This just in: Picture power

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will change.


Osama bin Laden caused airliners to be flown into the Trade Center towers for a number of reasons. High in importance among these reasons – certainly it was the most carefully planned for – was pictures.

The airliners were scheduled to hit the towers around 9 in the morning, to leave all those hours of daylight for cameras to send pictures.

The same thinking was in Timothy McVeigh’s mind as he planned the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. His bomb went off at 9:02 a.m., leaving all those hours of daylight for cameras to send pictures.

The pictures maximized the public impact. They manipulated the public’s reaction. Terrorists are media experts, and any terrorism planning always begins with journalism tools that are based on the ancient human reaction package.

President Bush makes clear the influence of pictures. This week he said the media contributed to the sour mood about Iraq because it sent pictures of insurgent bombs blowing up instead of pictures of the good things happening in Iraq.

Of course, “good thing” is relative, regarding pictures from Iraq. In March, 2003, a good thing picture from Iraq was bomb flashes in the Baghdad darkness, and a very, very, good thing picture was the one of a U.S. tank pulling over the statue of Saddam Hussein.

It’s funny. This week in his press conference, crusty old Helen Thomas asked Mr. Bush why he “really wanted to go to war with Iraq,” when all his published reasons for that war turned out not to exist. It was just flat wrong, he said, to assume he wanted war.

One reason to want an Iraq war was pictures. No president would go to war just for pictures – he had plenty of public reasons for that decision, even if they turned out not to exist – but the pictures are going to be there anyway, and they are powerful shapers of public impact.

Pictures would not have been much of a reason to want a war with the Osama terrorists. It would not have been the same with pictures from the U.S. pursuit of terrorists in Afghanistan, the Al Qaeda base, of rocket attacks on obscure tunnel entrances in rocky Afghan mountains, or of diplomatic efforts to enlist international allegiance in the war on terrorism. None of those pictures would stand up to pictures of twin towers collapsing.

The Iraq pictures were powerful. “Shock and awe,” they called it. Mr. Bush understands the power of pictures to manipulate public reaction. You will remember the pictures of him in military gear landing on an aircraft carrier, at the front-seat controls, to declare on the flight deck: “Mission accomplished.”

Now the Iraq pictures don’t bear that out, and Mr. Bush wishes for “good things” pictures. What he knows, and the rest of us know, is that the best good thing pictures from Iraq right now would be no pictures at all.
©Michael Grant 2006