By Bill Shein
January 19, 2010

The reasons for heartache after the massive earthquake that struck Haiti last week are too numerous to count. The horrific loss of life, the unimaginable pain and suffering, the distress of fellow human beings is beyond comprehension.

The television news channels presented a steady stream of tragic images and awful video: Enormous piles of dead bodies. Limbs protruding from between the cement floors of collapsed buildings. Babies covered in death shrouds of torn cardboard and tattered cloth. Men and women wailing in agony.

On its Web site, Fox News featured a photo slideshow marked “WARNING: Graphic” with 106 photos of death, destruction, and despair. CNN.com featured a similar slideshow, as did the New York Times and many other print and broadcast news outlets. Anchors and reporters, sometimes overcome with emotion, warned that “some of these images may be disturbing” and that “viewer discretion is advised.”

The images from Haiti inspired an outpouring of financial support and the rapid mobilization of relief aid. They led many to volunteer. They may, perhaps, fuel a long-overdue discussion of the awful history of exploitation and occupation of Haiti by the Great Powers, and how the difficult road ahead must not repeat the mistakes of the past.

Yet the dramatic reporting out of Haiti also raises vital questions about what we see – and don’t see – on American television news. Because while there is no shortage of graphic footage from the scene of natural disasters, we see very few images or video of similar human suffering from man-made war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the reporting from those places, there is no looping video showing the carnage, the dead bodies, the grievously injured soldiers, the orphaned children, the hungry refugees. There is no daily coverage of wounded civilians in hospital beds. There are no interviews with Afghan families in which they are asked detailed questions about the death of loved ones.

There is, of course, plenty of war coverage. But it is quite different from what is broadcast from Haiti. The early days of the Iraq invasion featured dramatic footage of the so-called “shock and awe” campaign. From a distance, we saw enormous explosions. We were shown detailed, 3-D animated schematics of the weaponry used. The Pentagon provided daily video clips showing successful missile strikes on “targets.” But we saw few, if any, people.

It was largely left to foreign media to show graphic video of civilian injuries, of hospitals filled with the injured and dying, of morgues overflowing. In the U.S., this was widely considered “propaganda” that should not be aired. Ever.

This is a disturbing double standard: Human misery and death from natural disasters like Haiti is shown endlessly, almost pornographically. But the bloodshed caused by U.S.-led war remains hidden from view. Why? The answer, of course, is that it is easier to make war when the horror is not widely seen.

Imagine if we saw endlessly looped video of hospitals in Iraq, Afghanistan, and at U.S. military bases filled with the injured, dead, and dying. What if CNN’s celebrity anchors raced to the site of a missile strike, climbed atop the rubble of a house, and held out a microphone to capture the screams of civilians trapped inside? Or if the networks were on hand every day to interview wounded U.S. soldiers waiting for medical treatment in the desert heat? Surely the human drama would be as compelling as what we’ve seen in Haiti, and the information quite useful to citizens of a democracy.

In the stunning 2001 documentary, “War Photographer,” longtime photojournalist James Nachtwey lamented that advertisers don’t want bloody images of war to appear alongside their marketing messages. Yet for the past week, cheery advertisements for all kinds of products filled the commercial breaks during Haiti coverage. Why the difference?

During their coverage, the networks have consistently and appropriately promoted ways to support the Haiti relief effort. Phone numbers, Web sites, and instructions for making donations via text message crawl across the screen. And there’s been a massive response.

What might happen if we saw 24/7 coverage of the truth of war? And the bottom of our screens included the phone numbers and email addresses of those in Washington who make war policy? How would we respond? And what long-overdue discussion might we have?

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Bill Shein likes how Martin Luther King, Jr. put it: “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”