Very interesting talk by Peter Sussman at a Stanford conference recently, (courtesy of GradeTheNews.org) looking at the language of war - textual and visual - and media ethics in the context of a patriotic feeding frenzy.

An example:

Think about the differences, for instance, between the logos War with Iraq and War on Iraq. Interestingly, the war looks different north of our border. CTV used the logo “Target Iraq,” and CBC used “Attack on Iraq,” both of which emphasize accurately that this country was the aggressor in the war. Operation Iraqi Freedom, used by several networks and stations, was a label created by government p.r. specialists and picked up uncritically by the press for use as a purely descriptive logo.

A Texas television station’s logo for the Iraqi war was “War on Terror,” though there had been no evidence of recent Iraqi terror attacks on Americans. And then there was “Showdown with Saddam,” which was in widespread use before the outbreak of combat. That logo served to distort the dispute by personalizing and otherwise misrepresenting it, in accordance with administration logic but ignoring a fact that was obvious to most of the rest of the world -- that we weren’t actually attacking one man; we ultimately invaded an entire country.

What constantly irks me is that Fox News will also use the "War on Terror" logo when covering stories about Iran or North Korea, as if to help legitimise the "axis of evil" concept.

(By the way, during the conflict my own paper used the strap "War in Iraq" - if anything even more removed from involvement).

Comment?