinion, both of which, as mentioned earlier, may have some influence on government policy-making. The experts paraded before the cameras spoke to those headlines and answered those questions with a well-rehearsed certainty that left, as they say, little room for doubt.

<36> If, day after day, the captioned headlines of the most influential news media were, for example, “The Struggle for Peace,” “Finding the Road toward Reconciliation,” “The Move Toward Resolution,” or “The Hope for Dialogue,” would public perception and government policy have been different?

Reality Television? Now THERE’S an Oxymoron!

<37> Television news, like, for example, sitcoms, soaps, dramas, cartoons, sports broadcasts, variety shows, talk shows, action shows, children’s programs, and detective shows, is a just another television genre. The news broadcast cannot transcend the limits of how it represents events, since those limits are determined, in advance and at the most fundamental level, by the physical nature of the television that sits before you. Once again, as McLuhan (1964, 7-21) pointed out years ago, the medium is the message, and here the medium, the vehicle of mediation, is television.

<38> If we were generous in describing what takes place, we might say that the news is a representation of reality. Less generously, we would say that television is a two-dimensional visual and audio approximation subject to directorial decisions and techniques as well as the filmic conventions of framing, angles, focus, editing, voice-overs, musical scores, captions, special effects, time constraints, and so on—the elements of micro-mediation: the complex, active matrix of images and sounds that you receive into your home in simple, passive ways.

<39> It’s not reality that we see—not unless reality has a sound track, slow motion, and is framed by commercials for cars, cleaning products, soft drinks, and, of course, other television shows. “Reality television” is an oxymoron, and only a moron, or an ox, would believe that it closely approximates the world beyond the toob. Your only possible vehicle of control is the remote, but its primary function is to allow you to endlessly search the woods looking for trees.

Quiz: Art Imitating Life Imitating Art . . .

<40> Once upon a time, there was a large, very large, international media organization that, via ratings, could financially benefit by encouraging a major conflict—a war—between two countries.

Question 1: The key participant in this plotline is:

Question 2: The name of the performance is:

Question 3: The name of the large, very large, international media organization is:

Reading Postmodern Media

<41> The reason for making a shift to a new genre formulation of “news entertainment” or “CNNing” follows from and is a reflection of a postmodern conception of media: a hyper-radical awareness of the arbitrary construction of “meaningful” discourse, where the apparatus of production and representation themselves become the pretense of content. Thus we have television shows like Seinfeld and Late Night with David Letterman that are radically self-conscious of the conventions they use and the genre under which they both operate and subvert, and they generate content from that radical self-consciousness and subversion. They laugh at themselves, parody themselves, and, in the spirit of intertextuality, openly borrow their terms of reference, yet the “reality” they create and borrow from is self-referential or at least the product of popular culture; they resist deep meaning; they blur the distinctions between something/nothing, important/unimportant, seriousness/flippancy, reality/fiction. Take the example of how Late Night with David Letterman constantly shows the cameras, calls upon the participation of stagehands as part of the performance, and makes use of Dave’s sense of the absurd and apparent indifference to how his show fares. As Umberto Eco points out, “The disquieting fact is that if you see a TV camera on television it is certain not to be the one that is filming (unless there is a complex mis-en-scene using mirrors). Hence, every time the TV camera appears, it is telling a lie” (Eco, 1997, 156).When CNN presents its news, the background behind the anchors is abuzz with activity and ablaze with flickering monitors and flashing lights; they are, in effect, showing us their factory of the imaginary, the site where the news is created and manufactured. There no longer seems to be anything behind the scenes. In a postmodernist sense, all is surface.

<42> Some of this can be applied to characterize the “new media”: unlike the old media, the new media tends to display its apparatus, its conventions, its backgrounds as the site of meaning, and here is where self-awareness gestures toward irony, and this may be part of the reason for the playful suspiciousness we have of the veracity of the new media: all that hyper-radical consciousness, critical self-reflexiveness, and technical wizardry point to the idea of glib hyperbole and artifice—to a shrug and a wink which says, in effect, to us, its audience-consumers: “We know this is not real, and we think you know, too.” We, consuming all the while, look back, and nonetheless say—to borrow from the cynically disenchanted chorus of one of Kurt Cobain’s songs—“Here we are now, entertain us” (Cobain 1991).

A Show about Something

<43> Medium: Television

Genre: Situation Comedy (“sitcom”)

Program: Seinfeld (season four, episode 10)

Episode: “The Virgin”

Aired: 11 Nov 1992
The set up: Marla (the pretty English virgin who rearranges closet space for her clients) asks Jerry about his trip to Berlin to see the wall come down, but Jerry has forgotten he had used this only as an excuse not to see her any further.

Marla [to Jerry]: So, how was your trip to Berlin?
Jerry: Trip to Berlin?
Marla: Remember? That's why you put off doing the closets. You said you were going to Berlin for a while.
Jerry: Oh, right, right.
Marla: The wall had just come down, and you told me you wanted to be part of the celebration.
Jerry: Yes, yes, I did. But, you know, I was watching it on CNN, and they covered it so well I thought, "Why knock my brains out?"

<44> This Seinfeldian moment tells us a number of things:

  1. That CNN has currency (name recognition) in popular culture.
  2. That CNN’s representation of events substitutes for experience.
  3. That watching CNN becomes an accepted form of participating in an event.
  4. That CNN is a convenient way to know the world.
  5. That CNN is perceived as credible and current.
  6. That CNN is watched by Jerry Seinfeld.
  7. That Jerry has no problem lying.

Item: Seinfeld is produced by Castle Rock Entertainment, which is owned by Time Warner, which owns CNN.

There’s No Business Likes News Business

<45> CNN presents its “news” in styles and formats that approximate the variable, quick-moving nature of commercial television programming, where the emphasis is on entertainment that beckons viewers to hang around long enough to take in the commercials. There’s the old conundrum: Is television a series of programs framed by commercials, or is television a series of commercials framed by programming?

<46> In terms of attention-seeking behavior, CNN in the 1990s, with its style of presentation, did to television news what Sesame Street in the early 1970s did for children’s television programs: all that music, all that color, all those quick edits, all that framing; and, of course, all those memorable characters and the larger-than-life associations.

<47> Through these techniques—the posturing and the visual discourse of authority—CNN’s anchors and correspondents are constructed as stars and celebrities. Each program has its own musical score. Their identity, created by the producers, makes these figures a significant part of the news; television is the medium, but the message is celebrity. That is, we don’t watch “The News,” but we get news entertainment mediated through the identity or personality of one of the celebrities. The clear evidence is that their names are part of the program: American Morning with Paula Zahn, TalkBack Live with Arthel Neville, Inside Politics with Judy Woodruff, Wolf Blitzer Reports, Lou Dobbs Moneyline, Connie Chung Tonight, Larry King Live, and NewsNight With Aaron Brown (this was the programming lineup during the “SHOWDOWN: Iraq” period). Even Crossfire, which does not have an individual name as part of the program title, is designed to construct conflict using the well rehearsed and ideologically polarized roles of its volatile hosts; viewers expect and get the huffing, puffing, and posturing.

We like to watch

<48> Most of the world does not look to America but at America. America’s most influential export is not its foreign policy or items that have “Made in America” stamped on them. While there is little doubt that America’s military and economic clout is enough to get the attention of most of the planet, it might be suggested that the world “knows” and is influenced by America mainly via its mass media; and the most ubiquitous manifestation of that mass media is doubtlessly popular culture. Tuning into or viewing it is only as limited as the relatively inexpensive and accessible technologies required to receive or play it. A significant portion of the planet knows Lucy, Gilligan, Colombo and Jer-RY Jer-RY. They know how Dirty Harry can make your day. As long ago as the early 1980s, an American television show (with its name based on a city that often represents American values) illustrated the reach of American popular culture: Dallas. The show, which aired from April 1978 until 1991, was watched obsessively in over ninety countries. And this was before the wide use of satellites, videos, and the internet, but it was not before cultural critics viewed Dallas as a form of “cultural imperialism” (Ang 1985, 2-3).

<49> The world watches America, its satellite dishes turned to the stars—and stripes. People around the world large know the difference between Donald Rumsfeld and Donald Duck; they are on a first-name basis with Cher, Oprah, Madonna, and Martha; they know Larry King, Hulk Hogan, and what happened last week on Survivor. There are also places beyond America where the terms of reference by which people give meaning to their experiences come almost from American television, all the way from The Simpsons to The Sopranos. And all of these forms of identity and identification, brought to us by mediated presences, are framed by and embedded with advertising, beliefs, values, behaviors, and products—in short, the stuff of ideology, and that ideology is American. Should we be surprised that Saddam’s favorite movie is a celebrated Hollywood movie, The Godfather?

<50> Much of the world also likes to visit America, if only to make a pilgrimage to the two meccas of American pop culture: Disneyland and Universal Studios—although we note that CNN, cashing in on its celebrity, also offers tours of its studios where you can, on the way out, stop at their gift shop and purchase CNN merchandise, including fourteen different CNN coffee mugs, eleven CNN caps, and various CNN items of toddler clothing. [6] This is apparently what you do when you are part of the entertainment industry.

Celebrity Knows Best

<51> When it comes to a big news event, the media constructs—postures, produces—not only newspersons as celebrities and experts as celebrities, but celebrities as experts.

<52> Why does the media wish to empower persons, who may happen to be bestowed with, for example, terrific looks, acting talent, or an extraordinary voice box, with such expertise? The answer must, in some ways, be tied to the mandate of the media and what, through the mechanism of exposure and the attendant means of representation, it can create, market, and sell. The actions and words of these, the most highly mediated persons, have authority bestowed upon them by identification and identification only. This form of production is, within the realm of popular culture, called celebrity, and, when it comes to the news, the price we sometimes pay for it takes the form of banal commentary. Celebrity, then, becomes the vehicle of public attention and focus, and whatever comes out of those talking head must apparently be treated with special status.

<53> Celebrities are, in some ways, the equivalent of brand names, which bestow consumer confidence by name recognition. This name recognition and associated values is created by the most successfully pervasive form of exposure in western culture: advertising. Chevy Trucks? Like a rock. Coke? It’s the real thing. McDonalds? They do it all for you. Tums? For the tummy. Further, the actions and words of celebrities that makes them authorities on politics also makes them the object of our interest when their “talents” are turned elsewhere. Why else should we have extensive media coverage of who Hugh Grant bonks, what Robert Downey, Jr. puts up his nose, when Martha Stewart trades stocks, where Winona Ryder shoplifts, why Oprah diets, and how Michael Jackson tucks children in?

<54> We too have evidence that takes us beyond noting that the media constructs experts from celebrities. We can say that the media’s construction of celebrity-as-expert by-passes the very issue of and the public’s interest in expertise. Witness the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California. For many, he seems to have been elected for one reason: he is a celebrity, and the values he represents are conflated with his celebrity image and status imported from and created by popular culture. Nothing is particularly new about this phenomena, especially in American politics (West & Orman, 2002; Marks & Fischer, 2002); in this case, however, given the juxtaposition of Schwarzenegger’s extremely high level of celebrity and extremely low level of political experience, the obvious needs stating: celebrity can be a determiner of public trust [7].

Attention CNN Shoppers: The War on Iraq is on special in aisle 17

<55> Who needs media critics to tell you that news is a consumer product, that it competes in the market place with all those retailers where you fill your shopping cart? On the weekend of 22-23 March 2003, in the earlier stages of “War in Iraq,” Wal-Mart reported that its consumer figures were down. They attributed it to the “CNN Effect,” a term in general circulation often used to describe how news coverage—especially saturated coverage—of a significant event effects behavior: people become glued to their television sets in order to watch events unfold; they may take some time off work, they may cancel travel arrangements, and, in this case, they might not shop (Livingston, 1997; Belknap, 2002; Robinson, 2002; and Hess & Kalb, 2003). For Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer of hard goods (with $218 billion in sales in the fiscal year ending January 2002), its anticipated patrons were instead consuming the products of Time Warner’s CNN, the world’s largest producer of media (with $41.1 billion in revenue for 2002).

<56> But the CNN Effect goes beyond viewer and consumer behavior. It also refers to how real-time global media coverage of particular events may influence political policy: how it may set agenda, impede goals, or accelerate both administrative and military decisions. Two truisms spin off: 1) the form, content, and timing of news coverage plays both a political and public role in mediating, and therefore constructing, our anticipation and perception of events; and 2) “CNN” has become the name associated with this effect.

ITEM: “In an exclusive, first television interview following his controversial visit to Iraq, actor and director Sean Penn will appear on Larry King Live Saturday, Jan. 11 [2003]. In a one-hour interview, Mr. Penn will talk about his recent three-day stay in Baghdad and the potential for war in Iraq.”

“In bed with . . . ?” “No, I said ‘embedded’.”

<57> QUESTIONS: In the eventual “War in Iraq” (a.k.a. “Operation Iraqi Freedom”) that followed from “SHOWDOWN: Iraq” and “Strike on Iraq,” what kind of relationship was established between the military and some aspects of the media? How would this have influenced 1) the stories of the journalists and 2) the actions of the soldiers/military?

<58> ANSWERS: The answer, my friend, is blowing in the spin. And this spin was produced by the way the military created a special force known as “embedded journalists” who were trained, in advance, to accompany the military in Iraq. As McLuhan noted years ago in a chapter called “Weapons,” in “the electric age,” information is the new weapon; “Ink and photo,” he wrote, “are supplanting soldiery and tanks” (McLuhan, 1964, 338-45). McLuhan could not have predicted that “ink and photo” would be replaced with, for example, hand-held satellite dishes and night-vision video phones, but these new media technologies only make McLuhan’s point about the power of medial culture even more cogent. This idea is not lost upon American military strategists, who clearly see how the world can be controlled “medially”—some even imagine future conflicts using a “broadcast weapon that could permanently alter human behavior without causing physical harm” (Peters, 1995-96).

<59> The way many stories were reported, a strong, enmeshed relationship was established between the journalists and soldiers who accompanied them through battle circumstances. As one veteran journalist noted, “It's very difficult to write anything critical about a guy you're going to have breakfast with the next morning” (Rooney, 2003). No doubt the pervasive presence of the journalists influenced certain military actions. The coalition forces were reasonably certain of the outcome and style of the military engagement, and it is doubtful they would have allowed such embedding if they thought it would not positively represent the story of their military actions. Yet even Republican politicians noted a particular function of embedded reporters: “it may serve no other purpose than to advance the heated ratings war” (McClintock, 2003).

<60> So, if we posit that, from September 2002 until March 2003, CNN constructed a media discourse that might be seen to have initially encouraged a “showdown” with Iraq, is it also possible that, with the unforeseen large number of American casualties during the occupation up into 2005, the power of CNN and the media’s representation of this new conflict might just as well encourage a changing policy regarding this occupation? How important is it for military (a.k.a. the government) to control what gets seen in the news? By the third week of April 2004, and as the body count of soldiers grew, an answer became clear as the Pentagon demanded adherence to an official ban on images of caskets bearing American soldiers. Now we want you, now we don’t—this may be the implicit message from the Pentagon. The media, of course, will continue doing what it does best, which now seems not only to get a story, but, in the spirit of CNNing, to become a part of it. One thing is clear: everyone—the government, the military, the media, the public—knows the power of representation.

ITEM: The Military is the Media. The US military media is accused by the BBC media of embellishing the 1 April 2003 rescue “mission” of Pfc. Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital. Did the footage released by the military embellish the operation—for whom, and in what way? What does this mean for Jessica Lynch? Only that, after her honorable discharge in August 2003, that she will enter the realm of popular culture with book deal and a TV movie. As for Ms. Lynch, she has gone on record numerous times to express her confusion why the “rescue” was filmed in the first place.

Uncle CNN Wants YOU!

<61> The war in Iraq and its build up received the most extensive and saturated media coverage of any event in history; it was as if, somehow, we could hardly wait to see the fireworks—and we had plenty of notice. We had, after all, been brooding for what Douglas Kellner (2003) refers to as a “megaspectacle” for months. When the first shots we fired on 19 March 2003, the news anchors immediately began to coo, almost gloat, over the job their field reporters and their technologies were doing; that is, the story was often about the story coming into being, about the remarkable nature of, for example, infra-red real-time video, or about how their journalists brought people together. They, like us, were ready: Lights, Cameras, and (finally!) Action.

<62> Given this style of buildup, in the Age of the New Media, how important is the news as a profitable commodity? Would it be preposterous to suggest that, proportionately speaking, more lives were sacrificed in the name of the media than in the name of military? Some figures are revealing:

It might seem that it is five times more likely that a media worker would be killed in Iraq during the official war period than military personnel.

Uber-Media

<63> The merging of Time Warner, Inc. and America Online on 11 January 2001 represents the folding of the old media into the new media to form what might called the Uber-Media: business based on multi-platform, integrated, interactive, and non-differentiated communication systems that operate via a wide range of blurred and overlapping technologies (TV, radio, phones, cellular phones, ISPs, PDAs, pagers, computers) and blurred and overlapping conduits (broadcast, cable, satellite, wireless, internet), controlled by a few large corporations with blurred transnational relations that also have interests in traditional hard media (books, newspapers, magazines, film).

<64> The operational mantra for the new media, as it is for CNN, is that it cannot stand still. Technology, the market place, and the news wait for no one.

The Media is the Message

<65> In a postmodern consumer age that combines shameless self-promotion and unembarrassed self-referentiality, CNN work up one morning—the morning after the Gulf War attack began—and found that it was famous, and it has played on and with that fame ever since. CNN has become part of the story: when it breaks big stories, especially exclusives or exclusive interviews; when it gets or gets rid of news stars; when it boldly goes where governments, armies, and public protectors fail to go, putting its own people in harm’s way; when, in a report, it draws attention to the technical innovations used to make the report; when news anchors give thanks to and respect for the extraordinary job their reporters in the field are doing; when new styles or formats of programming are featured; when it becomes the indirect conduit of communication between governments or individuals; when it is watched by various governments to see what’s going on with other governments; when it acquires or is acquired by new corporate relations.

<66> CNN, like the television, watches us as we watch it, and we seem to feed off each other’s desire to keep watching: they give us spectacle and narrative hooks, and we give them ratings and profitability. But CNN has become the object of its own gaze. This form of self-representation, when the news becomes the news via unrelenting promotion, might be called media narcissism: it is in love with what it looks at, which is itself; it is impressed with its own power. It is sometimes hard to tell where the news stops and the promotion begins. This takes place not only during news items that feature how and who got the story, but between news items and around commercial breaks. CNN’s voice-overs and flashy edited clips continually pump the reliability, trustworthiness, credibility, and ubiquitous scope of its product. We feel we are listening to someone pitching less nebulous products, like Crest toothpaste (which “four out of five dentists recommend”), Allstate Insurance (which “you’re in good hands with”), Campbell’s Soup (which is “Mm-mm good”). Like all good advertisers, CNN knows that, with repetition, it is difficult to distinguish between a fact, an opinion, and a slogan—or delusions of grandeur. We listen to CNN’s rhetoric of self-promotion: “The Power of Reporting; The Power of Experience; The Power of CNN.” We listen to CNN’s rhetoric hyperbole of content inclusiveness and temporal saturation: “All of the news, all of the time.” Finally, we are faced with a media company that, with a subtle trick of rhetoric, promotes itself as an individual: “No one,” CNN tells us, “gets you closer.” Indeed, its power is impossible to resist: “This is CNN.”

<67> With its strong narcissistic tendencies, we may have to put CNN on the therapist’s couch. We are then reminded that narcissism becomes pathological when power is constantly acted out; CNN, as least as a metaphorical body, more than perhaps any other television station, exhibits the symptoms of this pathology by continuously acting out its claims of powerful self worth. We should not be surprised that narcissistic personality disorder is associated with a need for admiration, fantasies of success, and an exaggerated sense of achievement. As CNN says about itself, “The most trusted name in news.” It is hard to argue with a signifier.

<68> CNN has come, then, to represent more than a particular 24-hour cable television news station with particular corporate relations. With its inclusive nature and canny forms of reproduction, self-representation, and self-promotion; with its saturated presence in hardware, software, airwaves, cable, and others conduits of transmission; and with its celebrity journalists who are part of the story, it has reached the summit of fame; it has, as this paper suggests, become a part of the most powerful form of meaning-making and representation since the first cave drawings: popular culture.

Notes

[1] For a complete listing of Time Warner’s holdings and affiliations, go to the “2003 AOL Time Warner Factbook”: http://www.timewarner.com/corporate_information/index.adp> 4 May 2004. [^]

[2] The term “CNNing” has appeared informally in a few places, but it has normally meant just watching CNN or a lot of news. [^]

[3] CNN’s content and style can be characterized by what Douglas Kellner (2003) calls “spectacle culture”: ranging from politics to sports, the media appears to be increasingly creating spectacle out of its portrayals of events. It is as if our postmodern frontal lobes need to take in whatever is bigger, better, faster, louder, or brighter; we need less story and more special effects; we need to be dazzled; we need the extravaganza; we need celebrities everywhere. As Guy-Ernest Debord (1967) pointed out long ago, all representations are also commodities, and as such are spectacles of the modern; the news is no exception: it is a representation, a commodity, and a spectacle. [^]

[4] Two other terms are useful here inasmuch as they have entered the descriptive discourse on the problematical intersection of knowledge, news, media, and public consumption: “infotainment” and “newszak.” The former term points to the genre of media presentation in which the viewer gets both knowledge of, information about, and entertained by the program. Exciting nature shows on television would be an example. A news program, by comparison, is ostensibly produced to privilege information; however, we have come to see that news, too, has put more emphasis in the entertainment component of its production value. “Newszak” refers mainly to corporate influence on programming, and in particular how programs about entertainment or light topics pose stylistically as news programs. [^]

[5] The most famous images depicting the toppling of a Saddam statue was from Fardus (“Firdos”) Square on 9 April 2003. Much of the media, including CNN, implied this was a large, sensational, and jubilant event. Other perspectives (and camera angles) suggest that it was a staged media event with only a few dozen Iraqis participating. Compare the photos from CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/09/sprj.irq.statue/index.html) with alternative sources (for example, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2842.htm, 5 May 2004). [^]

[6] To book your CNN Studio tour, go to <http://www.cnn.com/StudioTour>. [^]

[7] For example, a number of celebrity figures have gone into politics, including Fred Thompson (actor to senator), Clint Eastwood (actor to mayor), Fred Grandy (actor to congressman), Ben Jones (actor to congressman), Sonny Bono (singer/TV personality to mayor), Jack Kemp (professional athlete to congressman), Steve Largent (professional athlete to congressman), Bill Bradley (professional athlete to senator and presidential candidate) John Glenn (pilot/astronaut celebrity to senator and presidential candidate), Jesse Ventura (professional wrestler to governor), and Ronald Reagan (actor to governor and president). [^]

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