That was how it was before the Vietnam War. The news media disconnected itself from the foreign policy desires of the State Department during the Vietnam War because they actually saw the lies on the ground and reported the facts.
The first Iraq war started the change back to having the news media play lapdog again with “embedded reporters” meaning that the news media couldn’t wander by themselves like they did in Vietnam.
So we have shifted back to a news media basically toeing the line for the wishes of the government.
A huge difference between the coverage of Vietnam versus the first and second gulf wars was the change in media broadcasting regulations.
While you would think a nationalized service like broadcast airwave licenses would lead to a state-controlled media, in the US it led to the opposite effect because of the Fairness Doctrine and the general cultural expectation that news media would be impartial and dedicated to truth.
When privately distributed cable news rose in the early 90’s starting with Ted Turner starting CNN and 24-hour news cycles, it led to news becoming a unmoderated, uncontrolled, unlicensed commercial entity that could do or say whatever it wanted without oversight, and could get funding from any source.
Ronald Reagan was deregulating the media from Inauguration Day 1981.
There used to be a thing called ‘The Fairness Doctrine’ that required stations to give time to opposing viewpoints if they ran an editorial. There were restrictions on how many TV/radio stations one entity could own.
Just look at children’s TV. Once Reagan came in you started seeing half hour long commercials for GI Joe and The Transformers.
That was how it was before the Vietnam War. The news media disconnected itself from the foreign policy desires of the State Department during the Vietnam War because they actually saw the lies on the ground and reported the facts.
The first Iraq war started the change back to having the news media play lapdog again with “embedded reporters” meaning that the news media couldn’t wander by themselves like they did in Vietnam.
So we have shifted back to a news media basically toeing the line for the wishes of the government.
A huge difference between the coverage of Vietnam versus the first and second gulf wars was the change in media broadcasting regulations.
While you would think a nationalized service like broadcast airwave licenses would lead to a state-controlled media, in the US it led to the opposite effect because of the Fairness Doctrine and the general cultural expectation that news media would be impartial and dedicated to truth.
When privately distributed cable news rose in the early 90’s starting with Ted Turner starting CNN and 24-hour news cycles, it led to news becoming a unmoderated, uncontrolled, unlicensed commercial entity that could do or say whatever it wanted without oversight, and could get funding from any source.
Ronald Reagan was deregulating the media from Inauguration Day 1981.
There used to be a thing called ‘The Fairness Doctrine’ that required stations to give time to opposing viewpoints if they ran an editorial. There were restrictions on how many TV/radio stations one entity could own.
Just look at children’s TV. Once Reagan came in you started seeing half hour long commercials for GI Joe and The Transformers.