War And Media Essay Research Paper Allyn

War And Media Essay, Research Paper

Allyn Secor

Comm 407

Paper# 3

Media and War

Throughout history violent conflicts have been one of the few constants in our society. We can usually expect at least a war or two in our lifetime, and the way that our involvement in these wars documented and presented to us in media has a huge effect on how we perceive these conflicts. Most people don?t have the actual war experiences to influence their feelings on the subject, so we must rely on the information that is given to us by our forms of media such as television, radio, newspapers, etc. This media is often the only influence we have when deciding our stand on how we feel about these conflicts so we must understand whether or not media promotes understanding of the issues or whether it is more of a type of propaganda used to make our involvement more accepted by the public even if it is right or not. There are those that believe both sides of the issue, with many good arguments for both. Some believe that our media coverage probably helps us more than it hurts us, but many also believe that we aren?t getting the full true story about what is going on, but more of just a sample of what they want us to know- usually coverage that will make us feel proud of what we were doing and make us more inclined to accept and support the war.

Media has also evolved in the ways that war is covered, mistakes with the way coverage was in Vietnam were of course fixed by the time the Gulf War came around. The technology evolves rapidly in media and often-new forms of media are used from war to war. For example the Vietnam War was the first war to have such extensive television coverage. The stories that people read in newspapers during World War II became a lot more graphic and hit home a lot harder when you actually saw what was going on right in front of you on television. It became hard for people to accept the war when they saw the brutality of war and got to see exactly what was going on instead of just reading about it in the newspaper or listening to it on the radio. Most people are a lot less supportive when they see the horrors that their soldiers are going through. It is also a lot easier to hate an enemy that you can?t actually see. It was easy to hate Hitler and the rest of the Axis in World War II when you could read or hear about the atrocities they were committing from our own point of view, but it was hard to hate the Vietnamese when you saw them on television in their villages trying to lead their simple lives. You got to actually see their women and children and how they lived instead of just reading about the bad things their soldiers were doing.

When the Gulf War was covered the media tended to go back to less actual field coverage of the battles and carnage. They would usually show shots of missiles being fired or show a general giving us an overview of what was going on, not live coverage in the heat of battle showing people being gunned down. The media in most wars is usually very slanted towards our side of the issue. The media usually makes our forces out to be the heroes fighting for freedom and democracy whatever the real underlying agenda behind the war. You never hear our guys being confused with the bad guys and our enemies are never made out to look like the good guys. It is always made to look like a battle between good and evil with our guys always playing the good guys.

Media usually makes sure to point out all of the atrocities of our enemies and all of the great things we are doing. Of course in the other countries it is the other way around, which makes you really wonder what is really going on. One war where the line between the good and the evil was somewhat more blurred was the Vietnam war. Instead of just showing our troops as the knights riding in on white horses they also showed that our troops were also capable of committing unthinkable acts, an issue we had never been forced to confront before the Vietnam war. Stories about villages being burned and possibly innocent people being massacred were actually being reported more in Vietnam, something that didn?t sit well with a public that had a hard time accepting that we were in a war and that in wars unthinkable acts are committed on a daily basis. This coupled with the fact that the government never really gave us a real reason for even being in the conflict in the first place made public opinion for the war steadily turn sour. The media hadn?t anticipated the huge effect that it?s coverage of the war would have on the public. It swayed the public?s opinion so much that many of the men who fought in Vietnam came back to much less than a heroes welcome. People were outraged at what was going on and refused to accept our involvement. Many have heard first hand stories of how Vietnam veterans were treated when they got home, and much of the way they were treated is due to the way the war was presented to the public. My Swim coach in high school told us stories about how he would get into fights everyday when he got home from Vietnam because of the way he was treated. This is a very major drawback to covering a war so objectively. Is it fair for our soldiers to be treated like dogs for the benefit of our information. This is a very hard question to answer because we feel that we are entitled to all the information that is out there when it comes to our nat