Wag The Dog

Writing Assignment: Wag the Dog

The media is the source of contact we Americans keep with the other parts of the world. Without it how would we know what was going on in the globe? Fox News, CNN, NBC, and many others are our sources of information. Numerous people watch the news to see what is going on in other countries and in our own country. The news we hear creates a huge problem of knowledge, because reporters have a bias and we as the people do not know where the information is coming from.

The media shapes people's worldview. The intense focus on everything that is dangerous makes people believe that the world is more dangerous than it really is. Most of the time we are afraid of the wrong things. For example, I as a teenager am more afraid of getting kidnapped than a nuclear weapon being shot at the United States. The latter is definitely the more dangerous one, but in this day and time the media brings the attention of the American people to a kidnapping case rather than informing them of the ways of Iraq, North Korea, and Afghanistan.

When a reporter is researching a story and trying to gather information, they will want to sell that news as much as they can. The reporter knew that more people would pay attention to the article if it looked like more destruction had happened.

An excellent example of a "reporter" being biased about their information is the movie Wag the Dog. In this movie a man is hired to create a story about something else and take the minds of the American public off of a sex scandal that went on with the President, just days before the election. This film shows that you cannot trust the media for news. The media just receives the news from several sources, probably not even knowing if it is true they put in on the channel to have something to talk about. For example, the reporter in the movie created this entire story up about how the President was sick and going to remain in China for a day. After that the story just got bigger and bigger to try and make Americans like the President again.

As the story grew bigger, many people did forget about the scandal and started to be worried about a possible war with Albania. The reporter had made a hint to someone about a war with Albania and the next thing you know it is on the news channels and at white house press conferences. Anyone that has the right connections can make up news about anything or spin the news about anything. How is the American public to know the difference? Whatever the news channels say, we believe that to be true

When the CIA broke the news that the war was not real, they had to come up with a story to cover up a story. They produced a story about how a soldier was left behind enemy lines and had the name of Schumann. To make the American public look like they were sorry for this man, they went out in the middle of the night to throw shoes in to a tree in order to make the American public believe that many people were behind the President. Poor "Shoe"mann received the greatest support of a war hero and he wasn't even real.

As a result to cover up their story, they had to hire a "real" Schumann to come home when it came time for elections. They were able to put a sex scandal as the last thing on everyone's mind.