Military in the Media

The issue of portrayal of Military people in the media varies from country to country, from newspaper to newspaper. Everyone has a different agenda both as a private person or as a newspaper owner. Also there are many kinds of media from traditional newspapers to computer games and social media like Facebook. The main point of this blog was that media should distinguish between the military personel and the various conflicts they are involved in. It would however seem that media and also the general public nowadays manage to make this distinction.

Media were used in connection with the military already in the First World War with the short propaganda films and posters, where Germans portrayed their soldiers and their nation as naturally superior and the British portrayed German soldiers as bloodthirsty barbarians (Nesbitt). The Second World War probably more or less expanded this issue of propaganda. But a great step in media evolution in regards of military most likely happened in the Vietnam War. This war was covered by the media probably more than any previous one and the American public was often unable to distinguish between the notion of war and the people who were in it. That is why people were often vile to the veterans who returned from Vietnam (Herbert) and called them baby killer as was explained in one of the previous posts (Herbert). This most likely make many returning soldiers feel like they do not belong back to the society they left.

In modern day, the situation most likely improved with portrayal of military servicemen and women in the media. During the Iraq invasion in 2003, a Rolling Stone journalist Evan Wright was coming with the 1st Recon Battalion of the U.S. Marine Corps and described the situation from his point of view and the point of view of the marines he was with (Waxman). It mostly focues on the marines themselves, not on any global political issues concerning the war, but on the small things that were usually overlooked like the way the marines talk among themselves or the simple search of where to take a dump in the desert (Waxman). Wright was apparently one of the people who were greatly able to distinguish between the people and the conflict.

Nowadays, wars have most likely even greater media coverage then ever before, with reporters probably going regularly with soldiers into the field. Writer David Weber in his interview conducted by Blackfive server stated that the higher media coverage may force the soldiers to think more about what they are doing (Weber) since they know the entire world is watching. He uses an example with Vietnam, where American soldiers could pursue a escaping Viet Cong member into a village where he loses himself among the civilians. According to Weber, at that time, the soldiers could simply kill everyone in the village, because then they would be certain they managed to kill the Viet Cong member, but nowadays, they simply cannot do it, because they are constantly checked by the media and by extension the public. (Weber). Of course there are attrocities conducted by soldiers nowadays, like the prisoner abuse in Iraq, but with higher media coverage, these things probably do not happen as often as they used to in the era of Vietnam for example. And when they do happen, they are most likely found out and the perpetrators are punished.

No system is perfect, but the misuse of power, like the prisoner torture, is almost certainly a failing of an individuals, not the military and its servicemen as a whole. The original argument about division between the conflict and the soldiers in it had a point to make the media portray the soldiers as a individual people and not directly connected with the issue of the war itself. But people are both moral and immoral, so the media of course shoud present also the negative stories about the soldiers, like the issue of prisoner abuse. Such things would probably make the military self reflecting. During war there is probably a tendency - even by the private media - to publish only the positive stories. But as Tom Kratman points out in his interview (Kratman), if there are no negative stories, then the positive loose their impact, because the public would know that they will not get any negative stories and may start to think of all the positive stories purely as a propaganda. (Kratman) However it seem that the media in a way manage to make a distinction between a war and the soldiers themselves. And nowaday, when individual soldiers are allowed to use social media ("Military allows Twitter"), they can make themselves heard directly without having to go through military PR or any censorship.

Modern use of media most likely makes any kind of censorship useless. And that is probably one of the main reasons the servicemen are now easier to approach and seen as ordinary people and not just the faceless extension of the government's foreign policy.

Works Cited:
Herbert, Bob. "An Overdue 'Welcome Home'." New York Times. May 15, 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/opinion/15herbert.html

Kratman, Tom. "An Interview with Tom Kratman." May 15, 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXK9UyiLQSI

"Military allows Twitter, other social media." Reuters. May 15, 2010.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61Q07G20100227

Nesbitt, Todd. "International Media Systems." Class lecture. 2009.

Weber, David. "An Interview with David Weber." May 15, 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VyvtO4wZVU

Waxman, Sharon. "Sparing No One, a Journalist's Account of War." May 16, 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/books/sparing-no-one-a-journalist-s-account-of-war.html