“WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush plans to announce Friday that he is directing 500,000 members of the U.S. military to receive vaccinations against smallpox, a senior administration official said Wednesday.” found here.
As you’ll read that article, you’ll go on to find that it makes a hard pressed point that the U.S. is in a particularly vulnerable state pertaining to chemical warfare if smallpox is used. I only have one problem with this article. It shouldn’t really exist. As Saddam is preparing to go to war with us, whether or not the U.S. or he want war to happen, being prepared would be a good idea for both countries well beings), the last thing American society needs, is CNN and the rest of the media, giving him ideas on our vulnerabilities. I’m aware that if they paid attention to the U.S. government actions and history, they’d have this information themselves, but I’d rather, as a U.S. citizen, not have the information out in the open. This all leads to what the media should and should not cover.
In recent years, the government has had the media do certain coverage, then go completely against it, surprising the enemy, and with complete avail. But when the local news starts covering a story on how easy it is to tamper with the water in your area, or take over nuclear reactors, isn’t there a line. Whether or not media coverage like this, will truly effect the United States’ enemies tactics, isn’t pre-dominant yet, but I doubt testing the waters, and covering as much information on how the U.S. needs to tighten up certain aspects of government policies, is beneficial to anyone but the enemy.
Now, the argument against my thought process as stated above, is that the citizens need to know what is going on with their government, so they can make decisions. When is the last time you voted for a tax hike? Or a tax cut for that matter? My point is that it doesn’t matter how much information the media feeds U.S. citizens, because it will always be the case of feeding a baby in their high chair. You can put whatever you want on that spoon, and prior too even being in the high chair, the baby cried out for food, but given the chance, the baby only cries ore and rejects the food. U.S. citizens have proven time and time again, no matter how much information they are given, on a mass scale, no action is taken. Most 18 year olds don’t vote, yet want change in government policies and foreign affairs. From there up most citizen’s political views are in direct correlation of their view on money.
As the United States will always be riddled with the media as one of their biggest problems, on all levels of a countries status, the media overall usually carries a negative effect. But when it comes to U.S. citizens feeling like their security is in jeopardy, the media needs to know when to cut back on “coverage”. Whether or not it recognizes itself as a threat, by it’s pursuit of what’s “hot” and/or what’s held as “beauty” by today’s standards, the media in itself is a potent giant. Whether it’s aware of it’s direct correlation with society’s standards, U.S. citizen’s need too be aware of it’s effects as well.
I got to disagree with you to some extent. I don’t think the media is as bad as you are portraying them to be. They to me seem like the 4th branch of government.
Sometimes they over kill stories and exaggerate them to a point of ridicule (the sniper story) but all in all they are a good thing. The media helps to keep the checks and balances in government in place.
One such example is with Richard Nixon and Watergate. Richard Nixon fired the prosecutor assigned by another branch of government (congress) to investigate the matter. This created a constitutional crisis and only because those two reporters was the scandal revealed.