Media and Spielberg’s Munich
Given so much ammunition with which to attack the press, Steven Spielberg would be remiss if he didn’t use it to continue his anti-media campaign in his new film Munich.
Spielberg has waged this campaign through his film career from early works such as Close Encounters right up to his most recent, War of the Worlds. But in Munich, Spielberg might well be justified in his attacks.
Expect him to fire a heavy barrage of bitter irony in the opening scenes of Munich, hyping the fact that television broadcasts of troop deployments gave terrorists vital information that ruined an early chance at rescuing the athletes and hopelessly adding to the complexity of an already insanely complex situation. Had not the information been telegraphed to the media hungry terrorists who were gloating on their own images while holding the nine Israeli athlete hostage, the situation might have been resolved in the first few hours and some if not all of the nine athletes rescued alive.
Worse still was the false report by Reuters later in the day that said all of the hostages had been rescued unharmed. This message was transmitted world wide and gave false hope to the families of the athletes and an anxious national populace back home in Israel. The fact that the hostages were far from “unharmed” made the emotional impact that much more devastating when family members and others learned the truth.
Spielberg, who has depicted media as arrogant, stupid and sometimes even malicious in previous films can be expected to continue this assault with emotional ammunition so powerful that few of us will be able to side step the blame. He will not only show how an irresponsible media can misinform, but how we are capable even of leading people to death and prolonging grieving people’s misery.
It is pointless to speculate as to what specifically caused Spielberg to hold us in such a remarkably high regard, but in a film like Munich, the message will come with a very, very powerful punch indeed, a punch few of us who profess media as our career, will be able to handle.