Media and the Military
Where do politics stop...Or do they?
By Heidi Russell Rafferty
The National Mall heaved with military wives, Gold Star families and injured veterans. Stefani Barner, whose husband has been to Iraq twice with the Michigan Air National Guard, scanned the crowd for television cameras, which she had hoped would broadcast the throng’s concerns about the war in Iraq.
But only one network, Fox News, devoted a single sentence to the January 2007 protest, Barner bitterly recalls. “Nobody cared,” she says.
Why should it matter? Barner says that when the media is conspicuously absent, it translates to lack of public understanding, and ultimately, lack of public support for the struggles of military families.
“If only the media would cover issues with any sort of constructive dialogue! But they downgrade all of it. At the end of the day, they’re not paying attention and not giving the public anything to listen to. If the public were given the information they needed, they would be outraged,” Barner says.
Other military wives agree that many of the issues that concern them are largely ignored in mainstream media coverage. Psychologist and Social Worker, LeslieBeth Wish, notes that such frustration, and also the way in which stories are portrayed, can negatively affect one’s psyche.
“The news always has a slant, and it’s usually bad news. Imagine being a mother with an overweight child and you’re watching about how obesity is widespread. How can that make you feel good about the situation? Now imagine that it’s a topic like PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The news loves to portray bad news – somehow that’s the nature of the industry. It can push your buttons of feeling like you failed. It talks about a group or a problem you don’t wish to belong to,” Wish says. “The news hardly ever says, ‘Here are some tips that are helpful.’ It’s not the first door they go to often.”
Overlooking the Obvious
The biggest aggravation among wives is what they call, “neglectful coverage.”
Take Roberta Stewart of Cornville, Ariz., whose husband Patrick died in 2005 in Afghanistan when his Chinook helicopter was shot down. Patrick was extremely open about what he’d witnessed. His team had helped women and children who had been raped, then scarred from acid that the Taliban had thrown on their bodies. But the details of such atrocities never made it to regular newscasts, Stewart says. She’s frustrated about efforts in Congress to de-classify PTSD for treatment and notes that some of her husband’s friends are still suffering from their wartime memories.
“My opinion is that if the American people knew and could experience what our soldiers are going through, they would rally to bring them home stateside,” Stewart says.
Other spouses also feel that the details of war should be covered, but for a different reason – to muster support for the ongoing mission.
Debra Kilpatrick of Bradenton, Fla., says when her husband returned from Baghdad in November, she asked him if anything positive was occurring in Iraq. He said, “Absolutely,” noting that the Iraqi army was becoming more self-sufficient and that many Iraqis continually expressed gratitude to American soldiers.
“I said, ‘The media is not printing it, nor will they,’” Kilpatrick says. “They’re one-sided liberals to the extreme. They don’t want to promote anything positive that will make the president look reputable. They print mistruths in order to fulfill their own agenda and won’t print what’s actually going on over there.”
On the home front, spouses say many of the problems their families face after their husbands return also goes largely unnoticed. Alexis Kirby of Spring Hill, TN, says her husband Chris Kirby did not receive any military health benefits when he came home, because he was not active duty. He’d been in the hospital twice when he was in Iraq.
“I don’t think regular civilian people understand the difference, because the media isn’t covering it. It’s not an intentional thing, but it happens because everyone throws us in one big hole,” Kirby says.
Barner, too, says there are large veteran-proponent organizations that aren’t getting the coverage they need. She’s a member of Military Families Speak Out, which has 3,700 members worldwide who work towards bringing troops home and also on the mental health concerns of those who have returned. But many Americans don’t even know the group exists, she says. Even the coverage of the issues at Walter Reed was scant, compared to the VA’s problems nationwide, she says.
Stewart says she feels that the media downgrades much of the suffering that military families experience.
“They don’t show the extreme pain and damage to the family when the soldier comes home. They are downplaying the damage to the families, the divorce rate, and of course I believe they have misled public to believe that (widows and families) are taken care of,” Stewart says. “The idea that you’re taken care of the rest of your life a fallacy, and the American people are unaware that we only get two years of health insurance.”
What’s behind the coverage?
Is slanted news coverage deliberate or just plain ignorance? Cynically, some say that stories are determined by advertisers’ interests. “It’s a money-making market rather than reporting the truth, which is why a lot of people are turning to the stand bys – the people covering news on their own on the Internet. I’m more likely to watch that, because it’s the honest truth without an opinion,” Stewart says.
Others speculate that political agendas drive the newscasts. But in general, wives interviewed agreed that lack of public interest in their plights also affect how the reporters choose the stories.
Even so, Stewart notes that she has encountered individual reporters who do care – and it makes a difference in the quality of a story. Stewart, who is a Wicca, waged her own fight against the VA to engrave a pentacle on her husband Patrick’s grave. She received a lot of media coverage during her personal crusade.
“The media backed me up, and without its support I couldn’t have succeeded,” Stewart says. “They represented me fairly but were probably harder on the VA and Bush administration.”
She adds that although she believes the media is biased, she also believes in the right to free speech in the country. “Freedom of speech, the press, the things we hold dearly, all of it is important. I wish it wasn’t biased. I wish they could give us an honest, non-biased story without politics changing it,” she says.
“Can it happen? Probably not in society today, but I’d rather have the truth and honesty, even if it hurts me. I know everything about my husband’s crash, and it brings me peace to find the truth.”
Change the Media’s Coverage
Part of the reason that people feel angry at the media is that they have a sense of helplessness about the stories they see, says Psychologist and Social Worker LeslieBeth Wish of Sarasota, FL.
Here’s her suggestion on how to deal with it: Keep a journal of the things you think are done well and the things to which you want to offer corrections.
Then form a support group. “There is strength in numbers,” Wish says. “Call your friends who are in the same situation, get together and come up with a manifesto – a statement about how you feel about media coverage.”
Then, call your local TV station and invite a reporter to meet with your group and hear what you have to say. Make sure you pitch it as a great news story about military wives and their viewpoints!