cs in the Media
As Americans, we believe that world events over the next few years will unfold from September 11th. The safety and security that we all felt before will never be the same. While Americans continue to recover our enemies continue to plan a way to bring us to our knees once again. Many of us will never again be able to fly without a fear of what if and many of us will never again be able to turn on the morning news without the fear of what if. We tend to have the attitude that terrorist attacks are events that happen in other countries like Israel where peace is unsteady.
Many of us never dreamed of having it in our own front yard and to compound those affects by seeing parts of the world celebrating at the sight of a super power falling to its knees.
While the attacks themselves are a focal point for many scholars, I will focus not on the attacks, but rather I will ask questions as to why the attacks happened and why it hurt so much to see others smile happily at the sight of our pain. Americans are shocked to see that others would ever wish us pain. Much of this is taught to us at an early age, that everyone wants to be American and that the American Dream is the only way to live a full and happy life.
What role does the media play in continuing this naivet of American society and how does the media in other countries account for our pain? How does our super power mentality play in this picture and why do many citizens of the world feel ill will towards Americans? I will address these questions by reviewing foreign newscasts and magazine articles, interviewing international politics experts, and finally interviewing an expert in American foreign policy. As citizens in a democracy we deserve the truth.
The truth about how our government treats citizens of other countries and other accounts of how bad U.S. Foreign Policy creates negative feelings towards American citizens themselves.
To understand how the American media plays into a bigger picture of the foreign media it is important to understand how they both operate. In The Politics of Illusions by Lance Bennett he writes about notable media differences. Lance writes:
A fascinating example of how these work routines affect news content was discovered by Timothy Cook in a study of Gulf crisis coverage in the United States and France.
Immediately following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, television networks assigned their reporters to get reactions from key sources. American newscasts flipped through the golden triangle of Washington news beats: the White House, State Department, and Pentagon. Since the invasion had just occurred, there was no official reaction to be had. However, the reporters were pressured to say something, and they effectively invented the kinds of vague pronouncements that one might expect from officials in sensitive political posts at the early stage of world crisis. By contrast, French reporters (who do not operate on U.S.
-style beat system) interviewed various political party leaders and generated a comparatively broad range of political views about the meanings and implications of the invasion. (Bennett 119)
To understand that most U.S. reporters not only have lost sight of real journalism is to also realize that those same reporters sometimes knowingly hide the truth beneath many lays of non-important information.
The reporter and political official relationship is set to operate off one another. The politics could never play out without the reporters but on that same side the politics could never play out without a reporter willing to report what the political official wants to be heard.
A politicians public fate often lies in the trustworthiness of a reporter. Lance talks about how fragile this relationship is by stating, When those sources are powerful officials surrounded by an entourage of eager reporters clamoring for news, it is always possible that those who report what officials want them to will be rewarded while those who fail to convert key political messages into news will be punished. (Bennett 120)
Foreign policy encompasses more than war and peace, it .
