Off With Their Heads! Media Imagery and the Emotional Manipulation of the American Public

"Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure, she had not as yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew that it might happen any minute, `and then,' thought she, `what would become of me? They're dreadfully fond of beheading people here; the great wonder is, that there's any one left alive!'" --Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 1865 (image public domain)

Beheading is a time-honored execution method.  France no doubt still holds the record in the beheading department, having knocked off about 40,000 a year at the height of the guillotine era. That glittering machine not only slid heads neatly off of necks at a fearsome pace, but it stood as a testament to Western scientific development, allowing gravity and leverage to make elegant, modern work of what otherwise requires brute force and a wickedly sharp blade.  Science was further advanced by the many impromptu studies of how long those decapitated heads maintained consciousness, with various doctors and witnesses counting how long the eyes of the severed caput continued blinking or turned to look at speakers. Great crowds watched these execution extravaganzas: In the days before the World Wrestling Federation, beheadings, like burnings-at-stakes, ripping-apart-on-the-rack, and other such solemn occasions, were grand entertainment. 

The response of Americans to beheadings in the news today is an interesting case study in the power of media and the role media agendas play in steering national opinion and policy.  

The first point of interest is that executing people in and of itself doesn't bother Americans. According to data from the Death Penalty Information Center American executions have skyrocketed since the early 1980s, going from averages of single digits per year to a new normal averaging about 50 a year every year since 2000.  Recent difficulties in procuring legal execution drugs have resulted in some outright gruesome executions in which the person being executed took far longer to die than he would have with a swift severing of the head. 

A mild, predictable round of head-shaking and muttering occurred after these botched American execution incidents, with some people complaining that the decedent did not suffer enough, and others protesting that we shouldn't be in the business of killing people. But there was no wave of hysteria, no demands that someone bomb Texas or Oklahoma to make them stop this barbarism. As a nation, we have no problem with the concept of executions -- we just want to split hairs over who can do them, by what method, and for what reason.

Americans also apparently have no trouble with other countries conducting executions. While the U.S. performs the 5th highest number of executions per year in the world, we are far overshadowed by the number 1 executioner, our chief trading partner China. Amnesty International has had a hell of a time getting accurate data, but it appears that several thousand people are executed each year in China, by lethal injection or firing squad. But there's no outcry to bomb China, either; in fact, virtually no condemnation whatsoever. Instead there are invitations to the White House and shiny new trade agreements. 

Which raises the second point of interest -- apparently beheading in and of itself doesn't bother Americans either. America's bosom buddy, the House of Saud, executes hundreds of people a year, many by beheading. While Americans have been gnashing teeth in outrage over the public beheadings of two Western journalists by the entity which American media calls the Islamic State, Saudia Arabia has been calmly wacking off heads with swords for such horrendous crimes as being mentally ill or committing adultery. 

Yet no one is demanding that we bomb Saudi Arabia. In fact, we are tightening our military alliances with them and taking public steps to demonstrate just how tight and secure the U.S. relationship is with this tyrannical oligarchy.  

Which brings us to the third point to ponder: Having already established that America doesn't care if people are executed -- in fact, we support the proposition -- and that America doesn't care if people are beheaded -- heck, our dear friends the sheiks do it all the time -- then why did a couple of beheadings by the group we call the Islamic State lead to such a vehement public reaction that we are expending millions of dollars to drop bombs into a multi-party armed conflict in Syria? 

The answer is the emotional impact -- often deliberately designed  and manipulated -- of media coverage of the incidents. We do not see our own executions, or the beheadings committed by Saudi Arabia, on the tv news or even on the internet. When they are mentioned, they are discussed as abstract data or in a context which makes them appear rational. 

Either the media, or powers-that-be which use the media to manipulate the public, have determined that the actions of IS are to be presented in a highly emotional context designed to foster a sense of fear and hysteria. Real information about what is going on in IS-held territories is hard to come by. Obviously there is war, and people are getting killed and run out of their homes and villages. It certainly behooves us out of simple empathy for our fellow humans to provide humanitarian aid to those caught in such crossfires. But what compels Americans to feel an urgent need to enter into a war in a venue in which we have no direct interest? 

In Iraq, some years ago, it was the theory that Saddam Hussein was a Nazi-like force of evil with weapons of mass destruction. Today, it's that IS is a Nazi-like force of evil that beheads people.  But atrocities are always alleged in war. (Name one war in which it was NOT alleged that the enemy was putting children's heads on pikes and raping women.)  Internet watchdog Snopes points out  the difficulties in determining the extent of beheadings and rapes occurring in the territories being taken over by IS -- and notes, by way of cautionary tale, that at least some of the pictures of beheaded individuals circulating which are attributed to IS have in fact been making internet rounds for years, attributed to various individuals or entities depending on the particular furor intended to be ignited.

Is a media-imagery-generated emotional response a good reason to go to war? In the present case it's hard to pinpoint any more rational explanation for the bombs we are presently dropping on Syria. Not only have we established that America doesn't mind executions or even beheadings, we also don't mind supporting rebels overthrowing established governments -- we've backed the revolutionaries on numerous occasions, and were already in the process of backing rebels seeking to overthrow the government in Syria, only now we only like some of those rebels and not others. 

Motivational speaker Justin Cohen rightly says that we are not rational creatures, we are rationalizing creatures. We decide based on emotion and then look for a short dossier of facts to back up our emotional decisions. Since nothing moves emotions faster than story, and nothing conveys story faster than a few well-chosen visual images on commercial news media, it is frighteningly easy to manipulate the public of the most powerful nation in the world into going to war. Rest assured, however, that the photos of the women and children whose heads will be blown off by the bombs we drop, will never show up on the news. 

--Cindy Hill