Examines how the United States needed to use mass media to justify its war on terror and in Iraq.
Written in 2005; 1,547 words; 8 sources; MLA; $ 50.95
Paper Summary:
The paper explains that, due to the fact that America is a country run by its people, the government needed justification for the intensification of the war in Iraq and against terror. The writer examines the techniques used by mass media to portray the war and questions whether there was censorship or governmental rule over the media during this period.
From the Paper:
"The United States is a democratic country in which the people play a major role in the making of decisions. Their opinions and views have to be considered. Therefore, the country cannot decide to enter a war or attack another country unless it makes its case in front of the American voters. Due to this, the War on Terror that President Bush is now engaged in is fought on the battle ground and in the media. If this war is to be successful according to the wishes of the Bush Administration, then it has to be won on these two sides. To achieve this victory on the media side, the United States has to convince its people that war is necessary. Supposedly, it should do so by giving them the facts that support the necessity of war. However, the reporting of the truth may have the consequence of losing support for this war. In order to avoid the loss of this support, Susan L. Carruthers informs us in "New Media, New War," that the media present a "virtualization of war" (671). In this way, the war is communicated to the citizens as an event that is somewhere "between the real and the hyperreal." Thus, they do know that a war is being fought but they think of this war as a clean one, which does not involve the high losses of life or the destruction of countries. That is to say, the war becomes something like a videogame, with the belief that the high technology weapons have created military confrontations in "which injury has seemingly disappeared, along with enemy and civilian capacity to tolerate casualties" (Carruthers 671). The more realistic views and events of the war such as the death of a minimum of 3,767 innocent poor Aghanistani citizens who were not involved in either the Taliban or al Qaeda, from American bombs (Milne), are not strongly represented as they would contradict this whole image of the "virtualization of war," and could cause public opinion to be against the war. Therefore, the objectors to the war on terror and its extending into Iraq have to destroy this whole idea of the clean and "virtualized" war and present a more realistic view of it. Thus, the American media is currently a field of war between the supporters of striking Iraq and the objectors to it. The fact that most of the American people still remember the Gulf War on Iraq as still a virtual war in which the United States had a quick and easy success, should have allowed the supporters of the war an easy victory over its objectors in the media, were it not for the fact that there are some voices in the American media who are making an effective counter argument against war and its "virtualization.""
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