War Coverage In The Media

10 Pages 2393 Words

In our nations history just about every generation has to face some type of war, whether it be fighting against terror, an evil dictator, or communism. Whatever ever the reason may be, it always seems to result in war. My thesis isn’t just based on the war themselves or the reason behind them, but what I want to find out is does the media have a positive or negative affect on war and society as well. Spanning from WWI – War on Terror you can see how much more the media gets involved, to the point where there are reporters on the frontlines. We go from just political cartoons during the World Wars, to making a nation hate our Vets during Vietnam, and now actually going over to the actual war, where reporters have no place to be. Now, it’s not just the soldiers risking their lives, but men and women who have no place on the battlefield. Risking their lives just for a story, that only ends up bending the real truth in the end anyways.
Since America didn’t make their entrance into the First World War till the very end, the media never really got a chance to reach their full potential. Once WWII came about and we were attack by Japan at Pearl Harbor in 1941, which pretty much forced us to enter the war at the early stages of the war. America’s involvement in WWII produced such a long streak of political cartoons and anti war short films in hollywood. We have those today too, but what made it different back then was that barely any attacked America or the government’s motives. Such as the political cartoon drawn
by Arthur Szyk, which goes after the Japan army’s ties with Hitler. The cartoon portrays the Japan army to be a blood sucking bat flying over Pearl Harbor with swastikas displayed on the epaulettes. In another example from Arthur Szyk work he draws out Hitler, Mussolini, a Japanese Ultranationalist and a Bolshevik. In the cartoon he draws them out to be the Four Horseman of the apocalypse in the last book of the bib...