To examine the media's role in the production, contribution and maintenance of Cold War antagonism, it is important to first examine the media in the correct historical context. (April 27, 2011)http://jfredmacdonald.com/trm/111.tvdramas.htm, Mishkind, Barry. By 1960, three-quarters of American families owned at least one TV set. During World War I, Winston Churchill seriously suggested that, By this time the press had become an unpleasant fact of life for the military. When the siren went off in the Gulf, the American media were caught flat-footed. Stuck on the outer fringes of Vietnam, it had been under periodic siege, and President Lyndon Johnson and his advisers in Washington became convinced the North Vietnamese wanted to turn Khe Sanh into another Dien Bien Phu, the citadel of French colonial power that fell to North Vietnamese attack in 1954. Ukraine war: Questions over France's weapons supply to Kyiv How has the evolution of TV changed America? Both the Soviet and Western media outlets denatured each other as inferior and maintained us and them rhetoric. Things were normal and prosperous -- anything less was too close to the sad, ugly, too-recent days of the war. Make no mistake about it, the military has become extremely sophisticated in the way it handles public relations. Subsequent information on bombing runs took some of the high-tech gloss off the stunning television pictures that showed ordnance making its unerring way into doorframes and the like. Company Reg no: 04489574. At the start of the conflict, media coverage of the Cold War between America, its allies and the Soviet Union served to escalate domestic fear of imminent destruction. How did the mass media contribute to the war effort? Most of the Civil War, on the other hand, would be fought out close to a telegraph key. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); WordPress.com. And because the system ran -- and largely still runs -- on advertising, companies could use the sales platform to sell their products. The gross national product more than doubled from 1940 to 1960, and most Americans began to think of themselves as middle class. Facebook and Google have repeatedly blocked American Heritage's content because they can't tell the difference between Russian trolls and a trusted, award-winning magazine. What the media did here was reposition themselves as the only reliable information distributer and eroded confidence in the government. Like a great many things in American life, cooperation between the military and the media began to unravel in Vietnam. For that matter, Im still not certain. A joke going around the planning staff in Riyadh a few weeks back ran: Who is the second most hated man in the Middle East?. American propaganda during World War II - Wikipedia Hed had more combat exposure than any officer in the American Expeditionary Forces, having covered a number of conflicts, including the Greek-Turkish War, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine insurrection, the Boxer Rebellion, the Russo-Japanese War, and the American incursion into Mexico. It worked to subdue any domestic sympathy for the enemy or resistance to the conflict that usually occurs during war. In controlling the words and pictures that came out of the Gulf, the military had an unbeatable hole card that it played to the hilt and somewhat beyondthe argument that the lives of the troops must not be endangered by the unwarranted disclosure of information. Teacher CPD: Join us in London for another packed programme of face-to-face CPD courses. During World War II, the media and entertainment industries saw their role as supporting the war effort by promoting nationalism! Study notes, videos, interactive activities and more! The Ministry provided regular updates and briefings to the press for them to them to write about. They conserved, raised money, boosted soldiers' morale, worked in war manufacturing, and contributed to the war effort in countless other ways. All through the Depression and then the war, Americans were deprived not just of their luxuries, but often of the basic necessities they'd come to expect. In a television interview with David Frost, General Schwarzkopf made it clear that he had wanted to carry on the pursuit of Iraqi forces. Lyndon B. Johnson to state, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost. The ways that we react to that information, as a society, dictate what television does next, and so on. Copyright 1949-2023 American Heritage Publishing Co. All Rights Reserved. It wouldn't be until the surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 that the United States would be thrust into World War II. When the top general in the Air Force, Michael Dugan, was fired for making a politically awkward statement, a reporter named Richard Cohen dismissed the general as a talkative flyboy airhead. Later, another reporter, Joel Achenbach, late of Princeton and apparently nowhere else, made the discovery that military leaders today are influenced by the writings of Karl von Clausewitz. Vietnam War: Yes, the Media Did Undermine the War Effort. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. But correspondents were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the rosy predictions being given out at the top and worked their way down the command level to junior combat officers who had a bleaker view. The contribution of women to the war effort. Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage. We tend to be a responsive apparatus that reacts to whatever comes along.. Although Short refers specifically to newsreels in the movie theater, it can be seen that the same elements were stressed in the coverage of the other news media as well. Henry Adams said he went into journalism as the last resource of the educated poor who could not be artists and would not be tutors. The advertising model used in radio could have an even greater effect on TV by actually showing the products for sale. (/ In all, the media was the Cold Wars protagonist in cultivating and maintaining antagonism within the bipolar divide. Historic microphone used by Edward Murrow for London broadcasts to be loaned to the National Press Club. But trying to organize and discipline the unruly American press corps, he found, was worse than war.. The Media and World War II. Trump Speaks Out Against Imaginary Attack on Rally Town's Name - Mediaite The military requires subservience of the individual to the needs of the group, while the media prize independent initiative above all else. OWI research workers in May 1943. The . It is not in their natures for the military and the media to be entirely comfortable with each other. He got as close to the story as he could and reported it as well as he could under trying conditions. And that was just the beginning: Once advertisers realized the power of a 30-second ad, programs went from being sponsored by single corporations to advertising several products at once, which meant a dramatic increase in the number of ads on TV. With few exceptions, military beats had been poorly covered for years. But so did the average American. America.gov Archice. The media had unfettered access to the conflict and took more independence in their reporting. The problem was, the Russians had been U.S. allies in the recent war, and television had done its part to trumpet their successes. There were some grave breaches of security. At the same time, McCarthyism and the Cold War were activating panic across the country -- think about the bomb shelter trend, or schoolhouse "duck-and-cover" drills -- and most Americans just wanted to get back to the way they now remembered things being before the war. John Balzar, of the Los Angeles, Soon after the American troops started to move toward the desert, media attention began to focus on the arresting personality of Stormin Norman Schwarzkopf. Overview The student movement arose to demand free speech on college campuses, but as the US involvement in the Vietnam war expanded, the war became the main target of student-led protests. How did the mass media contribute to war effort? (1969, December 31). An indication of how poorly the media have been covering the military beat for the last twenty years is the scant information the public had on Schwarzkopf when he took command. While the private-owned Western media was obliging in the defence of Western economic and military interests, the state-censored soviet media was just as ready to defend theirs. Furthermore, the Nazis placed loudspeakers in public places so that no matter where you were you would hear the Nazi propaganda over the airwaves. This situation is changing now that the media are interested in generals again, and General Schwarzkopf, riding a tidal wave of popularity, may learn to miss the days when he led a life of relative obscurity. The February 1968 assessment by Walter Cronkite, the anchor of the CBS Evening News (known as "the most trusted man in America"), that the conflict was "mired in stalemate" was seen by many as the signal of a sea change in reporting about Vietnam, and it is said to have inspired Pres. His political satire made Buchwald one of Americas most widely read columnists. The Role of the Media During the Cold War - To What Extent Did the However, the lack of military conflict was only absent between the UUSR and America. This was the first sign of Hitl 2002-2023 LotsOfEssays.com. During this time, the media predominantly consisted of, print, film, radio, and TV. April 2011. 08 Jul. Thanks to careful planning and meticulous execution, as well as the kind of good luck that goes with such planning and execution, they managed to control the press to a degree not seen in our history. Peter Braestrup, who covered Vietnam for The New York Times and Washington Post and is now director of communications at the Library of Congress, was withering in his commentary on the press in the Gulf: Theyre ahistorical: they cant remember any precedents for anything.