El reino de este mundo

David Ibarra
Mass Communications
10/1108
Last week, I was eating lunch with my friends at the university’s student union, All of the sudden, I asked them if they knew anything new about theUnited States’ war in Afghanistan. Their responses were, “Is that war still going on? I thought that was called the war in Iraq.” If their response was that the war in Afghanistan is all about ourresponse to the 9/11 attacks and that the Iraq war was to over throw a dictatorship and bring peace to the country of Iraq, they would have been properly informed. I do not blame them for this type ofresponse. I do not blame the news crews or their television stations for not having enough information. To me, our very own American government is the one to blame for the public being greatly misinformedabout our current issues and foreign policy.
During the 1920’s, the United States government established a commission called the FCC or Federal Communications Commission, whose basic functionswere to keep an eye on the media and censor any material it considers inappropriate.
Today, our current issues are not being well addressed because we are living in an era I call “The post 9/11Hysteria Era.” The world trade center attacks on September 11 created a hysteria where we are all considered to be suspects of terrorism under one roof. Our sources of media and information have to becareful when using the words that the FCC considers “terrorist.” Such words could include “war and weapons.” Nowadays, our media, including news crews, are scared to be accused of writing or airing anymaterial that is not in peacekeeping with the FCC’s guidelines.
One of the times when the media had full coverage was during the Vietnam war. Claudia Springer from the article Vietnam on Televisionstated her view point about media full coverage of the war, “It brought the "horror of war" night-after-night into people's living rooms and eventually inspired revulsion and exhaustion (1).” If...