Clearly the biggest news this week is the death of Osama Bin Laden. I personally didn't think we would ever find him. I thought that he would be found when he was already dead, not that U.S. troops would ever catch him and kill him. To be honest, I'm still not so sure that's what happened. I only say this because despite the President's address and all the media coverage on the death, there still isn't much proof.
While they claim that there were DNA tests, that Osama's wife stood over his body identifying him, and that there was an 8 month campaign into the discovery of Osama Bin Laden, United States citizens have yet to witness any actual proof.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/world/asia/osama-bin-laden-dead.html?hp )
According to the New York Times, "Bin Laden died near the end of what officials described as an intense, 40-minute firefight that began 12 hours earlier when a team includin
g helicopter-borne Navy Seals raided a heavily fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He had been living for years in relative comfort with his family on the second and third floors of a home inside the compound, located at the end of a narrow dirt road in Abbottabad, a city an hour’s drive north of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad." New York Times also states, "His body was washed in accordance with Islamic custom, placed in a white sheet and then inside a weighted bag, a senior defense official said. A military officer read religious rites — translated into Arabic — and then the body was placed on a board, tipped up and “eased into the sea,” the official said."Although along with many other American's I am glad to see justice be done for 9/11 but also want to take note of how much power the government and the media have in a situation like this. While they claim there was a DNA test, we as the American public might never know if there really was one. We haven't been shown the proof of any test, and we never saw the body either. We also haven't been shown any footage or testimony of the one of Osama's wives that identified his body. Lastly, we haven't seen anything of his burial either. Now in the weeks to come, some type of footage may be leaked(it is likely with YouTube and Google) but it also may not. We are expected to completely trust the media, to trust the government and our President. Just something I was thinking about while watching the news yesterday and this morning.
At my internship last Monday, the first thing we did is went through all the metro-area papers to see how the death was covered. Not surprisingly, the Times had the best and most detailed coverage. To our surprise however, the Post was not as out there as you might have thought. Their headline was low key and their articles were done in a professional manner.
ReplyDeleteIts a little scary knowing that the media and the government are able to work together to either spin a story a certain way or present facts in a certain way. When i heard the news i was skeptical at first because i found it odd that they shot him in the head instead of taking him prisoner. I have heard many people say they dont beleive he is dead or that the government is hiding something. I say who cares the man is dead so let it be, nothign we can do now. The media and the government do need to take some notes from crisis PR because when a story like this hits there should be no room for skeptisism. We know they have all the facts so its their job to present ALL the facts and not just some. Im not saying show us the pictures but they should at least give people something to to work with so that we can be confident in our government and the media
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