Page 50 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

40 Chapter 2

that is objective and fair.'* Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation seems
to concur, stating that his company, Fox News, does not "take any position at
all" in favor of the Bush administration or other political ~eaders.~ The common
feeling amongst mainstream reporters and owners is that mass media institutions
are in large part because they exist independently of government
influence, ownership, and manipulation. It is through this conception of the me-
dia that many journalists defend corporate ownership of the press. As corporate
conglomerates further consolidate their control over the news, they inevitably
mold the opinions and perceptions of the American people regarding crucial
matters, such as public confidence in government and the legitimacy of the
"War on Terror." The corporate media attempts to influence the public in accor-
dance with the prevailing ideologies that drive the capitalist system. It is under
this context that those who consume the news should seek to understand the
basic elements comprising corporate media framing.
The corporate press has historically been supportive of American engage-
ment in foreign wars. During the Spanish-American War, William Randolph
Hearst's paper, the New York Journal, aided in promoting pro-war enthusiasm
amongst the American public by printing drawings that showed Spanish agents
planting a mine on the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, despite the lack of evi-
dence that Spanish forces had attacked the ship. The lack of conclusive evidence
did not stop Hearst, as he encouraged his reporter in Cuba to file reports of Cu-
ban rebellion against the Spanish. Hearst famously promised his Cuban corre-
spondent, "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war."6 Similarly, support for
war took root in the media during World War I1 and the Vietnam War. In World
War 11, the U.S. government prohibited the printing of any pictures depicting
American casualties until 1943, in order to prevent the public from souring on
the war eff01-t.~
In the Vietnam War, the mass media went to great lengths to accommodate
the Johnson administration's claims that the North Vietnamese had attacked a
U.S. destroyer at the Gulf of Tonkin. The New York Times reported that "Presi-
dent Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and 'certain sup-
porting facilities in North Vietnam' after renewed attacks against American de-
stroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin," despite the fact that journalists at the time had
substantial information contradicting the Johnson administration's account of
what happened at i on kin.'
As the U.S. escalated the war with Vietnam, newspapers and magazines
pronounced government commitment to human rights. In 1966, US. News and
World Report argued that, "What the United States is doing in Vietnam is the
most significant example of philanthropy extended by one people to another that
we have witnessed in our times," despite estimates that the U.S. was responsible
for the deaths of millions of civilians in Vietnam, Cambodia, and ~aos? When
the media did turn against the war, it was more for pragmatic than moral rea-
sons. After the Tet Offensive, Walter Cronkite claimed the war was "unwin-
nable," rather than immoral or imperialistic. Such a statement was intended to
identify the failure of progress, raiher than focus upon American responsibility