War Coverage in the American Media

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2 (B), Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Anglistics/ American Studies), course: American Media Culture, language: English, abstract: The war coverage in the American media is a theme that shows the reality of the American democracy. Though the media in the U.S. is rarely limited by law it was often used for special purposes. The latest example is the war with Iraq where all kinds of media were employed to create a pro-war opinion within the population of the USA. I will lead further into that in chapter 6. The history of the American media makes up the beginning of this paper (chapter 2, page 4) and the history of the American war coverage (chapter 3, page 8). In my opinion the knowledge about these things is important to understand how the American media act and work today. A summary of all chapters and some of my personal conclusions can be found in chapter 7 from page 19. Examples for the coverage of American led wars are the Vietnam War (chapter 4, page 10), the second Gulf War (chapter 5, page 12), and the third Gulf War (chapter 6, page 14). There were various sources for this paper. First of all I want to mention 'The American Age' by Walter LaFeber1. Furthermore the 'Länderbericht USA'2, the 'stern', 'The Media in American Politics' by Paletz3, and several articles from the seminar reader which will be listed in the list of sources (page 21). Additionally I used the 'Microsoft Encarta 96'4 which was a very useful starting place for me. 1 LaFeber, Walter: The American Age. U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, London, 1994. 2 Adams, W. P., E.-O. Czempiel, B. Ostendorf, K. L. Shell, P. B. Spahn, M. Zöller (Hrsg.): Länderbericht USA I; Länderbericht USA II. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Schriftenreihe Band 293/I und 293/II, Bonn, 1992. 3 Paletz, David L.: The Media in American Politics. Longman, 2002. 4 Microsoft® Encarta® 96 Encyclopedia. 1993-1995 Microsoft Corporation.