Media's Influence and Power...or rather as an Instrument of Influence and Power?

I recently watched a documentary in my last class. I forgot the title but it talks about the United States of America's unjust wars over other countries (particularly Iraq) for the past years.

The documentary discussed the truth on how the USA played during the Iraq War. But more importantly, it discussed how the "free press" was controlled by the military in these times.

The documentary discussed how a liberal news media like the CNN hid the truth behind the Iraq War. According to intelligences, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, yet these same intelligences were not entirely sure about whether Iraq really had weapons of mass destructions or not. Therefore, the fact that Iraq have weapons of mass destruction was not valid. President Bush used this as one of his reasons for his campaign 'Liberation of Iraq". Obviously, President Bush ignored the most important fact: the intelligences are not even sure that Iraq supposedly had of mass destruction. Nevertheless, he still continued with his campaign, often the U.S. military faithfully supporting his propaganda named "War on Terror".

The point here is the fact that CNN, as well as the entire U.S. media, failed or never even bothered to investigate the government's real intentions behind the Iraq War. I could assume that President Bush had a hidden reason as to why he discarded the most important fact regarding suspicions about Iraq: the validity of the country having weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. free press never even informed that important fact about the reason why the U.S. declaring war on Iraq. The American people had the right to know the truth behind the government's purposes for the "War on Terror", since the lives of their soldiers and, more importantly, of the innocent Iraqi civilians were at stake.

Why at stake, you ask?

As I watched the documentary, it showed the U.S. military prowess by portraying its latest war machines and the technology in its most innovative and most destructive form. Instead of criticizing the U.S. military's guts of boasting these superior "weapons of mass destruction" (it seems like its the other way around), the U.S. media praised the U.S. military for portraying the U.S. as the most technologically advanced nation at that time in terms of military weapons. The U.S. media failed to realize how many lives these "patriotic weapons" will take once these were dropped on the spot. As journalists (I'm not and I will never be a journalist, but if you are one, you must know what I'm talking about), they must not be afraid to expose the truth behind the "War on Terror" even though the government would accuse them as "unpatriotic". Unpatriotic or not, a journalist's purpose is to expose the truth no matter what. Unpatriotic or not, the media's purpose is to expose the truth no matter what. But in this case, the U.S. media failed to do so. In other words, the U.S. media, or the "free press", had just let itself become an instrument of the U.S. government's self-interests. Whatever happened to the concept of "free press". Because of this, Americans immediately believed President's Bush purported reason that "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, thus the U.S. must send in troops to stop Iraq from using these weapons of mass destruction, for the world's safety is at stake".

This just shows how powerful the media, or more specifically the "free press", is in terms of delivering current news and events of utter importance and significance. Because of this asset, the media is often targeted by the government to further their plans that may and may not benefit the entire nation.

Recently, in the case of the Philippines, certain sex scandals were used by certain government officials to further increase their "likeableness" not for creating these certain sex scandals but rather condemning the certain person behind these certain sex scandals. One tactic used by this certain government official for showing his "heroic" stance is informing the local media to inform the public about these certain sex scandals and how he used ways to condemn the certain person behind these certain sex scandals. I'm sure you would know what I'm talking about if you have lived in the Philippines for quite sometime around May 2009.