"You cannot wage a war without rumors, without media, without propaganda. Any military planner who plans a war, and doesn't put media, propaganda on top of his agenda, is a bad military," says Al Jazeera senior producer, Samir Khader.
In wars, image assumes iconic status. The coverage of the bombing of Baghdad during the first Persian Gulf War put CNN on the media map. Today, the spread of digital technology means that an image can be distributed worldwide within seconds. But are we better informed?
You've got to see it to believe it' but should Americans really trust their eyes?
The complexity of war coverage in the news and press media - does America really get the full picture from American foreign reporting on the war with Iraq?
Images can end wars. At least that's the contention of Vietnam War veteran Larry Stimeling who says on his website "The United States ended the war in Vietnam, not because of defeat on the battlefield, but because of photographs that turned America's stomach". His message highlights the power of the picture, and indivertibly harks back to American coverage of the Vietnam War. So where in the press are the My Lai images from the war in Iraq?
Despite ongoing violence in Iraq, the American media does not fully report the civilian casualties or the deaths of US soldiers. Statistics are printed like test scores in press reports, but with no photo there is no meaning. Yet as the conflict continues the mood of the nation is changing, is America waking up to the reality of war? How has the American news and press media been giving a different representation on the war with Iraq? And what are the implications for news reporting and war journalism in the media?
War media has certainly changed in the past 40 years. Gone are the days when CNN was the only news channel able to dedicate 24 hour of news coverage to a live war. Thanks to deregulation and improvements in communication - satellite and cable channels the war against Iraq has received saturated coverage across all major networks. Despite this magnitude of information, America may not be any better informed.
The nature of war journalism has also changed; the Iraq war has introduced the concept of the embedded reporter' to the world. Journalists have unprecedented access, and with the aid of new technologies (such as the video phone, satellite and broadband) news reporters can air slices of the action from the front line within seconds of events unfolding.
Beginning in the early 1960's American journalists began taking a hard look at America's involvement in South Vietnam. This inevitably led to a conflict with the American and South Vietnamese governments, some fellow journalists, and their parent news organizations. This was the last hurrah of print journalism, as television began to grow in stature. William Prochnau's, Once Upon A Distant War, carefully details the struggles of these hardy journalists, led by David Halberstram, Malcolm Browne, and Neil Sheehan. The book contains stories, told in layers, chronicling America's growing involvement in South Vietnam from 1961 through 1963.
Images can manipulate many scenarios but it’s tactic used to show the realities of our world. Despite what we see, picture taken of the war and events occurring in the war doesn’t mean they aren’t real. We all live in a messy world and history is constantly repeating itself. Pictures are taken to spread awareness and empathy. It is a reason DeGhett argued that the Iraq brunt solider photograph taken by Kenneth Jarecke should have been posted in order for the public to get a sense that the war occurring at the moment is nothing like in the movies. Images are powerful and we must learn to always look closely and
Piers Robinson: The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy, and Intervention, (London: Routledge, 2002), pp.7-24.
Even visual media, which has improved remarkably over the last several decades, cannot express these feelings accurately. Today’s movies, photography and other digital media about wars are considerably more visual and realistic than in the past. They are capable of portraying events very close to reality. However, these photos and movie scenes still cannot make a person experience the exact feelings of another person who actually fought in a war.
The media takes a biased approach on the news that they cover, giving their audience an incomplete view of what had actually happened in a story. Most people believe that they are not “being propagandized or being in some way manipulated” into thinking a certain way or hearing certain “truths” told by their favorite media outlets (Greenwald 827). In reality, everyone is susceptible to suggestion as emphasized in the article “Limiting Democracy: The American Media’s World View, and Ours.” The
Instead of telling readers what to think through words, readers can form their own point of view from a photo. A photograph that showed different interpretations was taken during WWII after the destruction of Iwo Jima in Japan of Americans soldiers raising an American flag in the ruins. Some viewers may perceive this act as patriotic, and others may have thought it was an act of terrorism and revenge. Either opinion could be argued and the photograph is the evidence. Since photographs can be unbiased, they can also hold truthful detail. For example, one photograph from the Vietnam war depicted a Vietnamese police officer shooting a Viet Cong in the streets. There are a lot of emotion in that photograph that words cannot describe all; which included the fear and hostility that was upheld during the time. Newspapers need to print more of these kinds of photographs to educate people the ugliness of war and death. Ephron pointed out, “throughout the Vietnam War, editors were reluctant to print atrocity pictures. . . That 's what that war was about.” War and its deaths are a part of history too, and history needs to be kept true and unbiased. As long as the photos are not altered nor used for propaganda, they can be
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”(Albert Einstein) The motto of the media is “if it bleeds it leads”, the only things to make the front page are things that tarnish the image of people. In time of war the media will never print stories of great achievements of soldiers but the casualties or the “politically incorrect”. In war there is no such thing as politically incorrect and there is a thin red line between whats moral and unmoral, especially in Vietnam.
Gerbner, G. (1993). Defense and the Media in Time of Limited War. Armed Forces and Society, v20, pp.147-9.
The Effect of Mass Media on Americans during the Vietnam War When the war initially began, Dean Rusk, US Secretary of State, pointed out that: "This was the first struggle fought on television in everybody's living room every day... whether ordinary people can sustain a war effort under that kind of daily hammering is a very large question. " The us administration, unlike most governments at war, made no official attempt to censure the reporting in the Vietnam war. Every night on the colour television people not only in America but across the planet saw pictures of dead and wounded marines. Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America--not on the battlefields of Vietnam."
1. Although most journalists would state that their main objective in reporting on a story is to maintain impartial, this with the onset of cable news stations as well as the internet has become increasingly rare. Cable news stations such as CNN and FOX news are increasingly influenced by the politicians and corporations which control most of their funding. As Michael Moore states in his documentary “ Fahrenheit 9/11”, which ironically is another good example of bias in the media, the man in charge of Fox News’ decision desk on election night was none other then George Bush’s first cousin. I would seem impartially may be compromised in this situation. To say that the media worked together with the media to promote the Iraq war may be an exaggeration, however the media in know way held the government responsible for the fraud that they committed in invading Iraq. The media, whether knowingly or not, promoted the Bush Administrations agenda in Iraq by arousing overwhelming feelings of nationalism in the American people. It then became unpopular, or un-american to oppose the war. In the case of the Iraq war the media failed to properly fulfill its responsibility of maintaining accountability in government as well as most importantly reporting in an impartial style.
Media and propaganda in general are very interesting to follow. But we should remember not to believe it all so quickly. It is important to bear in mind that the photographer or artist has a specific job to do. They must support their government and its actions. We have to keep in mind the question: who actually controls the media?
We use pictures to develop our own views on specific events that have gone on in the world past and present. In the photograph “Napalm Girl”, Associated press Nick Ut captured a story that only him and the people in the photo would know. The picture was captured of a group of children and soldiers getting away from an accidental napalm bomb that was dropped during the Vietnam War. I am going to establish the history of the event. The issue that this photograph was editors from different media companies and all built stories to show the public that the Vietnam war was not under control. All of the newscasting and journalist headlines that were created from the photos were different. This image has drawn many people in society to believing different
They are alongside the soldiers, sailors, and marines. In some cases, these reporters may need to drop their camera or pen and defend themselves. These examples bring many questions that I want to know. The biggest of these questions is how do these different types of reporting, the “main stream media”, and the small independent embedded reporters affect the views that the American people have back home? The reason I chose this topic is that after reading The Good Soldiers and Moments of Truth in Iraq, I was intrigued by the considerable difference between what was written in books and what CNN reported on the nightly news.
Because I am a journalism student, I have talked, researched and discussed with many of my fellow students and faculty members about the topics above. I am choosing to talk about this because I think it is important and they are pertinent issues in the journalism field. I am also very interested in this topic, so I thought it would be fun to take the opportunity you gave us to design our own multi-part question and write about something in journalism that is appealing to me.
Thirty years ago, if I told you that the primary means of communicating and disseminating information would be a series of interconnected computer networks you would of thought I was watching Star Trek or reading a science fiction novel. In 2010, the future of mass media is upon us today; the Internet. The Internet is and will only grow in the future as the primary means of delivering news, information and entertainment to the vast majority of Americans. Mass media as we know it today will take new shape and form in the next few years with the convergence and migration of three legacy mediums (Television, Radio, Newspaper) into one that is based on the Internet and will replace these mediums forever changing the face of journalism, media and politics. In this paper I will attempt to explain the transition of print media to one of the internet, how the shift to an internet based media environment will impact journalism and mass media, and how this migration will benefit society and forever change the dynamic of news and politics.