After reading this article, I am much more aware of the fabrication of news. Military officers had major pull during the War in a Iraq with media. "Many Americans, polls showed, were uneasy about invading a country with no clear connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Pentagon and White House officials believed the military analysts could play a crucial role in helping overcome this resistance." This quote shows that the analysts truly did have an impact on American citizens. The government was using the media to change the citizens' minds so that more people would agree with the war. A paragraph that I found interesting was : "Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”" This caught my eye because it shows proof of the government manipulating the media in way that would change the American citizens' opinions.
According to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_e8Fsw4jls , the Pentagon used military analysts as a "media Trojan horse" to spread pro-war propaganda to Americans.
Another site agrees (http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=36&contentid=7930) stating that "It's recently been revealed that the U.S. government contracted HBGary Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on controversial issues by promoting propaganda." By creating these social media profiles, not only can they sway the public opinion but they also can use the profiles as surveillences to view the common public opinion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_yOfwB3VfQ also demonstrates this idea. This is a video about how the U.S Pentagon used the Media to full the people by hiring retired generals to inject pro-Iraq-war ideas into the masses.
A last site that I came across was http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2010/07/afghanistan-iran-pilger-war , which describes how the media manages to cover up atrocities of war under the Pentagon's word.
Personally, I find this all ridiculous on our government's part. We live in a democracy with free press and we should have the right to know the truth about what is going on over seas. They should not be able to cover up atrocities of war and promote the war if it is not going well. We have the right to know whether or not the war is going well or not.
I chose the above articles because they all related to the topic of the Pentagon manipulating the media and also support my stance of how ridiculous and un-American this act is.
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