Gaddafi's Death

Kristi, Stacey, Casey, Alex, Cody, Sean

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/10/2011102151443683876.html

First thing your eyes fall upon when opening this article on Al Jazeera is the slightly gruesome picture of Gaddafi’s corpse. The picture, although not extremely violent or disturbing, I believe would not be shown in a main-stream American news organization’s article. The reason why these types of pictures may only be shown in Libya, is because Gaddafi was such a resented figure in Libya and its surrounding countries, that there is no sympathy for his death and the people are care free about showing his dead body. Another factor is that because of the violence that occurs in that region, the people are desensitized to gruesome images such as this. picture. America is so protective about the censoring of images in public materials that I cannot imagine a major source putting its name along side something like this.

The article also mainly deals with Gaddafi’s rule, his influence in Libya, how he came to power, and the ways of using his power over the decades. This article does not really go into detail about his oppression but it is more of a timeline of his leadership. It also talks about his ideals and his reign coming to a cease in the recent years. I does not really express strong bias but it is clear that the author of this article is against Gaddafi because it only mentions the terrible things the Gaddafi has done. However, the comments at the bottom express more obvious opinions about Gaddafi’s death then the article. They start with stating that the celebrating of deaths are of Muslim/Arab leaders and that the whole overthrowing of Gaddafi was Western influenced. More and more anti-west comments were posted calling the U.S. imperialists and that our leaders are free from persecution. Others also praised Gaddafi calling him a better leader to his people than the last 25 American Presidents. It is safe to say that the Al Jazeera news is read by primarily Muslim people and some with anti-west opinions but the newspaper is under the influence of the supporters of the Libyan cause. The comments clearly show that America’s influence has not been appreciated in the region in the past and especially in the last decade.

Another interesting aspect to look at, is the fact that the article was written by a former CIA official who held positions in posts in the Middle-East and the CIA’s counterterrorism centre. One of the first thoughts that crossed my mind when seeing this was why is there a CIA official’s article on a Middle-Eastern news source. I can only see it as way to further their resentment of the West and criticize the doings of our country. The fact that the author is an American CIA official no doubt fueled the anti-west comments below even more. Although, like I said, before they have the right and I understand their reasons for it.

Sean Meyers: american news http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/20/libyan-fighters-say-they-have-captured-gadhafi/

One thing I notice right away about the American news coverage of Gaddafi is that the hard facts and evidence of his death are sugar-coated so to speak. His death was a rather violent act of hatred and the fact that he was shot in the head would have left a huge mess. The news coverage from an American stand point does not go into detail about how he was killed and the aftermath of his body. American journalism is designed to be very professional and appeal to the American audience, however, they leave out the gruesome details of his death so as to not disturb the protective American bubble that we all live inside.

Another thing I notice is that many details are left out because they legally have to be. Our government censors more content that we realize. Our entire media is more or less controlled by the government and they decide what can and cannot be released to the American people. This is evident in multiple reports on gaddafi’s death where the article states that “certain details of this matter are not being released at this time.” It is a little unnerving to know that we are only getting part of the story and not the entire picture.

Casey Manungo,Source-Aljazeera.

From Aljazeera, Muammar Gaddafi’s death was described as that, just a death. It was not at any moment said to be an unfortunate passing, tragedy or in any way described in a sympathetic manner. The first link I analyzed from the source was

http://english.aljazeera.net/video/africa/2011/10/20111020141013867772.html, from this clip it is clearly demonstrated most, if not all of Libya is happy about the dying of the alleged dictator. The background crowd was yelling ‘Allahu Akbar’, which translates to ‘God is the Greatest’. From this statement and other comments made by those interviewed it can clearly be seen that the public thought that the deceased leader was trying to take the place of their God. Given the religious background of Islam it is therefore not puzzling to understand why they are all rejoicing. What is puzzling to note is that Aljazeera is an east African news source, a place where Islam is the dominating religion. One would therefore expect it to release footage which is not controversial to its larger viewer base religious beliefs, for fear of low ratings. However in some interviews such as that on

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/10/20111022133513323321.html the station reveals hundreds of people lining up to see Gaddafi’s dead body which, under Islamic law, should have been buried within twenty four hours of his passing. This is supposed to be a major violation in Islamic law and yet Aljazeera, a largely Islamic fan based program, treats it as far much less, with statements such as ‘This is a special case’ by Ibrahim Ahmad, being released to justify the violation. The way this story is presented here seems to say that Gaddafi did so much wrong so he does not deserve any significant religious recognition. The fact that, even young kids are shown going to view Gaddafi’s dead body are, in my opinion, disturbing. I think in some way the fathers have decide to use the opportunity to teach their sons the dangers of being a dictator by experiencing first hand that dictators once dead receive no respect.

Other articles such as those from

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/10/2011102413358850809.html seem to say that the death of Gaddafi was not clear and so should be investigated in a quest of acting out and representing the new Libya. One is made to ask for whom this investigation is for? Looking at interviews anyone who had be asked about the leaders death spent most of their time talking about how happy they were that the ‘King’ was now dead. So if the Libyan’s are ok with it, why do it? Why even broadcast about doing it? Could it be that both Aljazeera and NTC are both controlled by some other unknown force?

One woman was caught saying that she welcomed Gaddafi’s killing, merely because, if he had been alive then the issue would have become more complicated as everyone would be having their own different opinion on the issue of his trial, clearly representing the softer side of women, always looking for an easier way out. This makes me wonder if the comments from the men on the streets, those saying they were happy about the death and so forth, are a product of their informed knowledge or just their high testosterone levels.

_______________

Alexander Simpson

CSCL 1001

News/Journalism Project

11/4/11

“Gadhafi's legacy in Africa: 'Madman or god?”
Word count: 1,106
Column size: thin
Written by Faith Karimi
News article: http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/05/world/africa/africa-gadhafi-legacy/index.html


I chose to read a CNN article that makes a sweeping analysis of Gadhafi’s legacy in Africa. The first thing I noticed was how the modern “mediascape” presents itself in this new digital world. In the twentieth century, we were accustomed to opening up the physical newspaper and seeing mostly text and a few images. Today, that physical medium and the news it conveys has undergone significant renovations. The webpage of this Gadhafi article has several noticeable components. First, the column size is incredibly thin, so the story seems longer than it might actually be (and you are constantly scrolling down). Second, there are distractions everywhere. Irrelevant advertisements, external links, and surveys make it incredibly hard to focus on a sliver-sized news column. Third, the story is summed up into four bullet points at the top of the left margin under “Story Highlights”. This encourages people to skip the article before even starting it.
We can ‘read’ a lot just from CNN’s online format. Chomsky’s second filter describes that our media is highly influenced by the financial power of advertisements. Consequently, this article is surrounded with ads and external links, actually making up about 50% of the page’s content. The most shocking thing is that these ads and links not only distract the reader, but they make a sliver-sized column of text (the original reason for visiting the page) look pathetically uninteresting. The “story highlights” only further the feeling that news is no longer the priority for CNN and news giants of the like.
Next, it’s important to analyze the actual content of the article, which will reveal a lot about CNN’s motives and tactics. The first aspect that stood out to me in this article was the quotes. There was not a single quote from an actual Libyan or any African who lived under Gadhafi’s regime. Instead, CNN used quotes from Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society (a London-based group that aims to foster a better understanding of the continent), Ayo Johnson, director of Viewpoint Africa (an organization that sells content about Africa to media outlets internationally), and Abdul Raufu Mustapha, a professor of African politics at Oxford University. It seems as though interviewing someone who reaped the benefits of Gadhafi’s infrastructure projects or possibly suffered the loss of a loved one from Gadhafi sponsored civil war would be more qualified for debating Gadhafi as a “Madman or God”. Consequently, this article is formulating opinions and writing history without actually consulting the voices of those who were experiencing it in real time. Why? Because there are great financial and reputational expenses involved when a media outlet interviews and uses these voices.
This article also contains an abundance of indirect quotes followed by “analysts say”.
“In Africa, Gadhafi's influence extended beyond his generosity. His ideas and eccentricity were also a big draw, analysts say.”

In this case, a sweeping generalization about Gadhafi’s influence over an entire continent is cited with a completely anonymous resource. How do we know that anyone in Africa actually agrees with this claim? Can we trust huge claims like this if we don’t know where they are coming from? This as all seems to follow a central theme, similar to that of the “story highlights” and sliver-sized news column, of our 21st century news sources, which is take any shortcut available. As the attention span of the modern reader shrinks, so does in-depth news reporting.
We can learn many things from this article. First, the digital format of news is very blurry; there is a striking contrast between the new and the old print media. Second, the economics of news production seems takes priority over news production. Ads fuel a diminishing quality of news for a less attentive and easily distracted audience. Third, the bodies—the Africans helped or harmed by Gadhafi—are never directly represented, mainly because of the risk involved on behalf of CNN and other news giants. Unfortunately, this is the “mediascape” we have grown accustomed to; one that will write history to its own liking.

Kristi Kolb
News article:
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/10/29/charles-krauthammer-gaddafis-death-should-serve-as-warning-to-other-dictators/

This news article from The National Post was very different from the other ones I read online. Others were just talking about how Gaddafi’s death will be investigated and about his burial, but this one talked about how he deserved what he got. It was so interesting to me to read what this man had to say because it was so different and straight forward. It was a very raw analysis.

Charles Krauthammer said that the way Gaddafi acted and in turn was killed should serve as an example to other dictators. They should learn from his mistakes if they don’t want to end up like him. If Gaddafi would have stepped down and avoided the wars and terrible things he and his people did to their country, Krauthammer said he could have been rid of punishment for his crimes like Idi Amin in Suadi Arabia. Instead, he chose to go forth with all of his killing and fighting therefore putting him in the place that he ended up at- being killed brutally. “That fateful decision to fight — and kill — is the prism through which to judge the cruel treatment Gaddafi received in his last hours. It is his refusal to forgo those final crimes, those final shellings of civilians, those final executions of prisoners that justifies his rotten death.”
Krauthammer states his opinion as Gaddafi deserving what he got. He chose the way his life played out and it was all his fault. He even used humor in this article, saying Gaddafi died from “Libyan crossfire: a bullet crossing from one temple to the other.” The author didn’t seem to show any remorse for this death, and portrayed it as something that was bound to happen. I feel the author believes that the human rights groups and others who think that Gaddafi’s death was wrong shouldn’t really think that. He mentions several times that if Gaddafi would have just stepped down and relinquished his powers, it would’ve saved his country much of the bloodshed and suffering the population went through from his followers under his rule. When people do bad things, they deserve bad punishment for their actions. I feel that some of the torture afflicted on him by his capturers were a little much, but he was a bad leader and because of the suffering he put on his people, he deserved certain punishments.
Would he have suffered more pr let off easy if he were put on trial? Was his murder for the best? Krauthammer believes the murder of Gaddafi was an easy way out. He should have suffered far longer for all of the torture he brought on to his people, as said by the author. Do you agree with him? I’m not sure what to believe, but I think that he was a bad leader who deserved some type of punishment for the things he and his followers did to their country. I think that there are many people out there who believe he got what he deserved.




Stacey Rhyner
Article http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/news/intrnational/2011/10/25/1324.html

This article is a report on Gaddafi’s death by the Canadian National but it also serves as an opinion’s piece on everything that has been happening within the course of the Libyan revolution. The writers of this article have the blunt opinion that Gaddafi’s death was an unlawful murder and the United States and the other NATO countries wrongfully pushed the rebels into killing Gaddafi because they wanted to have stronger economical influence over Libya and their oil fields. The newspaper has several techniques into arguing you into this opinion.

Firstly, the picture of Gaddafi used in this article is not like most of the pictures portrayed in other news sources. In most articles Gaddafi’s pictures portray a strong, serious looking dictator dressed in a military uniform. In this article, though, Gaddafi is in regular clothes and has an expression of confusion. This image humanizes him, which is important because it makes us realize that Gaddafi is an actual person and not just a dictator. Because we see Gaddafi as a human, his death seems more sympathetic to us and therefore this argues us into believing the Gaddafi was wrongfully killed.
This news source also tries to argue us into thinking that Gaddafi’s death was horrific by their usage of word choice and vivid description of his death. For example, when describing Gaddafi’s death, The National Canadian uses words like “savage,” “assassination,” and “massacre.” Using words that have negative connotations with strong emotions such as “massacred” instead of “killed,” makes Gaddafi’s death seem to be more cruel because people who are involved in a “massacre,” are often thought to be innocent and brutally murdered while words like “kill) do not hold such a strong image. This article also explains Gaddafi’s murder in such gory detail which his murders seem sick and unfair in a way.
Lastly, this article tries to argue its readers into believing that Gaddafi’s death was not proper by putting parenthesis around the word rebel when referring to the rebels of Libya. This punctuation says a lot about what the authors think of the rebels in Libya. By putting parenthesis around “rebels” the authors are suggesting that these Libyans are truly not rebels and don’t have justification in fighting the Civil War in Libya. Instead they are murders who have killed hundreds of innocent people.
In order to read this article properly and fully understand it, we have to look at the source from which the article comes from. We have to know the source because only then we will know where the biases in these articles are and why. Also, we can get a better grasp of what the article is trying to say by knowing its source. This article is written by The Canadian National who has the reputation of being very patriotic and being a little Anti-American. For example, I went to the main page of their website and some of their front page headlines included two links to stories about how Canada’s businesses are being bought from American’s corrupt corporations and that Canada shouldn’t “want to import their hostile and pernicious management culture into our society.” Also, the information from this article was taken from the Worlds Socialist Web Site, which of course is run by Socialist. Socialist usually doesn’t have a favorable opinion of the U.S. or other countries in membership with NATO because democracy challenges socialism and the Socialist’s beliefs.

Analysis

All of these articles that we have read present their information in a different way based on their own opinions of the civil war in Libya and the death of Gaddafi. All of these articles that we have presented here are from a variety of different countries which all differ in their own desires and have small variances in their opinions about Gaddafi’s death.

First of all, the U.S. CNN article, the National Post, and the Al Jareeza news source present Gaddafi’s death in very different ways but they do maintain the same opinion that the death of Gaddafi was a good thing. The U.S. and Al Jareeza present their approval of Gaddafi’s death by providing a list of reasons why the death was justified. They illustrate the past “evil” actions of Gaddafi and what he has done to his people but both CNN and Al Jareeza, present these past actions differently. For example, Al Jareeza seems to be more neutral on the subject of Gaddafi’s character because it shows both the good and evil things Gaddafi has done while the Al Jareeza just mentions the bad actions of Gaddafi. This makes sense because the U.S. is more neutral on the subject because the U.S. has never been a victim of Gaddafi’s persecution. Instead all of his actions were against the Libyans, who are very angry because of his prosecution of them and therefore they portray Gaddafi as a man that can do no good. This is difference is an important thing to realize because if people only read the Libyan newspaper they are easily argued into believing that Gaddafi was a man that could do no good and therefore it will distort their view on history.
It is also important to note that in Al Jareeza’s articles they have multiple videos attached of the Libyan people dancing and celebrating the death of Gaddafi. This is an important thing to note because a video is worth a thousand words. As a viewer we can get more out of a video than we can out of an article. These videos reinforces the point that this article is trying to say about Gaddafi's death and therefore this makes this article and its opinions more influential and realistic then the other articles.
The Canadian National is by far the most different of all of these articles. The Canadian National maintains the opinion that Gaddafi’s death was an unlawful murder while the rest of the articles believe that this death is a positive event. As mentioned before The Canadian National tries to convey their opinion by describing Gaddafi’s death in gruesome detail, uses words that have very negative connotations like “massacre” and “assassination,” and they attack the ethics of those who had a hand in his killings. All of the other articles do not use such emotional word choice or attack anyone else except Gaddafi’s character. Because of this, if one would read the National Canadian instead of any of the other articles they may take the view that Gaddafi’s death was a murder of an innocent person and that Libya and the NATO powers are a vicious group of people that will kill anyone that gets in their way. This is really important because if we change our thoughts of who is right and who is wrong it would change the course of history.

These articles are also very different because they differ in their approaches of selectivity. History or any other news for that matter is always a partial truth because it is impossible for a news source to report every single detail of an event. They have to be selective of what they present in their writings and this can be taken advantage of because then the reporters will only report the details that support their own opinions. For example, the Canadian National article reminds us that Gaddafi, until recently, had been a great ally to the Western powers by making oil deals and other pacts with them. The Al Jareeza does not report this fact because it would give a reason for their readers to question why the U.S. would condone the killing of a person that was once an ally of theirs. Trying to appear neutral the U.S. does shed light on some of the positive Gaddafi has done but they put more empathize on what he has done wrong. Of course the Canadian National also utilizes selectivity but they only select things that make the U.S. look bad and Gaddafi’s death look cruel. For example, Al Jareeza reports some of the horrific things that Gaddafi has done to his Libyan people while the Canadian never mentions these well known events because it would contradict their opinion that Gaddafi was wrongfully killed. This selectivity of information is important because the lack of information and the present information offered will easily sway the opinions of its audience.

. Another way in which these articles are presented differently is by their usage of pictures. In most Arabic speaking countries, people tend to have a different view on what they consider to be ok to show openly in the public than do people from the United States and Canada. Newspapers from these countries do not hesitate to publish gruesome pictures of people’s deaths like the bloody picture of Gaddafi in the Al Jazeera. On the other hand, public newspapers in the Americas often do not show these gruesome pictures because of government restrictions and also because this representation of violence can be considered offensive and barbaric to some people in the American culture. Because the Americas do not show these pictures, it makes us view Gaddafi’s death as not as horrible as one would if they were reading the Al Jazeera because they do not actually physically see the gruesomeness behind Gaddafi’s death. The pictures presented by the American newspaper and the Canadian newspaper are also vastly different. The American newspaper shows a picture of Gaddafi looking proud, serious, and dressed in his military uniform, a typical portrayal of a violent, blood thirsty dictator. This image argues the reader into believing that Gaddafi was an evil dictator and therefore his death seems justified. On the other hand, the Canadian newspaper, who is against the killing of Gaddafi, portrays Gaddafi in regular cloths with a confuse look on their face. This picture makes Gaddafi seem more human and therefore more sympathetic to the readers.

All of these news sources do have one common characteristic: they all are heavily controlled by the leading class. The leading class is pretty much the rich and these newspapers publish the opinions of the rich and this can be seen in the articles we have presented here. For example, the wealthy in Canada, the United States, and Libya all have something to gain from Gaddafi’s death. Now that Gaddafi is dead, his country’s oil fields are available for the Western Powers and so are other economical opportunities. Because of this, the wealthy try to spin Gaddafi’s death as a positive thing in their newspapers so they can have the backing of the public and still explore their new political and economical gains. The only newspaper who differ in this opinion is the Canadian National, who is against Gaddafi’s death, but this newspaper is mightily influenced by the Socialist Party. The Socialist Party is again a rich and leading class who is against anything that has to do with democracy. So again you can see that these are obviously controlled by the ruling class because they share the opinions that would best suite the rich.