How,
when, and why American have media exposed global human
rights abuses?
Frederic
A. Moritz, writer, teacher, and former Asia
correspondent of The
Christian Science Monitor has designed and
maintains this site as an academic course supplement, a
stimulus to research and, and a guide to what is
available on the web.
This is not an "advocacy site" but an effort to "bridge"
a variety of perspectives.
The case studies may be used on line or downloaded in
.pdf format for use as "e-books" viewable with
Acrobat
Reader. Email the author to purchase at
nominal price a periodically updated cd rom of the entire
website.
This writing has grown from the author's work as a
correspondent covering Chinese domestic and foreign
policy -- and from more than twenty years of teaching and
research on the interplay of journalism and politics. It
seeks to:
*Develop an overall framework
for better understanding the economic, cultural and
technological conditions under which American media
spotlight overseas abuses in a way which impacts
American attitudes, politics, and policies.
*Spotlight the sometimes fine line between
distorted sensationalism producing stereotypes and
propaganda about overseas events -- and insightful
exposure of overseas brutality in a way which
encourages constructive action by governments and
peoples in America and elsewhere.
*Explore the inherent selectivity of American human
rights journalism -- as shaped by technology,
politics, culture, and the logic of history.
*Explore the way in which American human rights
reporting can act as a "gateway" to produce or
justify war.
*Illuminate the circumstances under which American
journalists have ignored or papered over massive
abuse -- such as in the cases of Hitler and
Stalin.
*Examine the impact of changing technology of
global human rights reporting in media such as
television and the Internet. New technologies have
cut information barriers, helped human rights
advocates gain media attention, and visually
dramatized bloody government crackdowns and
emaciating famines.
TO
STIR THE POT; OR CALM THE TEMPER?
Born of Victorian tastes,
two "outsiders,"Joseph Pulitzer and Mary Baker Eddy, took
opposite approaches to journalism reform. Pulitzer's
"Yellow
Journalism" helped set
the stage for modern human rights reporting. But the
reform movements pioneered by The New York Times
and The Christian Science Monitor have
complemented and restrained the journalistic excesses
inherited by today's media from "the yellows."
Download
"e-book" in .pdf.
BEYOND
BELIEF: IS THIS A "NAZI KIND OF THING?"
Is Saddam Hussein "Hitler Revisited?" How events of the
1930's created an atrocity "archetype" which, even today,
triggers journalistic investigation of "Nazi kind of
things." With hindsight it seems almost incredible that
American media so thoroughly failed in their coverage of
repression by Hitler and Stalin. The prevailing media
failings of the 1930's can be seen as a lesson against
which progress in human rights coverage can be measured.
Take a tour of a time when journalists seemed to "sleep"
and explore some simple reasons why the "holocaust" of
German concentration camps seemed ignored until after
World War II. Download
"e-book" in .pdf.
THIS
JOURNALIST AS PART OF THE STORY: REPORTING SURPRISE
ATTACK
This essay analyzes the pitfalls of intelligence
gathering -- and the role of the journalist as
"intelligence analyst." It explores issues of "surprise
attack" by tracing the impact of Japan's attack on Pearl
Harbor right up to the "Second Bush Administration" and
the attack on the World Trade Center. Intelligence can be
compromised by the "fog" of reality, by failure to
communicate, or by political blinders at "the top." Based
in part on this writer's personal experience in reporting
Deng Xiaoping's secret decision to invade Vietnam on
February 17, 1979. Deng would prove once again, as in
China's decision to launch human wave assaults on
American troops in Korea some 30 years before, that a
once humiliated China would risk a wider war to "stand
up." Download
"e-book" in .pdf
WHAT
THE CAMERA CATCHES: OVERSEAS CRIME
BEAT
An examination of the changing conditions
under which human rights issues become defined as "news"
-- and when patriotism (as in the Afghan and Iraq wars)
seems to shape it to patriotic purposes or make it
off-limits. An historical overview of how communications
and technology help American international human rights
journalism provide the sexy "blood and gore" for overseas
reporting. Supported by the technology of TV with its
vivid emphasis on violence and suffering, human rights
reporting has become our overseas crime reporting, a way
of "humanizing" the abstractions of distant peoples.
Coverage is greatest when there is clearly "blood on the
shovel." Download
"e-book" in .pdf
GATEWAY
TO WAR: MY LAI, MEDIA, AND IRAQ
In the war with Iraq American "on-team" media help
integrate many classic American themes -- from lofty
idealistic human rights crusades, to ruthless Indian
fighting to crafty "realpolitik." This study traces
developments in American journalism which foreshadow the
current emphasis on human rights issues in overseas
reporting. Traces the roots of modern human rights
journalism in the 19th century, especially "yellow
journalism;" surveys early examples, summarizes the
impact of World War II and the holocaust. Explores
American journalism's record of sometimes "taking
on" American atrocities. It also explores the
explosion of human rights reporting and awards boosted by
the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and the human
rights policies of the Carter years. Download
"e-book" in .pdf
MARGARET
FULLER: THE "MOTHER" WHO LED THE
WAY
This New England intellectual - also a poet
and an essayist - was perhaps the first great pioneer to
make of journalism a watchdog for alerting American
readers to human rights issues abroad. A decade before
the Civil War, as Europe erupted in the revolutions of
1848, Margaret Fuller, the "mother" of human rights
journalism, became a foreign correspondent as the last
stage in a personal voyage of intense intellectual and
emotional growth. She was an intellectual who became a
foreign correspondent - rather than a journalist by
trade. Download
"e-book" in .pdf
OVERVIEW
IN "YELLOW": THE "FATHER" WHO LED THE WAY
How "yellow
journalists" of the Hearst and Pulitzer chains
became human rights pioneers. An examination of "yellow
journalism" at home and abroad -- and of the deep roots
of today's "watchdog" human rights reporting in the
Victorian moralism of a century ago. An introduction to
how James Creelman, the "father" of human rights
journalism, exposed the Japanese massacre of Chinese
civilians during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1995, then
joined other American reporters to open the way for the
Spanish American war by exposing and sensationalizing
Spanish brutalities in Cuba. Download
"e-book" in .pdf
CREELMAN
AT PORT ARTHUR: FORGOTTEN SEEDS OF
PROPHECY
A case study of how "yellow journalist" James Creelman
helped launch American journalism as a power on the world
stage. He caused an international scandal by exposing
Japanese atrocities during the Sino-Japanese War of
1894-1895. Although an admirer of Japan, Creelman's
reporting forced an apology from Japan and prophetically
exposed the roots of Japan's later WWII atrocities. His
reporting provided deep, but quickly forgotten, insights
into Japan's modernization and expansion. This essay
compares early and contemporary human rights reporting
and examines the delicate balance between watchdog and
propagandist. Download
"e-book" in .pdf
CREELMAN
IN CUBA: "YELLOW" SEEDS OF WAR
A case study of how "yellow journalists" exposed the
brutalities of the pacification campaign conducted by
Spain in the 1890's. The coverage led to America's war
with Spain after the sinking of the battleship Maine in
Havana harbor. Spanish abuses helped justify American
empire in Cuba and the Philippines. Atrocities in Cuba
foreshadowed a coming century of guerrilla war - and how
journalists would cover it. America's war with Philippine
guerrilla insurgents, Britain's war against the Boers in
southern Africa, partisan wars in World War II, and
America's war against Vietnamese communists all too often
made academic the niceties of the Geneva Conventions.
Download
"e-book" in .pdf
SPANISH
LEGACY: THE IMPACT OF SANTO DOMINGO
Just what was going on in Cuba in the 1890's when "yellow
journalists" filed sometimes sensational reports on
Spanish atrocities against Cubans during a rebellion for
independence? Guest essayist Jaime GARCIA-RODRIGUEZ
compares the tactics used by Spain's
General Valeriano Weyler at the time of his mandate in
Cuba (1896-97) with those later used by the British Army
during the Boer War (1899-1902) and by the French Army
during the Algerian war (1954-61). Weyler brought to Cuba
the brutal violent experience of prolonged war in Santo
Domingo. Download
"e-book" in .pdf
EUROPEAN
MEDIA "WATCHDOG" UNITED STATES
Has the U.S. legal system, as practiced in Jefferson
County, Colorado, violated civilized standards of human
rights in relation to the treatment of children? That is
the question posed by a case in late October 1999 which
was little reported in the United States but sparked
outrage in some countries of Europe. News media there
raised public concern for pressure on the American
government in the case of an 11 year old Swiss-American
boy arrested and imprisoned on charges of sexual abuse
related to incest.
Download
"e-book" in .pdf