Update On Frito Lay

[Darth Wong]

"Negativity" is irrelevant. The war-wanker claim is that the media actually engaged in widespread misrepresentations.

[Straha]

"Negativity" is irrelevant. The war-wanker claim is that the media actually engaged in widespread misrepresentations.

Wouldn't at all surprise me if it did. A I was shocked to read the downright venom that some of the articles had, especially in contrast to the Iraq War until I understood that these people were upset not just because their country was fighting as an imperialist aggressor power/in the most half-assed way possible. But because their country was doing that with their sons, essentially at gun point.

[Darth Wong]

"Negativity" is irrelevant. The war-wanker claim is that the media actually engaged in widespread misrepresentations.

Wouldn't at all surprise me if it did. A I was shocked to read the downright venom that some of the articles had, especially in contrast to the Iraq War until I understood that these people were upset not just because their country was fighting as an imperialist aggressor power/in the most half-assed way possible. But because their country was doing that with their sons, essentially at gun point.

Replacing the word "negativity" with "venom" does not make it any more relevant. Stop being obtuse.

[Dark Hellion]

The premise that you can have media that can accurately represent any foreign warzone at the time of the conflict would seem questionable. The enemy isn't going to give you accurate information, and you sure as hell aren't going to get accurate information from your own side. So, you pretty much have to look at the surface and then state your opinion.

I am not going to pretend to have a scholarly knowledge of the Vietnam war, but the premise that there is a magically empirical media source, anywhere, during a war seems off. Ask a left-wing blogger, Rush Limbaugh, and a normal sane news source about the war in Iraq today, and then ask someone from the military about it six months later, and all are going to appear as misrepresentations. A decade later, even the soldier is going to be a misrepresentation.

The mood of the opinion is going to matter for anyone who is only giving a cursory examination of the issue, which is the basic public. This is not to say that we should write in a positive light even if we are losing. But more that neutrality is immensely hard in this light, especially because there is so much at stake.

[harbringer]

At the risk of being obvious and so on : Dark hellion is right at the time and afterwards it is very hard to get a realistic representation of what happens in war as much of it relies on deception and has done since classical history (or possibly futher if the farmers spoken to by the egyptians at the battle of kadesh can be proven to be plants). However it is also never one sided, there is always an opposing veiw it might be the minority but there will always be someone supporting the king/emperor/polity/whatever. Take the battle of troy it was a story written after the events but in no way can be called correct as the writer lived long after the last eye witness died. Of course in this case there is really only one account as the trojans were well annihilated by the greeks (as was often the case in history). but you could also prove it with WW2 or WW1 and see the same things or the boar war or the American civil war ad infinitum really. Problem is when you are the media you tend to tell what you want the people to hear or conversely what you think they want to hear (mostly if you sell your "news") - I dont see that changing.

[Darth Wong]

And yet, we hear every time someone mentions the Vietnam War that "the media" said this, or "the media" said that, as if they had a monolithic opinion or even an agenda. Frankly, it all sounds like right-wing propaganda bullshit to me, just like the constant right-wing whinge that the media "has a left-wing liberal bias" that we hear constantly even today.

[Dark Hellion]

I have no doubt that the right-wing has overstated their case of media agenda. More likely, the media is simply biased to report deaths of Americans and then to portray it as tragic, regardless of context or situation. Some hick blows himself up in Kentucky and you get a sympathetic media story. Its because the media does have an agenda, report what people want to hear. Not what they need to, because need just doesn't make money.