This army knew no boundaries and did not use conventional tactics of war fare. Even when the Taliban were imprisoned, the media first reasoned and then insisted that the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war applied to these prisoners. Bill Maher, comedian, political commentator and host of the program "Politically Incorrect" called the terrorists "freedom fighters." (Landau, 2009) Many editorials were written excoriating Americans for ill-treatment of these prisoners. Some in the media even averred that these prisoners deserved the same rights guaranteed to those in correctional facilities in the United States. This meant that those imprisoned in the war on Terror could be given specific rights as afforded by the Constitution of the United States of America. The media in its insistence did not recognize that these prisoners knew no national affiliation and therefore were not protected by any convention. They were not U.S. citizens and therefore were not protected by the Constitution. But this did not stop them from opining and attempting to change public opinion.
On reading the newspapers, or watching CNN or MSNBC, it would seem as if the United States came from the perspective of tyrants and the Taliban and Iraqi prisoners were merely were some sort of victims. The national trauma of 9-11 was forgotten for political expediency. Only the Fox News Channel, which largely represents the conservative and Republican viewpoint, maintained some semblance of the political coverage of old, and largely supported the U.S. standpoint. There was a remarkable difference in how the media felt that the prisoners were treated vs. how they opined about excesses real or perceived by the U.S. troops. The media had a lot of negatives to proclaim when it came to the misadventures of U.S. troops at the Abu Ghraib prison. (Hersh, 2004)
While in war, given the circumstance that troops face day in and day out, it is conceivable that some abuses will occur, but a sense of perspective is necessary. The U.S. has largely routed the Taliban, enabled free and fair elections in Iraq, set up a system of government in Afghanistan, set up modern infrastructure in Iraq, and served notice to other tin-pot dictators in the region. Only research enables an information seeker to find this information, because the media does not report it. The media is more concerned with reporting instances of the death of U.S. servicemen or any setbacks to the U.S. Or its allies in this war. It is conceivable that the U.S. efforts...
Media and Military Operations Recently there has been much debate about the effect of media reports on military conduct. Most of this has to do with the security that the military needs to conduct their operations and the dangerous are some of the reports that the media sometimes leaks out. A recent article found in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy argued that First Amendment freedom was compromised because
The spin that often surrounds war, is fundamentally damaging even if it is intended as damage control for the nation as a whole, or at the very least the leaders of the nation. Public Belief It has been hinted at within this work that the old adage, the public does not necessarily believe what it hears, but it hears what it believes is at play when it comes to media. As
Media Coverage and the Vietnam War: A Literature Review Few events in U.S. history had the dramatic and lasting impact on American culture as did the Vietnam War. Many historians and commentators attribute the war's outcome and legacy to the treatment it received by the mainstream media. A review of a sampling of the literature on this subject reveals a very diverse, sometimes acrimonious, view of the media's influence on the
Wartime Embedded Journalists There have been war correspondents in virtually every U.S. military engagement. During the Civil War, a photographer named Matthew Brady was out there on the battlefield not exactly snapping pictures, but laboriously preparing the glass plates in the back of his horse-drawn darkroom. So embedding journalists in with the U.S. military during the recent, and continuing, war in Iraq would not seem to be any different, and certainly
47). The attorney general also made sure that the mainstream media had plenty of scary stuff about terrorists to cover in a dramatic fashion. For instance, Dettmer notes that, "The manner of the announcement by a live TV linkup for Ashcroft in Moscow and a star-studded news conference at the Justice Department added massive drama. With the surprising exception of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, aides and officials appeared determined
War coverage-Media obsession To argue about the role of media in our lives would be only redundant since we already know and acknowledge the influence of media over our perception of the world. How the various news media including newspapers, television, radio and more recently Internet affect our thinking and shape our perception requires some close analysis of the way these agencies gather and present news. There is an interesting process
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now