Article published In:
The Soft Power of War: Legitimacy and community in Iraq war discoursesEdited by Lilie Chouliaraki
[Journal of Language and Politics 4:1] 2005
► pp. 143–159
Edited by Lilie Chouliaraki
[Journal of Language and Politics 4:1] 2005
► pp. 143–159
Spectacular ethics
On the television footage of the Iraq war
This article argues that the BBC World footage of the bombardment of Baghdad, March–April 2003, manages to take sides in the controversy over the Iraq war, without violating the principle of objectivity — a principle necessary for the credibility of public service broadcasting. Making use of the ‘analytics of mediation’, I show that the semiotic choices of this footage construe the bombardment of Baghdad in a regime of pity, whereby the aesthetic quality of the spectacle effaces the presence of Iraqi people as human beings and sidelines the question of the coalition troops identity either as benefactors or bombers. This combination is instrumental in aestheticising the horror of war at the expense of raising issues around the legitimacy and effects of the war.
The taking of sides in the BBC ‘update’ occurs precisely through this aestheticised representation of warfare that denies the sufferer her humanity and relieves the bomber of his responsibility in inflicting the suffering. By rendering these identities irrelevant to the spectacle of the suffering, the footage ultimately suppresses the emotional, ethical and political issues that lie behind the bombardment of Baghdad.
References
Arendt, H
1990(1973). On Revolution. London: Penguin Books.
Boltanski, L
1999 Distant Suffering. Politics, Morality and the Media. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
Barnett, C
2003 Culure and Democracy. Media, Space and Representation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Brooks, R, Lewis, J., Mosdell, N. and Threadgold, T
2003 Embeds or In-beds? The Media Coverage of the War in Iraq. Report Commissioned for the BBC. Cardiff: Cardiff School of Journalism.
Butler, J
2003 Precarious Life. The Powers of Death and Mourning. London: Verso.
Chatman, S
1991 Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
Chartier, R
1999 The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Chilton, P
2003 Analysing Political Discourse. London: Routlege.
Chouliaraki, L
2004a Watching September 11: The politics of pity. Discourse & Society 15(2–3), 185–198.
2004b Shock and Awe: The Aestheticisation of Suffering in Iraq War Footage. (Working paper available at MediaDemos website )
2005 Discourse and Culture. London: Sage.
Flyvebjerg, B
1999 Making Social Sciences Matter Cambridge. Cambridge: University Press.
Lewis, J
2004 Television, public opinion and the war in Iraq: The case of Britain. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 16(3), 295–310.
Martin, J
2004 Mourning: How we are aligned. Discourse & Society. 15(2–3), 321–44.
Perlmutter, D. and Wagner, G
2004 The anatomy of a photojournalistic icon: Marginalisation of dissent in the selection and framing of ‘a death in Genoa’. Visual Communication 3(1), 91–108.
Peters, J. D
2001 Witnessing. Media Culture and Society. London: Sage.
Reisigl, M. and Wodak, R
2000 Discourse Analysis: Discourse and Discrimination; Rhetorics of Racism and Anti-Semitism. London: Routledge.
Rose, N
1999 Powers of Freedom. Reframing Political Thought. London: Routledge.
Scannel, P
1991 Broadcast Talk. London: Sage.
Silverstone, R
2004 Mediation and communication. In: G. Calhoun et al. (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Sociological Analysis. London: Sage.
van Leeuwen, T. and Jaworski, A
2002 The discourses of war photography: Photojournalistic representations of the Palestinian-Israeli war. Journal of Language and Politics 1(2), 255–76.
Cited by
Cited by 11 other publications
Aydın-Düzgit, Senem & Bahar Rumelili
2018. Discourse Analysis: Strengths and Shortcomings. All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace 
Carpentier, Nico & Benjamin De Cleen
2007. Bringing Discourse Theory into Media Studies. Journal of Language and Politics 6:2 ► pp. 265 ff.
Chouliaraki, Lilie
2006. Towards an analytics of mediation. Critical Discourse Studies 3:2 ► pp. 153 ff.
Chouliaraki, Lilie
2006. The aestheticization of suffering on television. Visual Communication 5:3 ► pp. 261 ff.
Liang, Weishan
2020. A contrastive analysis of reports on North Korea’s missile program. Journal of Language and Politics 19:4 ► pp. 646 ff.
Maryam Sadat, Ghiasian, Namvar Zahra, Rovshan Belgheis & Soltani Ali Asghar
2013. Representation of the Legitimation Discourse of Iran’s Nuclear Activity in America`s View. Qurterly Journal of Political Research in Islamic World 3:2 ► pp. 97 ff.
Orwenjo, Daniel Ochieng, Asiru Hameed Tunde, Gilbert Francis Odhiambo & Jared Juma
2021. “They Have Overstayed Their Welcome”: the Discursive Construction of Collective Identities in Kenya’s Quest to Close the Dadaab Refugee Camp. Global Social Welfare 8:4 ► pp. 351 ff.
Sahlane, Ahmed
2022. Covering the War on Iraq. In Discourse, Media, and Conflict, ► pp. 93 ff.
Slattery, Karen & Ana C. Garner
2007. Mothers of Soldiers in Wartime: A National News Narrative. Critical Studies in Media Communication 24:5 ► pp. 429 ff.
Tarrega, Mariola
2016. Oddo, John. 2014. Intertextuality and the 24h news cycle: A day in the rhetorical life of Colin Powell’s U.N address. Journal of Language and Politics 15:6 ► pp. 824 ff.
Vestergaard, Anne
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 may 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.