The class lecture on the relationship between the press and the government as it evolved from war to war history was interesting and left me with some very illuminating insight into my own family and how the press coverage of World War II impacted my mother. When World War II erupted my mother was a young girl and her father my grandfather was sent to war. My grandmother would take the family to the movies each week to see the war news reels and they would site every night and read newspaper accounts of war events. As I was growing up, if a discussion of the war developed, my mother recounted tales in a very racist way towards the Japenese. I have never been able to understand how my mother could talk this way when she has friends with many varying backgrounds. It struck me as Angelia spoke that my mother was a young girl who had the coverage, which had a significant racist tone, read to her night after night. It was imprinted on her.
NB C-notes
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From the WaPo:
NEW YORK -- The Society of Professional Journalists condemned NBC News for
practicing "checkbook journalism" by chartering a jet that carrie...
14 years ago
3 comments:
My parents also grew up during a time when war information was a form of propaganda ,not unbiased news information.
They however,lived in England , during the second World War, and the news they got about Hitler, couldn't have skewed him to be anymore of a villain than in actuality he was!
I think though that the negativity associated with certain ethnicity's from that period in time, was not necessarily the fault of racism and bias propaganda in the media,but because of the involvement of these ethnic groups , overtly effecting their lives in such a negative way, some people unfortunately have a difficult time disassociating these groups from what they were responsible for then, and who they are today.
Just a thought about this - although I haven't seen much of this personally, it seemed much of this similar hysteria surrounded the Muslim community following 9/11. We like to think of ourselves as more progressive at this time, but many innocent people were rounded up because of their appearance and immigration status. Of course not quite as extreme as internment camps, but people were/are held in Gitmo without due process because of their race, religion, or association.
The news will always present a super-biased, sometimes pseudo-racist image of whomever the enemy may be in one of the multiple overseas conflicts the U.S. is currently engaged in.
I completely and totally disagree with this practice. The point of democracy is to allow citizens to form their opinions based upon relevant, true information. If a war is waged, or Congress is wanting to wage a war, the point is not to justify it by instilling anger in the masses. The point is to inform them accurately of the actual situation, and allow them to base their opinions on what course of action should be taken off of such news coverage.
Categorically speaking out against Muslims has been detrimental to the development of an entire generation. I was in the seventh grade when the attacks on 9/11 occurred. Most people my age and part of my generation have an underlying intolerance and even prejudice against the Middle East.
This is foolish. The Middle East didn't attack us; Islam didn't attack us. A small cell of extremists carried out a violent attack on behalf of their own isolated beliefs.
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