Methods of the Media

Because of its age and the fact that on several occasions journalism has lost some of its reputation for providing correct coverage on stories, culture has gotten used to the fact that you can't trust the news to bring you accurate information. There have been so many cover-ups, like Watergate, Franklin Roosevelt's affairs, JFK, his death, affairs, and activities in Hollywood that mixing in government affairs with journalism and public relations is like throwing vodka on a fire. It blows up. This movie portrays two major issues. The first, is that as a society we believe the media and the media is actually not controlled by the media but by public relations and government officials. They pull the strings by which our opinions and decisions on who to vote for are formed.
In the movie the media and producers choose music and images to accompany their story of the reality of the war. their choices influence the people watching the news to mourn the lose of Schumann and throw shoes on telephone wires in rememberance of him.
The media has techniques they use to "frame" the way the culture views an individual or group of people.

The media organizes ideas or storylines which groups the audience and their beliefs about issues or public figures that have been framed into the whole package that is then transported either visually or through words to the public. This is the effect the media has and uses to shape culture. And while much of society thinks that the media has a specific agenda to portray individuals in a negative way what they actually do is provide information to frame an individual or situation into a package that can influence audiences. (Mar09) It is not the media that causes audiences to believe or disbelieve, that would give them too much power. The audience is given leave to form their own opinions based on how they view the world.

In this movie persuasion is used abundantly. A public relations shows the main words to be used the issue of war, he chose a description of people, and he chose how those people act. As a result the message that came across to the audience was authored by him. He was able to carefully select how to frame the events and based on his understanding of human nature shot of those events would be interpreted by the audience.

This movie was about how journalism can manipulate societies beliefs and culture. This movie was not intended to depict any social ramifications of their actions and for this reason they didn’t suffer any in the film.