* (in which the author explains why he no longer readsThe New York
Times)
Bestselling author David Shields analyzed over a decade's worth of
front-page war photographs from TheNew York Timesand came to a shocking
conclusion: the photo-editing process ofthe paper of record, by way of
pretty, heroic, and lavishly aesthetic image selection, pullsthe
woolover the eyes of its readers; Shields forces us to face not only the
the media's complicity in dubious and catastrophic military campaigns
but our own as well.This powerful media mouthpiece, the mightyTimes, far
from being a check on governmental power, is in reality a massive
amplifier for its dark forces by virtue of the way it
aestheticizeswarfare. Anyone baffled by the willful American involvement
in Iraq and Afghanistan can't help but see in this book how eagerly and
invariably theTimesled the way in making the case for these wars through
the manipulation of its visuals. Shields forces the reader to weigh the
consequences of our own passivity in the face of these images' opiatic
numbing. The photographs gathered inWar Is Beautiful, often beautiful
and always artful, are filters of reality rather than the documentary
journalism they purport to be.