Deception is just as bad as telling an outright lie.

            During class we watched a document called “The control room” which displayed Al Jazeera’s involvement in reporting the Iraqi war. This was a very important and informative document as it was showing Al Jazeera’s depiction of the Iraqi’s point of view, which the American Government did not want the world to see. Al Jazeera is a very important media in the Arab world, in which many people trust this new outlet more than the local news channels. American Media is portrayed as being exceptionally censored and controlled by the government and politicians which shows in media bias towards the enemy country. In this case, Iraq.

In class, when posed with this prompt, I took a very long time to choose if I would agree or disagree. I was unsure about the exact meaning of the word and if both of them inflict the same affect.  But after watching this documentary I would strongly agree. I don’t particularly think that decieving and lying are much different as the result is still the same. To put this shortly, deception is like manipulating.  Just like lying, they both convey a false image or perspective and therefore it is just as bad, as the media decieves you to believe one side, completely excluding the other.

Whilst making sense of the clips, the representation of the United States were portrayed to be heroic and courages as they where showing the bodies of soldiers in the battle scene. This would really appeal to the emotions of the American public as it was rather graphic. Through this depiction, the US government is not lying as there is no false information as there is visual evidence, however the government is not illustrating the whole picture of the Iraqi people which only shows the Americans being portrayed as heroic. However as a lie, it would still contribute to the public thinking the same ideology behind this occuring news story. Therefore it is just as bad. The government publically announced that Al Jazeera was equivalent towards being “Osama Bin Laden’s mouthpiece” and that Sadam Hussien threatened the U.S with weapons of mass destruction. This is evident in relying on only emotions.

For instance, the news outlet used Soliders for evidence in how the information was being displayed which is very important for patriotism and giving the audience a sense of pride and releif. This can be supported with the fall of another Arabic country, where the citizens were very shocked that they had lost the war and came to local panic because it contradicted to how well their country seemed to be doing in the media, which shows that the portrayal of the countries strategies a lot of the time are used for propaganda only.

Al Jazeera’s approach was very incitefull as in the documentary, on the the producers argued “We want both news exposed, this guest only exposed the American’s point of view. That’s not how we do things.” It is inciteful because not many news outlets think this way. It is very heavily influenced by western coverage, where Al Jazeera wanted to cover the news in Iraq as well providing both aspect to an extent that it was very contreversial. This channel was very contreversial that some Arab Governments banned it. This highly important as they are letting their audience-which is extremely important in media- to come up with their own solution and perspective on the media. This shows that the channel does push their demographic to be viewed as neutral sides and information being conveyed, despite having American bias at the beginning. However in the end, they did comment on the capture of Baghdad and how they interpreted the situation which shows how trustworthy the news is .