Ideologies & Why We Fight...

Last week’s reading on ideologies and power was something that I personally found to be pretty interesting because the influences behind media being presented to the public is something that I have been thinking a lot about ever since the screening of Outfoxed earlier in the semester. It can sometimes be difficult to discern what information is to be trusted and what information is biased or misleading in some way. How do we know that the things we have been taught or that are passed along to us by newspapers, magazines, television, etc. are in fact true? We really don’t.

Take this week’s screening for example. I think I mentioned this in one of my discussion board posts last week as well, but in Why We Fight, one of the points mentioned was the belief, as presented in the media, that there was some kind of connection between the war in Iraq and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We heard the story of a retired NYPD officer who lost his son on September 11th, and based on what he had heard in the news and from the government, believed that the Iraq War was a part of bringing the terrorists who took his son’s life to justice. To honor him, he asked for his son’s name to be written on one of the bombs dropped in Iraq, only to hear the President clearly state later on that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks. Hearing this man’s story of his honorable intentions in remembering his son and how the thing that was supposed to be a loving tribute became a part of a seemingly pointless war was a heartbreaking example of how the powers behind the information we receive can be inaccurate or in some cases, completely misleading.