Fit to Print: Comparing Media Coverage of the My Lai Massacre, and the Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal

Abstract

The 1968 of the massacre of civilians at My Lai 4 in South Vietnam, and of the torture of detainees at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in late 2003, are each two of the most widely publicised and debated atrocities committed US troops. The wars in Vietnam and Iraq were promulgated as missions to save innocent peoples from an oppressive enemy force, but American soldiers were instead revealed to have committed war crimes for which only a lowly few received any punishment. Amongst the sparse comparative literature of the Vietnam and Iraq wars however, My Lai and Abu Ghraib have so far received little attention. This is despite some obvious parallels in their disruption of authorised war narratives, and the role of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in breaking both stories. Surveying and comparing the media coverage of My Lai and Abu Ghraib allows significantly similar and divergent historical features in the American experience of war atrocities to be better illuminated. They were undoubtedly very different kinds of atrocities. But like comparisons of the Vietnam and Iraq wars, their parallels lie in the kinds of processes, discourses, and concerns which characterised their emergence and development as media events in the United States. The importance of each atrocity was consistently established and contextualised in media coverage through specifically American concerns, rather than sympathy for the suffering of the victims. Indeed, in the conversion of war atrocities into symbols of moral degradation and corruption, the American nation and its ideals became the victim of extraordinary violence perpetrated by American soldiers upon distant non-Americans. In response, commentators proffered competing interpretations of responsibility for the atrocities at My Lai and Abu Ghraib, which nevertheless shared the primary goal of alleviating moral anxieties and restoring the United States to good standing.