Monday, April 17, 2017

OTM 3 - How the Press Gets Seduced By War

A couple weeks ago, President Donald Trump ordered a large amount (59) of missile attacks on a Syrian airbase for revenge on a chemical attack on their own people. They killed dozens of people including children. Being an heavily talked about debate whether this was good or bad, this has been all over the news. Stephen Kinzier, Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public affairs and Brown University, accompanied alongside with a columnist from the Boston Globe, argue that "The public is being presented with a deceptively simple version of reality because the media aren't asking the right questions."

First off, I think your viewpoint on this really settles on if you think war is necessary or not. I, for one, believe military weapon use is necessary, but only at a last resort. Whether or not this was demonstrated as a last resort, I'm not sure. The reporter in the audio clip mentioned that the missiles were meant to send a message to Asad (and the world) that there's a "new sheriff in town," that we are going to take a tougher line and will be taken seriously as a military. I for one would have to agree with this in the idea that, well, I don't feel like Obama did this. And if he did, he definitely didn't publicize it (or gain a lot of media attention).

As far as the news "romanticizing" these events, I do agree that yes, the news should be strictly informative and objective. This is true. But, really, can we expect anything less? That's how news are these days. Everything is tied with subjectiveness and opinions. I would love to live in a world where I can turn on the news and it's strictly FACTS, but that's not how it is anymore. In fact, most of our news outlets are so incredibly biased, it's hard to know what's true (which is sad, considering the news is the one source where we are supposed to go to with information).


http://www.wnyc.org/story/press-seduced-war

No comments:

Post a Comment