American Foreign Policy and Re

Broadcast journalism saw many changes through technological advances after the Vietnam War. It was based upon what one saw on the television screen. No president or prime minister will ever again be able to endure what former United Sates Defense Secretary Robert McNamara remembers as the “six day cocoon of time and privacy afforded by the absence of television scrutiny.

Journalist began to grow skeptical of claims of progress and the course of the war was presented more as an eternal recurrence than a string of decisive victories. The massacre of September 11th has had a different type of reaction from the public and that is of continued support of the war on terrorism. As more and more Americans in the early 80’s signed up for cable television they found fewer distinctions between cable feeds and the traditional networks.

Eventually the focus of the war began to change. Two recent situations come to mind when Americans were almost unanimously in support of a specific political action related to a military conflict, Somalia and September 11. Military “peace operations” in the generation of conflicts we now see must be short with achievable goals in order for politicians and military planners to sustain public consensus for involvement. At the time of the Korean War the television industry was still in its infancy stage, therefore not much material was given to the public through this medium. Thousands of phone calls to Capital Hill demanded that America withdraw its troops from Somalia immediately. CNN’s on scene open eye became the channel to seek when significant news broke. For example it has been noted that CNN played a crucial role in all phases of the U.