War Blog
Oz Jensen
In 1897 when William Randolph Hurst got a cable that stated "There will be no war" he responded with "You furnish the pictures and I will furnish the war.", sure enough, in February of 1898 the USA declared war on Spain after The U.S.S Maine blew up.
Hurst took advantage right away, understanding that war with Spain over Cuba would sell more copies of his newspaper, Hurst started a public campaign falsely propagating that Spain had definitely blown to U.S.S Maine and that America should respond strongly. Thanks to "yellow journalism" from the media, and especially Hurst public sentiment for the war was at an all time high.
The role of a journalist is often referred to as the 4th estate, referring to the power journalists have over public opinion and ability to impact political issues. For the most part in cases such as watergate, this is an exceptionally good thing, but what happens when journalists, similar to Hearst, ignore the truth for their own benefit, whether it be financial or idealogical.
This "watchdog" role is a necessary check and balance for federal and local governments, however this role needs journalists who are more focused on finding the truth than looking for the storyline that they choose to follow.
The press, and it's mainstream allegiance, combined with misinformation can be held partially responsible for many of the most controversial events in United States history, especially in times of war.
Misinformation in the American press to push ideologies to the public is older than the country itself, as one of the famous political cartoons in American history was an inaccurate description of what actually happened at the Boston Massacre. In the event, a rowdy group of colonist protesters threw snowballs filled with rocks and attacked the soldiers protecting the governors mansion with clubs.
Eventually, one soldier who had heard the word "fire", fired into the crowd, leading to other soldiers shooting and five colonists ending up dead. While the soldiers protecting the governors mansion were clearly incompetent, Throughout the next week descriptions of this event looked like Paul Revere's cartoon, in which it shows a commander ordering the soldiers to fire on a peaceful crowd. This was definitely not true.
However, the British were a brutal imperialist empire, and the fact that the public believed, and was so outraged immediately, I feel as though this may have been justified, as it was not as though the British would tell the truth either, and had their own propaganda machine.
What this dilemma shows is when a population is often lied to, ? Clearly Revere thought it was best to fight fire with fire. Most lies from the press in American histories did not have as clear and unselfish motives as Revere.
During the 1916 election, Woodrow Wilson promised the American people he would do everything he could to keep them out of war, even running on the pledge. So it made sense that when the United States public were angry when the United States joined the war in April of 1917.
To fight public outrage Wilson created the Committee on Public Information (CPI) to drum up public support to participate in WWI. The CPI would sensor information they found to be detrimental to the war effort, clear violations of personal freedom and democracy, something we were supposedly fighting for.
During World War II, limits on the press were not quite as bad World War 1, however the government would give them documents of what they should and should not cover. This should never be okay, as it is not the United States press's job to win the war for the country. This means that there could have been atrocities by the American forces during the war that the press never would have covered.
In 2003, The United States illegally invaded the country of Iraq. In a speech, President George W. Bush claimed that "intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that this Iraq regime continues to possess some of the most lethal weapons ever devised This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction" Bush also claimed that Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein was training terrorists to kill Americans. The resulting war cost Americans 2 trillion dollars and killed around 190,000 people.
Despite these lies, and the costliness, the majority of American media, especially Fox News, supported the war, and pushed the public to support it as well. The public was not quite as convinced by the government, holding the biggest protest in human history to end the war.
Press response of Iraq war
In the time leading up to the War, President George W. Bush, most of the press had gone so easy on the president, that Bill Moyers made an episode of the "Bill Moyers Journal" about it. In the episode, Moyers rips the war, as well as the journalists that made it so easy for the Bush administration to make things up, like the fact that Saddam Hussein had possession of weapons of mass destruction. Not long after the airing of this episode, The Bill Moyers Journal was cancelled, and yet if you google it, there is no mention of why it was taken off the air, even though he was a clearly great journalist. However, as time has moved on more and more has been written about the disaster of a war.
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