I always wondered how conflicts were shown in the media overseas. This is because I used to watch the news and think about why we only got to see a certain perspective of the conflict. It usually is seen to make your own country look really good or make them look like they are in trouble and need help but it never shows your own country doing the damage. When Mihingarangi Forbes spoke to us she made a clear emphasises on wanting the people they were filming to be able to tell their story. I thought about this and realised how important it was for people to be able to tell their story the way they saw and experienced it. However, I also began to see the importance of getting both perspectives – when you want to know a story in its clearest form.
Some examples of this is in both World War 1 and World War 2 and the Vietnam war. The impact of the media on the people at home was both negative and positive. In both of the World Wars stories were printed in the newspaper to lift the people at home up, to tell you how well your country was fighting. The negative impacts were that when the soldiers got home the people on the home front had no idea about what they had been through and the extent of the damage that was caused on both countries and people. The positive side of this was that people at home continued to go about their daily lives and when they would see these photos or read articles it gave them hope. I believe in a way that it was its own form of propaganda and shielded them from understanding more about the war because what they were being told was very one sided.
This all started to change when media became more entrenched in peoples lives effecting them more daily than just in newspapers. A war where the media played a particular important role was in the Vietnam War. For the first time the war was shown on TV and people could see things for themselves both the damages it was having on the people and the countries. Broadcasted all over different forms of media either in newspaper, magazines, radios and TVs people could understand the atrocities of war – which could be one of many explanations as to why they wanted their people out of Vietnam. Seeing these images or hearing these stories can make people feel guilty and upset, creating a class conscience.
I don’t’ believe that we will ever see conflicts or wars for exactly what they were. There is no one with no biases towards them which means that we will always be one sided. That is why conflict represented in the media is always going to challenge what people think because we don’t always believe the same thing and we all see things differently. The best way I believe of getting around this is showing these conflicts with all its truth and from both sides, that way people can make decisions for themselves.
You say that biases make war media one-sided, though I like to think we can do a bit better. Even if we can’t present every possible perspective (of which there might be an infinite number) we can always show conflicts from “both” or “all three” sides etc. If we keep adding nuance, we’ll get close to honesty. Of course, honesty isn’t what people want to hear, just what we’d like to want to hear. That problem seems less surmountable by merely putting more effort in: it might be necessary to teach the population enough criticality that they go looking for perspectives.
I agree with your point that we wont be able to see conflicts for what they are, or be able to view them from a ‘true’ perspective. I think it’s important that we allow for more outside narratives of conflict to be heard or represented in our media. However I think we should also focus on critical thinking skills, and teaching children etc that we can’t always take such representations and media at face value. Your point about how selective portrayals of war are a form of propaganda, was really thought provoking. It made me question how naively i may interpret media.
The different depictions of conflict during wartimes that you raised is something that has always fascinated me. I recall watching reruns of the fourth season of the British TV show ‘Blackadder’ starring Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry as soldiers on the front line in the First World War. One particular clip stands out to me, where Laurie’s character – a slightly dimwitted individual – enters the barracks with a copy of British propaganda for the soldiers called ‘King and Country’, espousing how thrilling and exciting it was. Atkinson – as the cynical officer – fires back comparing the magazine to toilet paper. Propaganda isn’t just to boost the spirits of those at home; it also can play a critical role (as parodied brilliantly by Blackadder) in keeping the ‘lad’s’ morale up in the trenches, so to speak. In looking into this, I also came across a fascinating collection of fliers dropped by the Vietnamese against American troops in the Vietnam war, detailing all of the horrific ways the soldiers were going to die, how corrupt the American government was, and how the Vietnamese were really the good guys after all. A very interesting search to be had, so thank you to for your post for inspiring it! I do however question the idea that we will never see conflicts for exactly what they were; given recent technological advancements, we very welly could reach a point where every aspect of war is recorded and televised, although this is certainly not going to be happening anytime soon.