Ugly War, Pretty Package: How CNN and Fox News Made the Invasion of Iraq High Concept

6 The Marketing of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq

The Marketing of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq In 2003, toy manufacturer Dragon Models created a series of action figures modeled on the U.S. soldiers in Iraq. One of those figures was named “Cody,” and his specific assignment was special operations in southern Iraq (DragonModelsLtd .com 2003). Although Cody was available commercially, Dragon Models crafted him for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which sells discounted products to military personnel and their families and donates the proceeds to the Army and Air Force (Taranto 2005). According to a Dragon Models marketing coordinator, Cody was “meant to look like a U.S. soldier who might be serving in Iraq.” That likeness proved to be convincing. In 2005, the militant group Al-Mujahideen Brigade claimed to be holding a U.S. soldier captive and posted a photo of the hostage on the Internet as evidence. The photo appeared legitimate to the untrained eye, but upon closer inspection, military officials immediately noticed the so-called hostage’s nonregulation military attire and detected the hoax. Dragon Models ultimately confirmed that the “soldier” was indeed Cody, whose toy assault rifle was pointed at his own head in the photo (CNN.com 2005). As an action figure, Cody represents the toy industry’s take on the war. As a convincing decoy, he illustrates the scope of high-concept merchandising. This chapter examines the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a commercial venture embraced by CNN, Fox News Channel, and other enterprises that exploited coverage of the war. CNN and Fox News Channel marketed their coverage and, in many ways, the Bush administration’s premises for the war using promo6 UGly war, pretty package 178   tional strategies during news programs and commercial breaks. Tie-ins from high-ticket merchandise like weaponry to more common consumer goods like action figures played a large role in selling the 2003 invasion to a U.S. audience. Of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Jean Baudrillard writes, “The media promote the war, the war promotes the media, and advertising competes with the war. Promotion . . . allows us to turn the world and the violence of the world into a consumable substance” (1995, 31). CNN and Fox News Channel’s coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was one such “consumable substance” that in turn helped to commodify particular elements and experiences of the war. High-Concept News versus High-Concept Films Like the turn toward high-concept filmmaking in the 1980s, the presence of high-concept values in news programming is a result of media conglomeration. The first wave of conglomeration in the 1960s aimed to decrease financial risk and increase the likelihood of substantial hits. Since the second wave in the 1980s, media conglomeration has been the active site of synergy, whereby the conglomerate promotes one media product across many of its holdings. Synergy is one way to achieve the maximum exposure a film requires to peak and sustain viewers’ interest. Synergy, therefore, enables film companies to market movies aggressively and fuse a movie’s style and content with its promotional life almost seamlessly. Other developments in the fields of marketing, technology, and film distribution enabled high concept films to thrive, and those same types of developments—combined with conglomeration—have likewise fostered the existence of high-concept news. High-concept news is a more comprehensive manifestation of entertainment -driven journalism. In chapter 1, I discussed “infotainment”—a type of news that Thussu characterizes as “high-tech” with “complex graphics” and a style similar to video games (2003, 117). While infotainment accurately describes a contemporary trend in television news, the term high concept properly contextualizes and expands our understanding of the commercial reach of news. What distinguishes high-concept advertising campaigns from all others is a marketable concept that is tailor-made for cross-fertilization in all the components of a corporate conglomerate (Wyatt 1994, 106). Advertising is the platform on which the excessive style of high-concept films makes sense and comes together. High concept is best understood as both an efficient packaging of a media artifact for maximum commercial gain and a strategy to keep the artifact in circulation for as long as possible, incessantly promoting itself and The Marketing of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq 179   the system that allows it to circulate. Marketing and merchandising attempt to achieve those ends in high-concept news. During the first days of prolonged concentrated news coverage, as in...