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Genocide and the Propaganda Media Essay

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To many Americans, the feeling of being a bystander as countries slaughter their own people has been in legal debate since 1933, it has gradually developed into a concept that can be applied in many situations, both historical and contemporary. The meaning of the phrase genocide is the cleansing of a race or ethnicity in a country. There has been evidence that this phrase can be used to describe past and present day massacres being committed around the world and how media has changed its perception on this issue overtime. "Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the whole people... Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea." ( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1926). …show more content…

Most people didn't know what was going on, and people didn't really know where Jews and gypsies etc. were going, all they knew was that they were being removed. When word and photographs got out into the public view about what happened in these camps, everyone is shocked to see so many dead bodies. With the role of media, the international response to the war crimes in the Holocaust was to establish an international tribunal and it was agreed to punish those responsible of crimes.
Throughout World War II, the American media published and broadcasted detailed accounts of what was happening to the Jews in Europe. Articles published propagation of anti-Semitic laws in German allied countries; death from disease and starvation of hundreds of thousands in ghettos and labor camps; mass executions in Nazi-occupied Russia; and mass gassings. The articles also indicated that these were not incidents, but part of a systematic campaign to kill all the Jews in Europe The 1994 Rwandan genocide presented one of the most horrific crimes against humanity since the Holocaust of World War II. In addition, it was also the first tragedy of its kind with the opportunity to be represented in full by the media. Media played a different role here than in the Holocaust, providing large coverage of the atrocities taking place “Remarkably, during a genocide that claimed as many as a million lives, this is one of the only times a killing is

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