1st Edition

Triumph Of The Image The Media's War In The Persian Gulf, A Global Perspective

    286 Pages
    by Routledge

    287 Pages
    by Routledge

    THE TRIUMPH OF IMAGE over reality and reason is the theme of this book. New communication technologies have made possible the transportation of images and words in real time to hundreds of millions of people around the world. We thought we witnessed the Gulf War as we sat, mesmerized by the imagery. But the studies from the many countries assembled for this book suggest that it was not the war in the Persian Gulf that we witnessed but rather imagery orchestrated to convey a sense of triumph and thus to achieve results that reality and reason could never have achieved. The book offers contributions from thirty-five authors in eighteen countries, including short samplings from the media of several regions. The authors explore the social, economic, and political context of media coverage in their countries, the domination of one image in most of them, and the struggle for alternative perspectives. The authors probe the dynamics of image-making and pose some challenges for the future as well as provide us with a unique glimpse of how the world outside of the United States (as well as many Americans) viewed the war in the Persian Gulf and how the dynamics of image-making and information control operate. Triumph of the Image will be useful to scholars and students in communications and mass media, international relations, political science, cultural studies, propaganda, censorship, and contemporary history as well as to the general public.

    Preface -- Image and Reality -- A Third-World War: A Political Economy of the Persian Gulf War and the New World Order -- Manipulating Hearts and Minds -- Roots of War: The Long Road of Intervention -- The Media and the War: What War? -- Many Nations, One Image -- The New World Odour: The Indian Experience -- The State, the Malaysian Press, and the War in West Asia -- The War Close to Home: The Turkish Media -- The Iranian Press and the Persian Gulf War: The Impact of Western News Agencies -- War Reporting: Collateral Damage in the European Theater -- Ruling by Pooling -- Innovations of Moral Policy -- Truth: The First Victim of War? -- Public Opinion and Media War Coverage in Britain -- A Sampling of Editorial Responses from the Middle Eastern Press on the Persian Gulf Crisis -- Coming Back to Reality -- Twisting the U.N. Charter to U.S. Ends -- CNN: Elites Talking to Elites -- Exterminating Angels: Morality, Violence, and Technology in the Gulf War -- More Viewing, Less Knowledge -- Clusters of Reality Bombed into Bold Relief -- Persian Gulf War, the Movie

    Biography

    Herbert Schiller