The Success of the Media's Manipulation on the Public's Opinion of the War

After the Second World War, media effects scholars proposed a more nuanced preconception of the media's influence on the public. Limited media effects theories suggested that media are far less powerful than previously assumed and the effects could not be generalized. Therefore, the masses become individuals, who are active by selecting and interpreting media messages and are not easily persuaded. This assumption is closely connected to Carl Hovland's Why We Fight experiments, which proved the ineffectiveness of one-sided propaganda in comparison to a more balanced view. In addition, the selective exposure theory of Joseph Klapper concluded that individuals prefer to surround themselves with media messages, which underline their already preexisting

During this time period, the use of television boomed, and for the first time was depended on and trusted significantly more than newspapers. “[Even though] the coverage of the war was significant, a relatively small portion of the coverage was actually combat footage (Anderson). Although producers captured thousands of hours worth of combat footage, they could not push out all of the coverage they captured, “The purpose being not to avoid showing the ugly side of war, but rather to avoid offending families of war victims" (Hallin). The media did not intentionally try to turn america against the war, to the contrary the media saw the war necessary to national security. However, as the war continued on in vietnam and watched daily in living rooms across the country, both the american soldiers and the public became disillusioned as they did not see an end to the war

‘Television brought the brutality of the war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America – not on the battlefields of Vietnam.’ (Marshall McLuhan, 1975). What evidence exists to demonstrate that the American media coverage of the Vietnam War influenced its outcome?

Robert Elegant’s quote explains the significant role the media played in the Vietnam War. This essay will argue that the media’s effect was one dominant aspect of why the United States lost the war in Vietnam. Looking in detail at the heavily televised ‘Tet Offensive’, this essay will suggest that this series of battles was the beginning of the decisive part the media played in influencing public opinion. It is worth nothing that there are several factors involved in why the United States lost the Vietnam War, but this essay will focus on just one. Overall, it

Robert Elegant’s quote explains the significant role the media played in the Vietnam War. This essay will argue that the media’s effect was one dominant aspect of why the United States lost the war in Vietnam. Looking in detail at the heavily televised ‘Tet Offensive’, this essay will suggest that this series of battles was the beginning of the decisive part the media played in influencing public opinion. It is worth nothing that there are several factors involved in why the United States lost the Vietnam War, but this essay will focus on just one. Overall, it

By 1968, more than half of the American people relied on television as their principal source of news. What they saw informed, engrossed, and unsettled them. CBS Evening News anchor Harry Reasoner referred to it as “horrors and failures.” The Vietnam War dominated the network newscast as it never had before. Suddenly the war was everywhere. The impact on the American public would indeed be great. It set off a critical reaction to the war within the American media and gave greater credence to arguments against the war that a vocal protest movement had been voicing for some time. The media coverage of the Tet Offensive had a great influence on the eventual outcome of the fighting and its aftermath. Clarence Wyatt, author of Paper

The Vietnam War plunged the United States in an ever-increasing dilemma of how to exit what seemed to be an unwinnable war against a formidable foe without losing honor and respect in the global community. In a comparison of two essays regarding America’s involvement in Vietnam, the authors offer different perspectives on the war and what led to an America defeat. In the first essay, the effects of the 1968 Tet Offensive are examined and what impact it had on American policy and public opinion about the war effort. Likewise, the second essay examines the role the news media played in the war effort and what effect they had, if any, on official and public opinion, domestically and internationally.

Appy claims that public opposition to the war and formation of a peace movement leading to a lack of trust in the government due to lies and cover-ups on events happening in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq are comparable to America’s attitude during the Vietnam War. Supporting this claim to the opposition of the war by the public because of the government’s perversion in the media is seen in the Middle through the example of Pat Tillman. Tillman’s death, which was propagated to make the public believe that he died in battle instead of a result of friendly fire, sets a prime instance for a comparison of the government’s. (Appy, 311-312). The causes of the War in Iraq such as finding and eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction lead to

The Great War was not only fought with tanks, U-boats, and trench warfare, but it was fought with propaganda. Propaganda from both sides was used throughout the Great War to help try and shape the opinions of each embattled nation. This ‘total war’ did not only require strategic fighting on the battlefield. It also required innovation and at times even deceptive propaganda. The British, Germans and United States governments specifically, invested many of its resources into propaganda as a way to increase recruitment numbers, build international support, and instill a sense of confidence in what was the Great War. Countries had to not just focus their efforts on getting people from their own country to support them, but also neutral countries,

We live in a world of technological innovation where mass media is a major part of us today. People make assumptions on what they hear. They do not try to analyze the situation to see who is right and who is wrong, and mass media is the main source of manipulating one's mind. The concept of propaganda has changed over time. Propagandists create ideas stereotypically through the use of propaganda and use media to promote it and target people's minds to have influence on their views towards a certain group of people. These ideas create negative or positive images in the intended audience's minds. However, it is notable that the information is only the one that is exemplified through media and therefore, can be

Gelpi’s main findings were not what he thought they were going to be. In the article he presented “two distinct cues within the context of a newspaper story to test four theoretical models of the public’s reliance on cues”. After doing his study, he concluded that the “surprising events” model was fairly consistent of opinion formation, “which suggest that individuals will attend to news events that conflict with their expectations in an effort to update their attitudes toward the war”. Also the results support the formation on public opinion on the war and a strong support on “the literature on casualty tolerance during military conflicts”.

During Bush’s War on Terror, the US media unquestionably fell short of its normative function, a point argued by Gary Kamiya in his article for Salon, by failing to provide factual, unbiased and relevant information on the war in Iraq. This essay will use Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model to explain how flak and sourcing forced the majority of journalists to report only news that backed the government’s arguments for war, thus skewing the public’s perception of events in the aftermath of 9/11. It will then explain, with reference to John Reith’s Public Service Principles and Johan Galtung’s public sphere model, what the normative function of media in a Libertarian society should be, and how this could be better met by the media during wartime by a better balance of published opinions for and against the war, and better fact checking by journalists.

As discussed in class, one of the most influential agencies of socialization is the media. The way we see ourselves or the way other people see us come from what we are told by others and what we tell ourselves. In the Better world handbook, the chapter on media states that “the way we think and act in our daily lives is inextricably linked to the information we receive about the world” (Jones, Haenfler and Johnson). The chapter continues to discus how information delivered to us can be bias and this raises the issue on who controls the media and what we see through it. The problem with this could be that that whoever controls the media does not necessary have our best interest in mind and the content that is transmitted through the media is profit driven. . In the article “Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong” gives a perfect accept of how easy it is for information to get omitted based on what people what you to know and what they don’t want you to know. From a young age, people decide what they want you to know, so that they can decide on what they want you to think about certain topics whether its American history or something else, its like the

“A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth” – Joseph Goebbels, German Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. This is the exact words of Nazis most famous propagandist in using media as a mass weapon of propaganda and mind control. Could you imagine Germany in 1930s, without Television channel, without the Internet, without every mobile device in your palm, what channel of information will you get? Of course, newspapers, flies, images, celebrities were used as tools for propaganda purposes, designed to provoke a reaction, and ultimately, a form of control over their citizen. Nowadays, with all the advanced of technologies, information can reach everyone in every corner of the Earth, the message is delivered in the subtlest ways, without people’s conscious, has shaped everyone’s decision, or at least shape their behavior toward the decision that the orchestrator want the audience to perceive. With the booming of internet, information sharing seamlessly, we must ask ourselves, the role of media in conveying, shaping the society that we are living in. Let look at few examples of U.S propaganda machine, and later, the particular case of fish sauce in Viet Nam back in October 2016.

Public opinion can be characterized as the thought of the society at a particular time towards any circumstantial incidents. The effectiveness of public opinion is amplified when people are assembled, united, massed and in mutual consent of the attitudes that is being publicized, popularized or due to societal pressure to conform. Public opinion can be manipulated and was stated by Adolf Hitler (1940) “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it and eventually they will believe it.”