War Made Easy
2009-11-02 05:23:04.067275+00 by
Dan Lyke
3 comments
Just finished watching War Made Easy to help Charlene with a project for one of her classes. Norman Solomon makes the case that the media complicity in the Dubya administration's push to war wasn't anything new, that since WWII the assorted media have been complicit in selling wars to U.S. citizens, and has continued to sell those wars long after the public support for them has waned. I believe it goes back a lot further than that.
You can watch it for yourself here, I'm guessing there isn't too much new there for most Flutterby readers. One question I did have: There's a bit in the video where there's a shot of tanks in a parade, a cut to a close-up of a tank in a parade setting with an American flag emblem visible, and then a cut back to a long shot. Since we were watching with a critical eye, this leaped out at me: I don't know enough about military hardware to identify the various vehicles, but I'm pretty sure the close-up was not of the same sort of tank the long shots were, making me suspicious that there was some editing for effect.
[ related topics:
Politics History Journalism and Media Video
]
comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Everybody spins it seems made: 2009-11-02 09:08:11.854939+00 by:
spl
It's disappointing to always come to this conclusion.
I'm reading a book on Islam right now (Paul Grieve, "A Brief Guide to Islam"). The back cover claims "this is the ideal summary for the reader looking for an unbiased overview of the religious and political world issues that have become part of our everyday lives." But this is absolutely not an unbiased piece of work. The back cover says of Grieve that "his aim is to inform," but he clearly writes to create sympathy for his subject, not simply to inform. I don't mind a book written to create sympathy for Islam and Muslims; in fact, they probably need it considering the beating they get in the Western media. But it annoys me to have a book spun as unbiased when it is so incredibly obvious that it is not.
#Comment Re: made: 2009-11-02 13:16:19.747823+00 by:
m
The history of the hand of the media in touting war goes back much further than WWII. "Yellow Journalism", ca 1900, sold the Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars.
#Comment Re: made: 2009-11-02 17:53:39.973546+00 by:
Mark A. Hershberger
spl: I haven't seen the book so I can't comment on the book specifically, but whenever an author avoids caricature and presents his subjects as people with human motivations that we can empathize with, he is accused of bias.