How The Autonomy Of Journalists Are Affected During War Times

The media’s job is to entertain, inform, and educate society on what is going on around the world. The media entertains society by reporting stories that amuse people. The educational function of the media is about allowing society to know their legal rights. The informational aspect of the media does not need to be explained; it is self-explanatory. Within the last three decades, the media’s role has changed dramatically. The media went from using telegraphs, post offices, newspapers, magazines, radio, and television to using cell phones and tablets. In the modern era, which is also sometimes referred to as the information age, global networking and global communication have shaped modern societies. The majority of

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.

“Words of Fire,” by Anthony Collings, details the lives of different journalists in regards to free press and covering potentially dangerous stories. Anthony Collings is a former CNN reporter who shifted his focus from reporting to telling the story of journalists who have come under fire in a power struggle between government and free press. Collings puts free press into a spectrum, on one side there is the United States, where the press is largely free, and on the other side there are places like North Korea or China where press is largely restricted by the government. Collings does not focus on these extremes, but rather the places in the middle where there is an ongoing struggle between state power.

The Vietnam War proved to governments all over the world that, in order to have a successful military campaign, some form of censorship needs to take place. The Washington Post has reported that due to the effects of the media in Vietnam, “every U.S. military engagement since… has featured attempts to control the media” (Hajela 2006, para. 13) which demonstrates how, since Vietnam, governments have been trying to avoid a similar reaction. Journalists who also reported in Vietnam recall interviewing generals with media handlers present in later conflicts, and mention, in relation to the censorship in Vietnam that, “[they] don't think that in our lifetimes we will ever see that kind of freedom again.” (Hajela 2006, para. 14) The Vietnam War not only made people aware of the need for censorship, but also the power the media holds, which was made clear in the changing attitudes of the media. This is made clear through public reactions and the timing of which they began to support withdrawals from Vietnam. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs, of the Australian government, highlights the power of the media, stating that, “opposition to the war, as the ALP had learnt to its cost in 1966, was not a vote winner… [however in] 1969… it was electorally popular to oppose the war,” (Australian Government Department of Veterans’ Affairs 2015, para. 2) This emphasises the power of the

As an academic, one becomes increasingly aware of the biases in others’ writing. It becomes engrained - to dissect the author’s worldview and biases in order to best determine how those things are affecting their writing. This dissection is all the more important when it comes to journalism. In current times, it is not just the academics that are concerned about biases. The average populous has become increasingly aware that the information that mass media attempts to feed them can be biased beyond belief. The coverage of the Battle of Vimy Ridge in the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail showcases the differences in how a singular event can be reported in very different ways beautifully.

Powerful Weapon All languages take advantage of using metaphors. Metaphors are used widely in all type of literature. They are very common in our daily life, too. Metaphors is a type of figurative language which expresses an idea by using words in imaginative manner and referring to something else in a non-literal way. They help us to express thoughts and ideas more clearly by adding colors and emotions to the sentences.

Operation Iraqi Freedom saw a new rise in media censorship for embedded journalists, before departing their country of origin and being embedded with a military unit journalists were required to undergo joint training and sign contracts vowing not to report information that could compromise unit position, future missions, classified weapons, and information they might find during their time in the field. When asked about the purpose of the embedded journalists and these new restrictions Lt. Col. Rick Long of the U.S. Marine Corps replied "Our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment.” Journalism from the front was no longer being used as a method of information broadcasting for concerned families and civilians at home, but to ensure proper reception of the war and shape public opinion not only in the United States, but the world as a whole.

War is truly a horrific event that unfortunately occurs in our world frequently. There are a variety of ethical questions surrounding war, such as how much should citizens know about the fighting? When it comes to reporting the news, it is the goal of the network to report the news first. The benefit to this is people will turn to them first when it comes to breaking stories. However if the news is delivered based on speed and not accuracy this can be harmful to society. War is a very serious event and should not be taken lightly. Therefore, reporters must make sure facts are correct and unbiased. In both the Vietnam War and our current war we see reporters going to extreme measures to be the first

The Vietnam War was a war of mass destruction, leaving Vietnam to become bitterly divided and claiming the many lives of Vietnamese civilians as well as American soldiers. Out of all the wars in American history, the Vietnam War was the first war to be broadly televised and covered by the media. It came to be known as the first “Television War”. Journalists began to pour into Vietnam from all over the nation, to cover the lives of the American Soldiers as well as Vietnamese civilians. As television brought horrendous images of the war into American living rooms, the perception of an American solider as a hero slowly became the image of the American enemy. Thus, the media is a major factor that

Before the insertion of ground troops in Vietnam, much of the concern in the media had been favoured to the political tactics of reinforcing a non-communist (democratic) government in South Vietnam. After the war changed its direction to heavy ground batlle, a change in coverage also eventuated that the media were more concerned and interested in military conjuncture (Wyatt 1995). By becoming more interested in military aspects of the war, the media became more engaged in actual fight scenes and brutality of the

The established freedom within this uncensored war, unleashed an unprecedented amount of evidence, thus allowing the media to become a tool for oral and visual communication for the masses, ultimately changing the method of historical approach. The ‘nature of evidence’ significantly changed during the television age as the intensity of war coverage changed. Professor Phillip M. Taylor ascertains that the role of the media enabled the general public to be "take a front seat at the making of history on the shirt-tails of journalism”. Therefore, the public became histories witnesses - albeit indirect participants - through the media. Many theorists argue that the media did not create or script any events that played out in the war, rather the

According to James Fallows article, “Learning to Love the (Shallow, Decisive, Unreliable) New Media,” officials all over the world continue to bewail the new ways of journalistic exertion; however, diminishing the old media could possibly be more beneficial than what the world expected.

At the beginning of television news an arrangement existed between television journalists and the public. It was look at as that in modern times promotion journalism was normal. The United States was the modern, broadminded leader of the free world. When Walter Cronkite reported on the daily count of deaths of American soldiers in Vietnam, in lead to the antiwar disapprovals of the 1960s. One man changed how the United States look at the war with his power and influence to change people opinions. (Mann)

Media convergence involves the movement from mass communication to networked communication. This movement has created a media global environment where moving from mass communicators such as TV or radio to network communicators such as mobile and the Internet. This transition is evident of a technological convergence where it has changed the way news are reported and viewed in today’s world. Where in today’s

Thousands of our nation's men and women were fighting for their country, yet the media limited the amount of information that they chose to pass on to the public. Each day the media is faced with the choice of making decisions of what news to pass on, when that news could make a significant difference in someone's life, or in the fate of our nation.