Communication - Media Communications Media

Communication - Media

COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA PERSPECTIVES

Most English language media are one sided and provide a distorted view of the world"

English-language news media tend to provide a slanted perspective of world events and geopolitical political relations. In this regard, one of the most prevalent assumptions underlying the English-language news media is that the American style of democratic government is necessarily preferable to all other forms of relationships between citizens and government. In fact, it may very well be true that Western-style democratic forms of government are preferable to other forms of government in an objective sense.

However, focusing on that point-of-view neglects the relative importance of understanding the impracticalities of instituting such profound changes to fundamental aspects of societies for whom democracy is a completely foreign concept. The perspective evident in much of English-language media is that democratic government in general, and American constitutional style of government in particular, is a freer form of society than other forms of social government. That suggestion becomes ironic when the supposed promoter of social freedom and self-government imposes that choice on sovereign nations by force.

The United States established something of a history, ever since the post World War II period of exporting American-style democratic government in remote countries, even pursuing long-term wars and wars by proxy for the purpose of "containing Communism" such as in Southeast Asia throughout the 1960s in particular. According to many historians, the pattern of distorted perspective through the American media began even before the formal surrender of Japan in 1945 when the Truman administration explained the justification for using nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Specifically, the argument was that the only alternative would have been a full-scale invasion of mainland Japan at a projected cost of as many as a million American casualties.

During the Cold War that followed the close of World War II, Western media pushed the point-of-view that Communism was the next version of Fascism and required the intervention of the United States to prevent the Soviet Union from expansion into the entire Eastern Hemisphere and even beyond. Subsequently, the American-lead Western media continually exaggerated the conventional and nuclear capabilities of the Soviet Union to justify the establishment of U.S. military facilities throughout the Western Hemisphere and the European continent as well as the deployment of nuclear missile systems throughout the United States. This distortion of the Soviet military capabilities was partly directed at the American public to justify financial expenditure on a massive American military and partly directed at the rest of the world to justify American expansionism in so far as its establishment of military facilities in other countries.

One of the most dramatic and most recent examples of American media distortion concerned the well-publicized media campaign throughout 2002 and part of 2003 in advance of the U.S.-lead invasion of Iraq. At that time, (then) American Secretary of State Colin Powell presented evidence that he introduced as absolutely conclusive and irrefutable that Iraq had developed nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction to justify the ultimatum issued to Saddam Hussein, and eventually, the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Likewise, American president George Bush had repeatedly promoted the supposed connection between Iraq and the Global War on Terror and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Subsequently, it was revealed that the information presented to the American public and the rest of the world was erroneous at best and purposefully deceitful at worst.

In any case, in retrospect, even the Bush administration now admits that the hardware imported by Iraq that was supposedly intended for use as high-grade centrifuges for the enrichment of uranium for use in nuclear weapons was, in fact, not suitable for that use at all and actually procured in connection with permissible industrial uses.

Similarly, in the five years since the invasion, the U.S. has not managed to locate any type of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and recently conceded publicly that it appears no efforts to produce chemical weapons or to re-establish the Iraqi nuclear weapons program were ever initiated again after the sanctions imposed by the U.S. following the conclusion of the Gulf War in 1991. According to some analysts, the continuing suggestion by the U.S. media that an American military presence in Iraq is necessary for the benefit of the Iraqi people may be a pretext for maintaining military force in the region to ensure against disruption of the OPEC oil supply, by force if necessary, should Saudi Arabia ever decide to terminate oil sales to the United States.