Buying The War

Submitted By lesj123
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“Buying The War” The film “Buying The War” by Bill Moyers and produced by Kathleen Hughes tries to potentially investigate the reasons for the bush administration decision to go to war. As stated by Moyer “The story of how the media bought what the white house was selling has not been told in depth on television. As the war rages into its fifth year, we look back at those months leading up to the invasion, when our press largely surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with our government in marching to war”(Moyer, Buying The war). The President sold the war to Americans and the press bought it and was sold with propaganda instead of actual facts and real news. The film helps identify and investigate the political and reporting spins that helped change the public mind. The news media has always been an influential source; it has been identified to be the most potent single weapon in the twentieth century. Today news is influenced by technological, political, and social factors. Nevertheless, when the attack on 9/11 happened the news media failed to act, as a watchdog but became a lapdog instead. Journalist weir not questioning the decisions that the presidents was making nor did they dig for more evidence. The media just went with what the president said event though no evidence was presented. Take for instance the news conference that was given by the president before we went in to war 2 weeks after he only chose on the friendly reporters and had a script telling him whom to call on and was already prepared to give them their answers. Furthermore, sources weir not sought thoroughly, take for instance, Scott Redder which argued that Americans just wanted to bomb something because they weir mad and were just making reasons to go to war. Therefore, the evidence presented in the film was horrifying because our journalist should of dug deeper and have done their job to present the false sources and had served as an independent monitor of power to the public and not have served as a “pillow for the government”. The causes of the war are still till this day argued. However, what Bill Moyer discovered in his video was lies that led America to believe that our best bet was to go to war and agree with our president. Therefore, president Bush with the help of the media and his power would link the 9/11 attacks with Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi with no supporting evidence. For instance, president Bush affirmed that their weir weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and believed that this was threatening to the United States. “Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat for us and our country” (Moyer, Buying The War). On the other hand, president bush ignored the fact that their was daily inspections happening day by day which, checked that the tubes they had found weir not being used to make weapons of mass destructions. The Daily reports and all the other test that weir made weir clean. On another note, Governor Powell failed to be truthful to the media and politicians in a conference made when he affirmed that he had got a top secret British intelligence map which he used in the UN conference showed the areas that mapped out potential threats. However, this document that was presented by Powell turned out to be a student thesis and was accused of plagiarism. “Buying the war not only makes you realize that journalist did not act to their full potential but, potentially open your eyes to realize that the government lied and
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