Eyeless in Iraq: The L.A. Times and the Fog of War

by Lila Rajiva

"(P)olitical language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness………one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them."
-- George Orwell, Politics and the English Language.

On April 19, the L.A. Times ran a piece entitled "Carnage Dims Hopes for Political Way in Iraq" written by staff writer Alissa J. Rubin. In many ways it is symptomatic of the way journalists today frame, obfuscate, and invert meaning through sub-textual narratives that are much more powerfully and insidiously self-censoring than any overt muzzling of the press. Rubin's article is the kind of impressionistic piece awash with innuendo that masquerades as unbiased journalism these days. The assumptions under which it is written are a form of a priori restraint beyond the usual limitations of what news to cover, how, and with what words. All the worse, it is on the face rather innocuous -- just another bit of first-hand reporting, seemingly neutral, liberal in sympathies, hardly the war-mongering right. Just for that, it warrants taking apart: The title sets us up for the subliminal framework within which she works:

RUBIN: Carnage dims hope for political way amid U.S. military action, Iraqis increasingly loathe presence of foreigners.

We are not told to whom or to what this "carnage" is related. Using an abstraction devoid of the moral context provided by an actor and a motive creates an emotional disjuncture between a story and its reader. Notice how Rubin’s syntax avoids calling attention to the missing subject of the title -- the perpetrator of the carnage. Is it the Iraqis or the Americans? "Action" after all is a value-neutral word. In fact, the only emotionally charged word is attached to the Iraqis who are said to loathe the presence of foreigners. Notice the word "foreigners" -- not occupiers, foreign troops, mercenaries, or anything that would tell us anything real about the role and nature of these innocent-sounding foreigners.

Eyeless in Iraq....