Covering Bin Laden: Global Media and the World's Most Wanted Man by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2015-02-06T22:00:00+00:00

7

Images of Our Dead Enemies

Visual Representations of bin Laden, Hussein, and el-Qaddafi

SUSAN MOELLER, JOANNA NURMIS, AND SARANAZ BARFOROUSH

In a nine-minute speech at 11:35 p.m. Eastern time on the evening of Sunday, May 1, 2011, President Barack Obama announced that U.S. Navy SEALs had killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.1

How do you know someone is dead unless you see the evidence? If the fact of a death really matters—politically, militarily, even emotionally—is it enough to take someone else’s word for it, to just simply hear (or read) a narrative account of that death?

Does a waiting audience want—or need—visual confirmation?

In the minutes and hours after the news of Osama bin Laden’s killing broke first across social media and then through President Barack Obama’s brief May 1 speech to the nation, news outlets across the world scrambled to cover the story of the decade.2 With no immediately forthcoming photos of bin Laden’s corpse (and the White House’s subsequent decision not to release any of the Navy SEALs’ pictures of the dead bin Laden), mainstream news outlets were excused from the ethical as well as moral binary decision about whether to show or not show images of bin Laden’s corpse. Instead, news outlets the world over had a set of decisions to make about what kind of image to select to accompany the announcement of bin Laden’s death.

The choice of which visual would lead the news became a complex, even political decision. Some news outlets chose to run archival photos of bin Laden; others used iconic images of Al Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. Still others used pictures of Americans celebrating the news of bin Laden’s death, and some ran photos and tape of President Obama speaking from the East Room of the White House. In essence, through their choices, news outlets decided how to visually “frame” the death of Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man.

News media around the world considered their own priorities. What were they most interested in:

Presenting evidence of bin Laden’s death?

Reminding their audiences how “evil” bin Laden was—as evident in his masterminding of 9/11 and other terrorist acts?

Gloating over bin Laden’s downfall (and not so coincidentally emphasizing American power)?

Articulating the political meaning and consequences of his death for Al Qaeda, for terrorism, for the political fortunes of President Barack Obama?

Marking the historical moment?

Reporting the details of the U.S. raid?

These considerations—and this case study—are a dramatic reminder that framing is one of the most inevitable, yet at the same time most complex, of all media actions. Journalists, whether working in print, broadcast, or digital media and whether covering an event or an issue, must make choices about that event’s or issue’s most salient elements. In turn, those reported elements influence how audiences perceive and interpret that event or issue.3 The photographs and videotape that media chose to illustrate the breaking news of bin Laden’s death, for example, together with the headlines and stories that contextualized those images, framed bin Laden’s death for a watching world.

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