By Dr Majid Khan
Nathan Roger argues in his book Image Warfare in War on Terror that the mass media system has been shifted to a rhizomatic (grows horizontally under the ground) media system. That system relates to deterritorialized (take the control of) circulations and weaponization of images and this has resulted the paradigm shift from techno-war to image war. Image warfare is at its peak in every field. Organizations, political parties, and nations all are fighting – and struggling – to construct a better image of themselves and also to demonize the enemy. In all these practices media plays a vital role. Construction of image by the media has extreme effects; the manipulated image of a country, nation, or religion, has stern consequences.
The portrayal of Muslims in Western media is always bad. Arabs and Muslims are the biggest victims of image warfare by the Western media. For example, on April 19, 1995, in the bombing of Oklahoma City 169 people were killed. After a few hours of this brutal incident of terrorism, journalists, law enforcement and government officials reported that “Arabic-looking men in jogging suits [were] running from the scene.” Without credible witnesses and proof, journalists accepted and reported that terrorists must be Arab and even some reporters began questioning the loyalty and integrity of America’s Arabs and Muslims. British newspaper Today published on its main page a scary picture of a fireman carrying the burnt remains of a dead child under the headline ‘In the name of Islam’. As a result, Muslims throughout the United States were targeted for physical abuse, rough treatment and social ostracism. Later it was proved that the bomber was an American soldier, a decorated Gulf War (1991) veteran. The religion of this terrorist was not Islam but Christianity. But no one in either American or British media labelled him a ‘Christian terrorist’ and it must be not. And even the media didn’t apologise to the Arabs and Muslim community for their labelling barbaric image to them.
According to Malcom X, ‘the media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.’ Since 9/11, Western media framed Muslims as terrorism. Several studies proved, how Muslims have been framed wrongly with terrorism and its drastic effects on the Muslim community, especially who live in the Western world. The portrayal of Muslims and Islam is large with terrorism activities by the Western news and entertainment media.
When we see the Western entertainment media, Muslims are also portrayed here as the worst of their kind. Most Hollywood movies about Arabs and Muslims like, True lies, Rules of engagement, Navy SEALs and Patriot games presented them as evils. According to Dr Jack Shaheen, over three hundred movies were made till 2006 in Hollywood against Arabs and Muslims. Dr Driss Ridouani argues in his research that the Muslims and Arabs are conceptualized in the Western media together with a drastic effect, which scars the Western people. He points out that in several prominent cartoons of US networks like Ali Baba, the made dog of deserts and Aladdin, the evils were shown Arabs and Muslims, and the same thing is in practice in video games. This practice of labelling by US media put a drastic effect on the image of Arabs and Muslims in the Western world.
The image construction by the media is very much related to the interests of international players and it changes from time to time. Noam Chomsky says that media work on a ‘doctrinal system’ where the message of the elite is put out. He pointed out that the global elite – like the Pentagon- controls what type of message is to be broadcasted in print and electronic media. Such kind of doctrine system we have also seen in the Iraq war when US media were running a war
The idea presented by Noam Chomsky and Nathan Rogan is generally the same and its application could be seen in the image construction of Mexico, Cuba, Pakistan, Arabs, Muslims and many counties of the developing world in the US media. It is interesting to know that there are only six media conglomerates, which hold almost 90% of US media and they are the main players in image construction. These media conglomerates work and follow only the interests of elite or international players like the US government. They construct or destruct the image of a nation or country in the interests of their government. It has been proved in many scholarly studies that US media always follow its government’s foreign policy.
With the rise of democracy and respect for national boundaries and non-interference in other nations’ affairs psychological warfare has gained immense importance. In psychological warfare, image warfare is vital in the modern world. Although psychological warfare has been used as an effective weapon since time immemorial yet its application had remained confined to the intimidation of foes to break their spirit of resistance.
Modern-day Image warfare has attained equal effectiveness as attributed to the weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It is time to educate the masses about the vicious role of Western news media, and how they badly portrayed Muslims and their other opponents. Several nations and religions are the victims of Western Image warfare. Hence the victim’s nations and religions are suffering from the fabricated truth and manufactured reality made by these media giants.
(Dr Majid Khan is a PhD Scholar of media, from Australia. He writes on Image building, Psychological warfare, Image Warfare and Propaganda.)
