After watching Amy Goodman speak in a brief documentary about mainstream media's coverage of war, I had a realization about the hypocrisy of popular news outlets. I know this is a harsh statement, especially for my first post, but let me explain.
We are in an age where story telling is key. People want to emotionally connect with a news story or identify with the person in order to stay fully engaged. But in some areas we are going too far.
Think election 2012. Popular media outlets will focus on a candidates sexual promiscuity, religious beliefs, family status and so on. What the audience is getting less and less of is actual information on policies-- the information that actually has an effect on our own lives. But that's okay because we voters are focusing on the candidates character rather than policy! No, it is not okay. Personification is dominating politics, a place it does not belong.
But is personification always bad? I don't believe so. Personification helped to end the Vietnam War. Famous pictures such as the naked girl running through the street with her flesh burning off or a monk on fire in protest are still etched in our minds as the horrors of war. It caused a uprising in the U.S. and it showed a desperate want of people to end the Vietnam war. We saw victims as people rather than numbers.
In the Iraq war, we have had no civilian victims. False. But you wouldn't know it based on the coverage by popular media. In fact, the media has done its best to keep personification out of wartime reporting, a place where it should be welcomed the most. War is not glamorous. People die, including civilians. If we are going to engage in war, U.S. citizens have a right to see the faces of war-- American or not. A life lost is important no matter who you are or where you are from in my opinion. We see on television a bomb exploding, but we are distanced from the people the bomb just blew to pieces. We don't see their faces; we don't identify with the destruction; we see nothing wrong in our war for "freedom" and the "greater good."
If the government is supposed to represent the American people, then why hide certain aspects of war or stay in a war a growing majority do not approve? If media is supposed to act as a checks and balances system for government, is it ethical for them not to show the all sides (and victims) of war? How in the world are citizens supposed to get a full understanding of whats happening and who is dying at the hand of the U.S. all over the world?
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