Just made a post, but I got an error, and I don’t see it.
I’ll wait a few to see if it appears, and if not, I guess I’ll repost it.
Ugly
I don
The implication being that the deaths of women and mothers deserve more sympathy than the deaths of men and fathers.
Interesting.
The game playing in WWII wasn’t the result of choice by PR folks. It was a matter of national policy. Prof. Paul Fussell, a WWII infantry platoon leader, wrote Wartime for the express purpose of detailing how the manipulation of news in that war worked. Worth reading I think.
I haven’t read “Wartime” but I’ll keep an eye open. To paraphrase Gandalf, three as often as I can spare them.
The public relations games I was referring to were mostly generated by the governments. Things like having people collect scrap metal that couldn’t be used – as they maintained – to melt down for weapons. Not saying when ships had sunk, or claiming they had sunk under different circumstances. Then the usual stuff about how the enemy is a Godless, lawless, immoral barbarian wearing funny clothes with the designer label outward.
It wasn’t limited to the government. National Geographic was asked to include in their issue on wartime insignia a group that didn’t exist at all, as a part of the ongoing effort to convince the Nazis we had more troops than we did.
Yeah
What’s the old saying -“The first casualty of war is the truth”
I also like this saying by Lionell Hutz (the lawyer from the Simpsons) “There’s the truth 
…and theres ‘The Truth’:D”
All kinds of deception goes on in war. Some is actually good (like fabricating entire mock armies prior to D-Day (Technically OPERATION: OVERLORD, D-Day just means the day the operations begins)) and some is actually the root of conflict (Nazi Master race propaganda).
A certain amount of self-deception is necessary. People want to believe that smart bombs can fly into a window and just kill the bad guys or that if little Jimmy from down the block got himself killed fighting overseas, he died heroicly (and instantly) while saving his platoon by single handedly charging a bunker.
Stories about smart bombs going astray and hitting a school or Jimmy getting decapatated by his own claymore mine makes people question the validity of the war and eventually lead to defeat. Not to mention that you probably don’t want to telegraph every operation on CNN.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating outright deception to the public. All I am saying is that there is some justification for a little selective broadcasting.
Oh, you betcha. Among the worst (British) losses in the Falklands War was placed squarely at the feet of one of the BBC reporters. He gave enough information about a plan/position that Argentine military figured out what would happen next. That incident had something to do with the extra emphasis placed on news hobbling in the Gulf War.
I happened across a secondhand VHS tape of the Falklands War from International Historic Films. Most is shots not appearing on TV, and which I had no clear image of – even after reading a history of the war. In terms of carnage and suffering it was far worse than I imagined. The public would have been howling for a cease-fire after the first couple days.
The media could be performing a valuable function – as long as all the broadcasts were reaching all the people from both sides. But that’s part of the irony. News in war turns into propaganda, as demonstrated by Al-Jazera TV. The United States doesn’t want its citizens to see the Arab version of truth. And vice versa. As with the Vietname war, it wouldn’t take too many evenings of watching bloody people carried away on stretchers for rational people to wonder “Why are we doing this?”
Ok, I’m retreating to comfortable self-deception again, now. Time to do wash.
After Pearl Harbor folks were forced to save (women can’t have bobby pins anymore for goodness sake) and scrimp. After 9/11 the president asked us to SPEND. Having said that- after Pearl Harbor internment camps were constructed. After 9/11 the president came on tv and said this is not a war against Muslims.
My simplified two cents.