Propaganda 4 corner reflection

Chosen prompt: “It is acceptable for a government to try to shape public opinion through information campaigns.”

My position on this prompt is that I strongly disagree, which was only reenforced through the Pat Tillman article and the documentary. In many cases this sort of 'privilege ' to withheld valuable information from the public is misused for the benefit of the publicist but not necessarily the public. People have a right to truthful accurate unbiased sources from which they can extract their information and form independent opinions on events and political issues that are only influenced by factual information. Often those sources include information that has been manipulated to fit the certain ideology that is meant to be transmitted to the people, as it is considered to be the most suitable according to the media institution. Reading the article "A Son’s Death, a Mother’s Agony, a Country’s Shame" further supports my opinion , as it addresses how a mother was lied to by the very people who fought in the army with her son:"The government gave him a Silver Star and concocted a story about his death. Only later did a suspicious coroner stateside realise that the wounds came from American bullets, not ones used by the other side." Clearly the governments intention was to steer clear of the effects this type of information would have on the public , knowing that they could possibly lose supporters and thus people that are willing to train and fight for their country since their own associates were allegedly shooting at each other. The fact that the truth was very concealed and hard to unearth only worsens the matter and brings forth the negative aspects of altering information to maintain the needed reputation. 

The documentary "The control room" provided me with some insight into the media itself, how they access information, who they associate themselves with and the overall development of events and issues that arise as they publish information. The core of this documentary was the conflicts between Al Jazeera and the US army spokes people wherein they both disagreed in the way al Jazeera only publishes the US army and what they do in Iraq and not the crimes that are apparently being committed by Iraqis, causing them to deserve the attacks. However this was rather ironic as the US army spokes person was not able to bring forward any substantial evidence of the accusations that were made and thus could not prove their validity or have a right to have them published. This made it clear that Al Jazeera's news coverage is absolutely unbiased. As seen in the documentary, journalists risk their lives in order to have access to first hand footage of what exactly takes place in Iraq and what they find, they publish. Nothing is being kept private , whether it aids Al Jazeera or not, they remain faithful to their aim of providing the public with complete and true information , regardless of what the public would prefer to hear or view. The fact that many arabic channels would ban Al Jazeera only reflects on their pre-set ideologies that they do not wish to alter , continuously feeding the public what they want to hear but not what they need to hear. Personally, the media should never contain manipulated or limited information on any incident or social group as the information isn't forced upon, but given to the public.