Customer Reviews

Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War, Updated with a New Preface

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This book will open your eyes to the real threat that press censorship poses to our democratic nation. You will be amazed at how the the Bush administration was able to control the press and public attitudes towards the first gulf war. It is highly relavent today in light current policies in Iraq.

The premise is that the media needs to be proactive and report news, not just what the government wants us to hear.

For example: Did you know that fourty thousand (40,000!!) Iraqis were buried alive on the first day of the '91 Iraq war? Why wasn't this grizzly fact reported?

No wonder we are not welcomed with open arms by the people of Iraq. Propagandists believe their own lies if they tell them enough.

This is a good a useful look at the way news and information were managed in the first Gulf War (1990-91). It skewers the media for being more interested in "access" than in reporting anything remotely like the truth about what was going on. Newspaper editors and TV executives are exposed as men and women looking for "product", stuff they can sell that will go down easy with a population they fear and distrust. Like in 2003, they want a simple story line with a designated "good guy" and a designated "bad guy" and no history or context to confuse the narrative. This book should have been read and absorbed by the media, and would have been if they were interested in performing the criitcal watgchdog role of truth-tellers. Most of them, however, are more interested in not rocking the boat and being stenographers to power.