Imagine a world - full of love - free of war. What if one day everyone got along and there was not anything to worry about? Nothing was in the way of anyones happiness. Media was out of the picture, weapons were not an option, and nobody had more power than anyone else. Imagine a perfect life of perfect freedom.
Walter Lippmann once said, “We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy’s side of the front is always propaganda, and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace.” Every battle has two sides to the story. One story comes from the media, and one comes from the field of battle, the people who were there. The media insists on using hyperbole to attract people into believing the complete wrong story. ("War, Propaganda and the Media." - Global Issues. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 May 2014.) The goal behind media is to get people excited into knowing the wrong things. Maybe not necessarily wrong, but maybe they just don’t tell you the whole story. They only use selective stories and they also narrow down the range of discourse. For example, Vietnam was named the first television war. PBS was the station that reported things. Also, the people that wanted to know things about the war and follow it, were very disappointed in what they heard. Americans finally realized this was a war we should have fought to win and wondered why we didn’t. People believe it was because of how the media reported the war. It was said that “during the Vietnam war, journalism and news media unintentionally caused a massive shift of American citizens viewpoint of the war.” The reason for this was because it was the first time people could write and report to the American citiz...
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...vented losing the Vietnam war, nor would it have stopped Hitler coming to power, or World War II. However, without all these things in the way, it definitely could have helped avoid a lot of the problems that were caused because of Media, nuclear weapons, and people with “more power” than others. A world full of peace is far beyond reach, especially now with all the power everything has.
WORKS CITED:
"War, Propaganda and the Media." - Global Issues. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 May 2014.
Gonthier, Hannah. "How Media Affected the Vietnam War." YouTube. YouTube, 26 Nov. 2012. Web. 15 May 2014.
"Key Issues: Nuclear Weapons: History: Cold War: Strategy: Introduction to Nuclear Strategies." Key Issues: Nuclear Weapons: History: Cold War: Strategy: Introduction to Nuclear Strategies. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 May 2014.
"Adolf." Hitler's Rise to Power. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 May 2014.
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Show More...conflict. The war had a profound effect on the United States domestic life. The government had massive spending. The more than $150 billion spent throughout this war led to a severe economic crisis (Lawrence, 171.) The war also caused Americans to not trust their governmental leaders for the first time in history. This was due to the Watergate scandal along with the war efforts (Lawrence, 172.) Due to the profound effects economically and socially the war had on Americans, the U.S. should have not proceeded to entering into a battle that was not their own.
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Media platforms like television and radio primarily spread propaganda created by the government. Citizens spend a lot of time watching television or listening to the radio and it’s a big part of their life. Almost everyone in the city owns a television or radio and believes things they see and hear from them. Montag escapes the police, but the T.V. chase is still playing out because they don’t want people to know that they let a fugitive get away. They found an innocent man on the street, labeled him as Montag, then killed him on the broadcast. “‘They’re faking. You threw them off at the river. They can’t admit it. They know they can hold their audience only so long. The show’s got to have a snap ending, quick!’... ‘The innocent man stood bewildered’… ‘The victim was seized by Hound and camera in a great spidering, clenching grip’” -Granger (Bradsbury 142). Media propaganda is so powerful today because everyone is susceptible to it. The press (newspapers, magazines, and T.V.) uses their tactics to shape people’s opinions. According to Johnnie Manzaria, the press is important because the most current news and info is spread through them everyday. People can believe anything the media says, because they have a popular opinion or reputation. Even if they spread propaganda, some people will inevitably believe it because “the news said so”, and is a very influential resource ("Media's Use of Propaganda to Persuade
...been involved in because it was against an unknown enemy in an unknown territory. The consequences of the war far exceed the benefits. The citizens during that period of time would definitely agree. The war caused a severe decrease in the countries moral. Many people no longer trusted the government and grew extremely skeptical of its actions. The recession soon after the war did not help in boosting the spirit of the country. The Vietnam war also exposed many of the United States‘ weaknesses. It showed that our government had planned poorly. It also showed that it was possible to resist the United States as a mass. There is a major difference between one disagreeing voice and a vast number of them. In the end the United States had devastating losses socially and economically. Protests and politics will always go hand in hand when the “sheep” disagree with the “herder“.
During the height of the cold war, the threat of a nuclear attack was real. Many citizens were afraid that an enemy state, most likely the Soviet Union, would launch nuclear missiles at ...
This essay will discuss to what degree the media can be blamed for the United States’ loss in the Vietnam conflict ending 1975. It will be based predominantly on key written resources on the subject, but it will also contain - by means of an interview - certain first-hand observations from a Vietnam War veteran.
Glynn, Patrick. Closing Pandora's Box "Arms Races, Arms Control, and the History of the Cold War". New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, Inc. 1992.
Mitchell, Michael C. "Television and The Vietnam War." Naval War College Review 37.3 (1989): 42-52.
Media played a vital role in changing the views of pro-war Americans to anti-war views by giving death counts, setting the stage for the anti-war movement to perform on, and publicizing leaked government information. The Vietnam War was known as the first televised war (“Vietnam Television”). Americans could watch as United States Troops fought, and the nightly news updated Americans on the death count and progress of US Troops in Vietnam (“Vietnam Television”).
The Cold War was a time of great tension all over the world. From 1945 to 1989, the United States was the leader and nuclear power and was competing with the Soviet Union to create huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons. However, even though the Cold War ended, nuclear weapons are still a threat. Countries around the world strive to create nuclear power, and they do not promise to use it for peaceful purposes. Some examples of the struggles caused by nuclear weapons include the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Iran’s recent nuclear weapon program. Surely, nuclear weapons have created conflict all over the world since the Cold War era.
Smirnov, Yuri, Vladislav Zubok. “Nuclear Weapons after Stalin’s Death: Moscow enters the H-Bomb Age.” Cold War International History Project. March 1994.
The year is 2006,watching TV, you flip through the various news stations to learn about the recent news in Iraq, the majority of the news simply says that ‘x’ amount of soldiers or marines were killed in such and such attack. You don’t like what you are hearing so you go online to read an independent embedded (embedded refers to news reporters who are attached to military units) reporters story. Online you read that two new schools were built, and the Iraqis, supported by US forces, led an attack to capture an insurgent leader. The big media corporations such as FOX, NBC, CNN, and many others distort the facts that are on the ground. The small, mostly independent, reporters generally try to get a first-hand account of the situation on the ground. They are their 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 Moment of Truth in Iraq, I was intrigued in the considerable difference between what was wrote in books and what CNN reported on the nightly news. I did not find a ‘good’ answer I could find to answer my question, however I did draw three conclusions. The conclusions are as follows: the ‘big media’ misconstrues the information from the battlefield to fit their own agendas; the media fails to obtain a personal more in depth view and instead report after the smoke has cleared instead of what happened during t...