Iatribe

Monday, July 28, 2003

 
Gawker on the "Media at War" Conference

There were a number of students in attendance; the more vocal of whom appeared to be anti-war and not very happy with media coverage. I'm told that before I got there, CNN's Bill Hemmer was questioned by a scruffy young man in a hat who demanded an explanation that Hemmer didn't want to give. Hemmer used his trump card: some variation of 'Young man, how old are you?' The 'young man' responded, 'thirty-seven.' Hemmer stammered, 'Um...so am I!'

Having been there when it happened, I recall the exchange being somewhat different, and I sent Elizabeth this e-mail:

Elizabeth -
The exchange went like this. Hatted guy (who was one of the ones clapping fiercely at every semi-anti-war statement and generally made an ass of himself) started asking a question about how he's got this friend down in Atlanta that does graphics for CNN and how they were trying to come up with the "sexiest" graphics for the war coverage, and why they would show those graphics instead of "dead bodies." (Forgetting for the moment, apparently, that those graphics were used to surround images, not replace them).
The guy was obviously not young. Hemmer goes, "how old are you?" The guy says "thirty-seven," and Hemmer goes, "Well, I'm 38," and then proceeded to explain how they were _both_ too young to recall the kind of skepticism that pervaded coverage of the Vietnam War, and that what we were now discovering about Bush's statements before the war and not finding in Iraq is changing his generation's perspective, which is now going to change the coverage. It was actually a pretty humbling statement on his part -- and it should be said that, throughout, he was a pretty straightforward and humbling fellow. When Garey Younge of the Guardian noted the problem of TV coverage using the word "we," Hemmer responded later that he'd made a strong effort to keep the word off of CNN and that he didn't think it'd been used; so someone from the audience later shot back that "we" might not have been used, but "heroes" was, and Hemmer responded "Guilty as charged," admitting that it was a problem.
As probably the youngest person at the event, other than some kids in a family that walked in at the end, I did notice a sort of age-ist feel in the room -- but it didn't come from Hemmer.

keep it good,
Steven I. Weiss

Steven I. Weiss 7:57:00 PM