Repetition and Omission: How wars are made invisible in the media.

• Author: Solomon, Norman
• Position: BOOK EXCERPT - War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine

The essence of propaganda is repetition. The frequencies of certain assumptions blend into a kind of white noise, with little chance for contrary sounds to be heard or considered. In the United States, the dominant media discourse and standard political rhetoric about the country's military role in the world are like that.

The militarism that propels nonstop U.S. warfare is systemic, but the topic of systemic militarism gets little public attention. Ballooning Pentagon budgets are sacrosanct. While there can be heated disagreement about how, where, and when the United States should engage in war, the prerogative of military intervention is scarcely questioned in the mass media.

Even when conventional wisdom ends up concluding that a war was unwise, the consequences for journalists who promoted it are essentially nil. Reporters and pundits who enthusiastically supported the Iraq invasion were not impeded in their careers as a result. Many advanced professionally. In medialand, being pro-war means never having to say you're sorry. Journalists who have gone with the war program are ill-positioned to throw stones from their glass houses later on; the same holds true for media outlets.

The interwoven media and political establishments stay within what are mutually seen as the bounds of serious discussion. That is especially true of basic war choices. Members of Congress and top officials in the executive branch are acutely sensitive to the reporting and commentary in major media, which in turn are guided by the range of debate at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. The right of the United States to militarily intervene in various countries is rarely questioned. Nor do the dominant political and media elites express much concern about the consequences for people living in countries where the United States is making war.

Omissions--what we don't see and hear--might be the most pernicious messages of all. When routinely included in media, some types of images and themes are magnetic, drawing our attention and whatever thoughts go with it. At the opposite pole, what's omitted pushes thoughts away, providing tacit cues as to what isn't worth knowing or seriously considering.

In media frames, the routine exclusion of people harmed by U.S. warfare conveys that they don't really matter much. Because we rarely see images of their suffering, hear their voices, or encounter empathetic words about them, the implicit messaging comes through loud and clear. The...