Media: The Puppeteer of the Public

Ever watch Bugs Bunny and the Looney Toon gang? Of course. Remember the episodes depicting Bugs and the gang in Word War I or World War II garb and situations? Bugs was always the red-blooded American hero and those Germans were depicted as despicable varmints. Those cartoons went along with the support the government had with the media in battling those wars.

But then came Korea and Vietnam. And the government and the media were no longer bedfellows. The media became an enemy as great as the one the country was battling thousands of miles away in the Asian rice fields. “The media became the primary battlefield. Illusory events reported by the press as well as real events within the press corps were more decisive than the clash of arms or the contention of ideologies.”(Dudley & Bender, 1990, p. 76)

The media, ever since being the puppet of the World War I and World War II government has since strived not only to cut the strings, but also to become the puppet master. The media sensationalized and condemned the government during the Vietnam War and even as recently as the 9/11 terrorist attacks continued its revolt by not displaying flag lapels.

News stories that entered the Vietnam era homes, included those of American soldiers burning villages and cutting ears off dead Viet Cong. That was the media’s version. The reality of the burning village was a deserted village used for Marine training exercises. The television correspondent gave a non-commissioned officer his Zippo lighter with the suggestion to set it fire. The reality of the cutting of the ears from a Viet Cong corpse was a cameraman offering the soldiers his knife and dared them to do it. (Dudley & Bender, 1990, p. 80)

So, as you sit down to watch the evening news, or to read your daily paper, you must give it some thought on who is pulling the strings. Is it the government controlling the media or is the media controlling the government? When you reach the last sentence or watch the rolling credits, you must decide on how much and what to believe. The best advice to give is to take many resources into account and combine with common sense, the one thing that the media may sway, but cannot control.

This was not the case with Vietnam, where the government did just the opposite. “As Crosby Noyes, foreign editor of The Washington Star put it: ‘This is the first U.S. government in history to have committed American lives to the outcome of a war and at the same time permitted--one could say--invited the systematic subversion of this commitment by the press…It is simply incredible that a government can ship 400,000 men to fight in a war and at the same time cheerfully accede to visits by reporters, hand-picked by the enemy, to tour his territory and write straight-faced dispatches on what they are told and shown.’”(AIM, 1989, p. 9) Public support for the Vietnam War dropped by 15 percent whenever total U.S. casualties increased by a factor of 10, according to AIM.

In 2001, the media began to play another role as the puppet master with the public and the government. As the second plane crashed into the other World Trade Center building, the American public watched. It was the biggest sensationalized item to come into the media’s hands and it was happening on American land. While firefighters, police o

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