Saturday, November 19, 2016

Propaganda Blog Post

Deception is just as bad as telling an outright lie.

In Al Jazeera's depiction of Iraq's point of view of their war, some truths surface from how American news channels' portrayals of the same war have contributed to the extreme bigotism against Arabs and Islam. American media is widely considered to be hijacked by the US government as leverage against enemy countries, such as Iraq. In the American depiction of the Iraq war, their news outlets have made a conscious effort to antagonise the Iraqi and middle Eastern culture. Considering this, the deception exuded by the American media is just as bad as telling an outright lie. 

Firstly, the representation of the United States' perspective on their news outlets materialised to be innocent and often downplayed their military actions. The American President at the time had a large involvement in the media as he often contributed his strong point of views. He created an enemy out of Iraq by stating things like "Al Jazeera is the mouthpiece of Osama Bin Laden" or publicly communicating that he felt the U.S. was being fair in their military actions. From an American civilians' point of view, they are only able to view their government as being just and honourable. Yet, their government is in fact disguising their real involvement in the war through language manipulation and fact deception. In many instances, American news outlets have used soldiers as their new anchors and describe certain military events as having "heroic resistance" or perhaps "miscalculating" some of their moves, which is in fact a huge paraphrase of the true events occurring within Iraq. The tone of voice used by their anchors also appears to be calm and certain, which acts as a tool to the media in reassuring the American audience and disguising the American government at the time. It is obvious that what the American news outlet are showing benefits their country rather than communicating the truth. In doing so, the truth will never ultimately be revealed to the American public demonstrating these U.S. journalists' inability toe be objective. 

On the other hand, Al Jazeera's approach at news seems to be much more effective. Despite inevitably having bias, their conscious effort at covering news that demonstrates neutrality and truth, effectively allows for their audience to come to their own conclusions about the truth. Their head director has confidently expressed that their news outlet only wishes to hear individuals and depict news that does not overtly communicate only one side of the story. The lack of support from the Iraqi government goes to show how they do not rely on the middle Eastern support to convey the truth. 

All in all, American media's obstructing the process of their own media is in fact misinformation and in this case can be viewed as an outright lie. The public deserves the right to know and understand the truth concerning their country's affairs with other countries. 

3 comments:

  1. Hi Gabby~
    I really enjoyed reading your blog post to the prompt "deception is just as bad as telling an outright lie." I chose this prompt as well and I think that your post was very enjoyable to read as considered two perspectives to the answer of how they consciously tried to implement both sides of the story, yet still inevitably having a bias. I think your blog post also demonstrated a good awareness of the appearance of media coverage on both countries that you supported with evidence.
    Great Job~

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  2. Your blog post is very well written, and you effectively examined the biases on the Iraq War of both the American news outlets, and Al Jazeera. You dedicated most of your post to criticizing the American point of view, which I personally disagreed with before, but you used a lot of very good arguments and facts to back up your claims, and they actually convinced me that the American media was very manipulative and antagonistic towards Iraq and the Middle East. Overall, very nice and amazing job!

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