NBC premiered ‘Saving Jessica Lynch’ Sunday night, a two-hour depiction of the events surrounding the capture, imprisonment and heroic rescue of Private First Class Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi prisoner-of-war facility. The blond, photogenic Lynch, finally beginning to comment on her capture herself after it seems everyone else in the world has done so, is the subject of the feel-good TV movie and war story of the year. NBC producers assure that the movie version is as ‘faithful a depiction of events as possible.’

Lynch is the ultimate example of a private citizen who, thrust into abject circumstances and having lived to tell the tale, has received a full celebrity makeover by a culture thirsty for the latest nugget of info-tainment. First came the headlines, then the ludicrous comparisons to Steven Spielberg’s ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ and now the celebrity train has finally arrived at sizable book deal (a biography, ‘I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story’ penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Bragg), the NBC special and a host of prime time interviews (Lynch comes on with Diane Sawyer Tuesday on ABC).

The story of Jessica Lynch is, above all else, certainly a compelling one. But it is also a clear-cut example of everything currently wrong with the sensational nature of today’s ‘info-tainment’ culture: a person whose life is exploited for ratings, popularity and money. What’s worse is that these networks, publishers and interviewers are rushing a sloppy, hammered-together version of Lynch’s story into the spotlight without even waiting for many official queries into the events surrounding her experience in Iraq to become confirmed facts and not mere speculation. In short, style has trumped substance yet again, but this time, style is rendered irresponsible due to an obscuring of truth and a rush to capitalize on what is largely speculation.

Jessica Lynch, herself, has spoken out against the sensational mutation of her own story, saying both the army and the media have made too much of it. While that assertion may be a good dose of modesty, Lynch and several people involved in her rescue have also come out against the credibility of the events depicted in both Bragg’s biography and NBC’s movie. For instance, Bragg’s biography alleges Lynch was raped during her incarceration, yet Dr. Jamal Al-Saedi, one of the doctors who treated Lynch at the U.S. military base hospital shortly after her rescue, absolutely refutes the claim on record, saying he found no signs of sexual assault whatsoever.

Apart from the obvious problem with failing truth and hurting credibility in favor of speed and sensationalism, there are also several other ethical concerns with regard to the media’s treatment of Jessica Lynch. For one, how about letting the lady get her life back before casting her as a model for all things feel-good American and obscuring facts about those events in Iraq in the process? The same forced fame has also found its way to Elizabeth Smart, who, mere months after surviving a nine-month kidnapping, has also been targeted by the ravenous, vulture-like network executives, book publishers and other like media outlets. Many of these media personalities Oprah Winfrey and Katie Couric among them, have fed sanctimonious lines like ‘Leave the girl alone, let her have her life back,’ to the American public, while entering into a ravenous bidding war for exclusive rights to her first major interview when off camera. Gripes about the media valuing sensationalism and ratings above concern for the health of their subjects are nothing new, but the damage being done to increase the trauma of those events, whether these personalities know it or not, is frighteningly clear.

Then there are questions of sexism, which in the whole of the Jessica Lynch affair seem to be the proverbial elephant of which no one likes to speak sitting on the couch. Honestly, would Lynch’s story have seen nearly as volatile a media frenzy had she been a male POW? Or, for that matter, not all-American Caucasian? Several news outlets, among them The Boston Globe, have already picked up a story about a friend of Lynch’s and a fellow soldier of hers in the 507th named Shoshana Johnson, who befell circumstances in Iraq similar to Lynch’s but has thus far received virtually no media attention. Because Johnson is black, advocates of racial equality in the media are already chomping at the bit as to why Johnson’s story is being ignored.

Finally, there is the question of NBC’s right to speculate in a television movie that is not a documentary, but rather a form of entertainment which, its producers say, is ‘based’ on actual events. These pages argued last week that CBS’ decision to pull ‘The Reagans’ was a faulty one because networks do have the right to speculate and in television movies are not bound to absolute fact in the way a documentary or historical record would be. But ‘Saving Jessica Lynch’ is a different scenario.

First of all, it is a recent story, one where the facts are still being debated for the historical record, let alone for disclaimers in television’s manipulation of truth. Second, ‘The Reagans’ speculates about personality traits in Ronald and Nancy Reagan based on historical anecdotes; ‘Lynch’ speculates about events which may or may not have happened. Finally, Ronald Reagan was and is a public figure, and under libel law guidelines, different rules apply to statements about his life. Jessica Lynch was not a public figure and never willingly agreed to be one she was made one by the media.

The connotations, both direct and tangential, of the sensational, celebrity thrust Jessica Lynch’s life has received since her rescue are many. But how can we defend how the media has so quickly put her into the spotlight when the rush to do so has resulted in irresponsible reporting, factual inconsistencies and ruthless exploitation at the expense of both Lynch’s personal life and the truth?