Embedding Essay

When the public is informed about the shortcomings of war, rarely are they shown lavishly graphic imagery, unless one has personally sought it out. This probable notion of censorship is the issue raised by Torie Rose Deghett in the article “The War Photo No One Would Publish”. Deghett introduces the reader to a potentially unfamiliar and graphic image taken during the Gulf War by photographer Kenneth Jarecke. The mere description of this image is incredibly distressing, and leads to Deghett’s main argument, where she questions if broadcasting images of this nature is necessary in order to keep the public informed. Throughout the piece Daghett appears to be mainly in favor of allowing these images to be present in the media, throughout describing how the Gulf War was dehumanized through the blocking of gruesome photographs such as Jarecke’s. While Daghett brings light to the many pitfalls of

The collection of poems “Theater”, “Water”, and “Safe House” by Solmaz Sharif shows the varied viewpoints of how war affects the speakers and how death is all too common in the midst of warfare. The author uses a spectrum of literary techniques to enhance the experience of the reader, so we can fully grasp the severity of each speaker’s plight. All of Sharif’s poems differ in form with the use of white space and indentations in “Theater”, colons in “Water”, and a style of abecedarian using the letter S in “Safe House”. While her diverse use of forms generate different emotions from the reader, they share the same notion of how violence is problematic. Each poem has a unique outlook to the sight of war: “Theater” being in the position of a victim and an assailant of war, “Water” explaining a war mission and fatalities in terse terms, and “Safe House” as an observer of an activist against war. Sharif’s strategy to exemplify the effects of how war affects the victim and the civilian is particularly critical because mass media tends to hide the collateral damage of war and only illustrates why we should attack the “enemy”. Another approach the author uses to critique the speakers central conflicts is by arranging words from the US Department of Defense 's Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, to concur with the message of the several ways war influences the lives of those who are unwillingly encompassed by it. Sharif uses poetry as an outlet to show the underlying tone

With this focus on the soldiers who bore the punishment and the blame for policies that they implemented. These witnesses, of whom many believe as war criminals, give their testimony into the context of the photographs. Using the interrotron, a machine which enables the interviewee to look directly at the camera whilst answering question by the interviewer, allows to audience to be looked in the eye by these soldiers. These testimonies paired with staged re-enactments, that focus on details from the testimonies, provide the audience with a visual representation of the soldier’s context, of which are not seen in the limited visual space of the photographs. These testimonies provide information to understand what exactly happened at the time of the photographs, or what occurred outside of the limited visual frame.

Carlson, Timothy and Katovsky, Bill, _Embedded: The media at war in Iraq_, The Lyons Press, Guilford, 2003.

Human beings are influenced by what they see, hear, or read on the news. Today we have several sources to receive news: newspapers, internet, and radio. However, with this information people come to question what is truly the truth. The Cable News Network (CNN) displays footage of current events happening all around the world. This well-known 24-hour news broadcasting system began to change its traditional pattern of news began to encapsulate the way media directs the foreign policy formulation. For the individuals behind the scenes, including policy makers and academics, the 1990’s was a time of media empowerment and growth. Piers Robinson thesis in the “CNN effect revisited” is the ways in which the media influences foreign policy formulation, socially and politically. In his argumentative essay, Robinson discusses the development of foreign policy since the “war on terror” and the “humanitarian war.” Additionally, Robinson discusses the ways media intervened with political decisions and how the media’s voice created military action. The media that has the privilege to voice opinions, can result in less freedom for the press

Due to the widespread availability and popularity, the internet had an immense impact upon the Iraq war (Raine, Fox and Fallows, 2015). It provided a platform for anti-war activism and it aided in the coverage of the conflict, not only by helping journalists connect outside the war zone but it also gave a platform for ordinary people to give their opinions and take on the war. Due to this impact the Iraq war and was quickly referred to as the first internet war, making the internet to Iraq war what television was to Vietnam.

These are discreet conferences between a tiny group of journalists and military officials (Toblin). These military officials have been documented using intimidation tactics and intensive “security-review” procedures to maintain uniformity and submission amongst the journalists (Toblin). In addition to pool sessions, the journalists who traveled abroad to film the war were also subject to harsh treatment (How PR). The Deputy Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Pete Williams, often spoke of the alleged importance of the “good cop/bad cop” strategy with the United States and Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War (How PR). Saudi Arabia, despite working with the United States during the Gulf War, frequently denied visas to the United States press and detained them (How PR). This strategy helped keep journalists complacent and grateful to Williams and the United States government for helping them in tough situations abroad. By securing the complacency of journalists as individuals, this obviously had a lasting impact on the mainstream media as an institution. The "cascading activation" theory of media has been used by several experts to show how issues are passed down from the White House to elites, news organizations, and the public (Entman). This cascading activation characterizes the media coverage of the Gulf War (Entman). This dangerous pattern often excludes important

A response to this critique may be that the variable of enemy labelling is a direct test for framing or counterframing. It is important to see whether news coverage is complying with the administration’s frame or deviating from this. Language used in news media is important as it affects public opinion about the war. It is a subtle element of bias from the news programme that gives away a political stance that may have not been explicit. This is because it establishes a sense of evaluating the situation morally. Counterframing, as Aday notes, can occur by the media rejecting obvious administration framing devices, such as enemy

Hermida, Lewis and Zamith (2014) describe journalistic sourcing as involving “making decisions on who is included or excluded as an actor in the media” (p. 480). Studies have repeatedly found that journalists rely on official and elite sources (Brown, Bybee, Wearden, & Straughan, 1987; Dardis, 2006; Jha, 2007; Lecheler & Kruikemeier, 2016). Official and elite sources include police, government officials, business leaders, public relations professionals and bureaucrats (Ryan, Carragee, & Meinhofer, 2001). For example, Reese and Buckalew (1995) found that local television reporters did not attempt to quote Gulf War protesters about their reasons for supporting the peace movements. The reporters did, however, quote police sources.

The aim of this investigation is to determine to what extent the US military manipulated the media during the First Gulf War. Therefore my research question is to what extent was media coverage of the First Gulf War manipulated by the United States government. In order to obtain an appropriate analysis of this topic several different sources will be consulted throughout this investigation. Those include, archived books, news reports, interviews, photos and websites. I will now analyse 2 of the sources that I will use in the investigation “For example the U.S Government exhibited great skill in shaping media coverage during the Gulf War. It used several means to do so. Reporters were restricted to the pool system meaning the government choose which reporters and news organizations had access to battlefield coverage. The government escorted the media to sites of the governments choosing and even then the media had to submit their reports to government censorship. Most of the media spent most of the Gulf War in hotel rooms in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia reporting on government press-briefings, and rebroadcasting and rebroadcasting the Pentagon’s footage of perfect bombing runs and surgical air strikes. The media had no independent ability to confirm or deny these rosy pictures and reports and no ability to track down stories the government did not want shown, such as those about Iraqi casualties, civilians dead or injured, missed bombs, or failing to strike Saddam Hussein.”

Thirdly and related to former point, the two US military interventions differ in size, scope, form and length of time. While the military operation to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in 1991 consisted of extensive military preparations and the invasion of a foreign country, the missile strike against a Syrian regime airfield was a an operation of a few hours, using only unmanned cruise missile against a single target. As a result, there was simply not enough time to assign correspondents to the ground, who often tend frame events in wars episodically. More generally, perhaps due to the lack of access to the ground operations, journalists, particularly those working for newspaper, were able to cover this foreign policy event predominately thematic as opposed to the first Gulf War.

In the United States, we seem to have dozens of news networks, and most of the time, everything that is put out by these networks is considered as fact. We rely so much on these news networks for our view into the outside world, and most of the time, one would not think to question them. Jehane Joujaim’s 2004 documentary, Control Room, covers “one of the most controversial news channels in the Arab world” (Joujaim, 2004), Al Jazeera, and brings to light many biases relating to the coverage of the 2003 Iraq war. Joujaim places Al Jazeera on a pedestal, and emphasizes the importance of that particular news network in Arab culture and society, as well as many of the problems that stem from the subjective media coverage of wars or invasions. It is difficult to discuss Joujaim’s documentary as a whole without discussing the most important aspect that I have taken from the film, and that is the topic of biases in the media.

Media has power to create, shape and change public opinion. At the same time, it is also created and shaped by community. In war or conflict discourse the power of media is crucial because it affects the image of the country on the international stage as well as public mood and atmosphere in the country. The ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict has been a matter of debate between many countries including but not limited to Russia and Ukraine. The research area of the current study is the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict in media discourse. The present study seeks to determine whether this conflict as well as its key actors are viewed and discussed differently in Russian, Ukrainian and European media, as well as whether media sources

The Syria’s war has become an issue that is frequently reported by news organisations around the world, and the news stories produced by different news organisations reflect a diversity of approaches of communicating, constructing and negotiating collective ideas (Al-Ghazzi, 2014). In order to understand the process of producing meaning by the different news media, it is necessary to analyse media representations as texts and images by discovering textual, visual and discursive properties (Orgad, 2012: 17). The case-study, therefore, will research the media discourse of news reports produced by the Guardian and Al-Jazeera, choosing 5 pairs of news stories with similar topics among Syria war.

In the world of international studies there are many bias parties and individuals as there are drastically differing viewpoints regarding hot topic issues in the field. This makes for an exciting endeavor when conducting research on topics such as Private Military Companies as all different types of political personalities arise when such subjects are debated over. This characteristics of the international relations area of study also becomes apparent when authors of scholarly journals and public websites debate over fundamental issues of the aforementioned subject, such as the different rules for engagement and fighting overseas. When hunting for sources for this project, I found that the community of experts commonly