U.S NEEDS TO TAKE A STEP BACK IN SETTING UP IRAQI GOVERNMENT -- Now that the United States military appears to be controlling much of Iraq, talk has turned to building a post-Saddam Iraqi government. According to Joe Schwartz, chair of Temple's political science department, the most important move for the U.S. at this point may be to take a quick step back. "The more it looks like the U.S. is the key player, the less likely the government will be seen as legitimate by the Arab world," says Schwartz. An early key to gaining support in Iraq will be for U.S. military leaders to allow for coalition peacekeepers, hopefully including Arab forces, to move into Iraq, he adds. "There's a lot of talk right now of a long-term U.S. military presence, but I think that would be a big mistake."
24-HOUR LIVE COVERAGE MAY NOT COVER THE REAL STORY OF THE WAR -- As record numbers of Americans tune in to 24-hour news channels like CNN and MSNBC for coverage of the war in Iraq, Temple journalism professor Andrew Mendelson warns that they may be missing the real story. "Because it's live, people feel like they're getting the real story and the whole story of the war. People are equating real time with quality," says the expert in visual communication. "Just because it is immediate they are assuming that it must be good journalism. But, that's not always the case." Mendelson points out that there is a real difference between television images and images in newspapers and magazines. "TV has been much more sanitized. While television stations do have live reports, it's mostly talking heads and maybe some firefights from a distance, but that's it. We aren't seeing the true effects of war on the television screen." If Americans want the real story, Mendelson says they need to rely on a mix of television and print media. "If you rely only on TV, you're getting a much more heroicized image of war, much cleaner and less of the total picture--both of the causes and the effects of the fighting. We've seen a few American soldiers and Iraqis wounded here and there in video images, but clearly not any bodies of deceased soldiers or civilians." Mendelson goes on to argue that because of their reliance on TV, the American public may end up with a fairly bland remembrance of the battle in Iraq. "I am still convinced that TV images are somewhat fleeting. They leave an impression, but viewers can't really grasp on to them. I think we remember video of actual firefights like we remember scenes from movies. Think of Desert Storm. What do most people remember? Most people think of the green images of night video, and that's it."
NON-ENGLISH WEBSITES CAN TRANSLATE INTO A DIFFERENT VIEW OF IRAQ --With the war in Iraq being covered by news media organizations from around the world, those following events via the Internet have the opportunity to see how the coverage is being portrayed outside the United States, says Temple computer and information sciences instructor Peter Cook. "A vast number of the world's web sites are not in English," says Cook. "Sites that don't have English on them, such as aljazeera.net, can be viewed by using one of over 100 web sites that will translate anything, either text or entire web pages, into nearly any language in the world." Among the translation sites Cook suggests are: tarjim.ajeeb.com/ajeeb/default.asp?lang=1, world.altavista.com and www.freetranslation.com/. Cook says that languages that use characters like Japanese, Chinese and Korean and the Cyrillic of Russian tend not to be 100 percent accurate because of the different meanings these characters can have in combination, but Arabic tends to be pretty accurate when translating. "Today there is no need to be scared off by web sites that are in different languages when you can translate any one of them," he adds. "Translating an entire web page that's in another language on these translation web sites can open a whole new world of information."
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