War Media And Public Opinion Essay Research

War, Media, And Public Opinion Essay, Research Paper

The discussion of the media’s influence on public opinion is a complicated one. The ways in which the media talks about subjects and the spin that they project on the subjects often changes the way the public views certain issues. Everything from the adjectives they use, to the pictures they show, to the tone of voice they use brings out different emotions in their viewers and readers. It is the same as imagery and sound in the movies. For instance, in the movie Top Gun the same image appears with some slow scary music and again with the up beat hero music. They each showed the same plane but one scared you the other excited you. This is the way media coverage has effected public opinion over the years.

In earlier eras the media was not what it is today, with real time information being relayed over satellites to show you live pictures of bombs hitting Belgrade. It started with information being released through reporters typing on manually operated typewriters, then to radio shows where families would gather around the one radio in the house and listen nightly to the news broadcast. Then as it was during World War II, it was movie tone news that was broadcasted at each movie house when you went to watch a show. At the time the sound was limited more likely than not you were reading the captions off the bottom of the screen. However, “By the 1940’s on average each American went to the movies three times a month”(Roeder 1993 4). Then into the sixties and seventies there were the networks, the big decision each night was which of the big three(ABC, NBC, CBS) were you going to watch. There was no cable audience, or no satellite television. They came later. In the 80’s the cable shows made an emergence with entire news networks such as CNN. There were more options on where your news would come from. Then, in the early nineties during the Gulf War there was real time television. You could watch a missile hit Baghdad on television if you choose to or you could read it and view the captions on the paper the next day. Now in the late nineties there are channels that have round the clock live coverage of the “Crisis in Kosovo”. MSNBC, CNBC, CNN and so forth have shows to discuss different options and different views on this issue. Or if you have what a growing majority of Americans have, a computer, you can go online and be connected to vast global knowledge of views and situations. You can speak to people who are typing on there computers in Belgrade as bombs explode outside there homes, or place of employment. This is the evolution of media coverage and how it influences which images and ideas that are brought to the mind. The main question most asked is how and which way does this coverage affect our public’s opinion. This question is frequently asked, but always asked during times of war. Since the evolution of man the information he receives has affected his beliefs, we are going to discuss only a brief part of the history. The period from WW II to present day when war, media, and public opinion have been intertwined so much.

This paper will start with CPI (Committee on Public Information) used during WWII, Life magazine and movie tone news. Then during Korea, how was coverage effecting public opinion. Was it adversely affecting opinions or was it positively helping the government. Then we will discuss why reporters no longer dodge bullets with the soldiers like they did during Vietnam. The eighties operations such as URGENT FURY, ELDORADO CANYON and JUST CAUSE will be discussed. Then to the reporter convoys used to transport and identify sites in the Gulf War will be discussed. How CNN showed the clips from the missiles hitting their targets is another recent first in the media world. Then we will end with the little information and history that we know of the Kosovo incident, or maybe by time this paper is finished, a war.

The Second World War, was one of “good vs. evil” It had to be because of the images the U.S. public saw according to Jean Bethke Elshtain “after studying war imagery”(Roeder 81). During the time of WWII the United States media and public were different from today. The people of that generation had to be because of the circumstances that they faced. The Greatest Generation, the title of Tom Brokaw’s book about the people of that time period (1930-1950), shines a little light into a period where men and women rose to new heights, achievements, and sacrifices not because they wanted to but because they had to. Society, as a whole was hurt, the Great Depression made it near impossible to survive with out finding new ways to live. Family, the word itself meant something and when the War broke out it meant so much more. Everyone knew, and more likely than not was related to someone in the war. Many hung stars of different colors in their windows to show that their men were either at war, coming home soon, or not coming home at all. The war touched home many women had to go to work in the factories because the men were all at war. Planes, guns, and ammunition had to be built. People had victory gardens, can drives, and glass mailboxes to save metal for the military. Society as a unit was strong people were good and wholehearted, everyone did their part to “support the war effort”.

“In 1941 the government’s “informational, promotional, and publicity activities” engaged the equivalent of 8,