The Role of Media on Middle Eastern Conflicts Essay example -- News Co

The Role of Media on Middle Eastern Conflicts 'By now, all of us realize that there is a high powered media campaign aimed at promoting the war on Iraq and shaping the views of the American people, relying on media-savvy political strategy to sell the administration's priorities and policies' 'Systematic sources of bias in TV coverage of international affairs not only distort information, but can also restrict citizens' awareness and options, and thereby produce more social control. The focus here is on the way TV news formats can limit, constrain, and distort information about terrorism.' The relationships between countries in the Middle East and with the West have never been ones of peace or tranquility, and in recent years these relationships seem to be headed in a downward spiral. Currently, there has been an increasingly intense clash between the citizens of all societies that is largely a reaction against what is perceived through the news media about the other society. While the general public goes about watching their favorite nightly news broadcasts, they are unaware that the very knowledge they hope will educate them about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the War in Iraq, is actually one of the primary factors leading to the strain between our two differing societies. This is largely the result of the way news coverage is produced and presented in the United States, the Middle East, and around the world. In the United States, there are many facets that determine how news about the Middle East is produced and presented. Ultimately, these news reports deter mine how the American people view Middle East societies and unfortunately, how they view people of Middle Eastern ethnicity within the United States.... ...s without the possibility of individual bias, people around the world cannot attain an accurate depiction and thus a truly educated understanding of world affairs. This lack of knowledge leads to a host of consequences, one of which is the violence that comes from those naà ¯ve to that which is different. As well, an increased sense of apathy toward government policies and our administrative leaders has enveloped our country because a majority of the American public is aware of the faulty nature of our media system. As a result of the multitude of structural problems that plague the media system, which include all of the examples presented here, people?s perceptions about the conflicts in the Middle East, both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war in Iraq, are skewed and are an inherent cause of the continued clashes resulting from misconceptions about others.