Media and War

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 y...

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...ovies, as recently more and more movies are having a tendency to show both sides of the issue, as it really probably was. If you ever watch an old movie about World War II you know for sure that the Americans are going to come across looking like heroes and the Germans and Japanese are going to look like the bad guys.

All in all it is obvious that media has a huge impact on how we view our involvement in wars. The part that is lees obvious is the way that media should cover our involvement. We have seen different ways of covering it throughout the years and overall that the way coverage is handled should depend on the situation, the war, and society. It would be impossible to say that there is a clear cut way that every war should be handled, because every war is crazy and different. I guess we’ll have to wait until the next war to see how it will be covered.