David Hernandez

English 419-Visual Rhetoric

November 25, 2015
The University Of New Mexico
War and Media: The Effects of an Over Stimulated People
War has been a constant in humanity since the dawn of human
existence. It is so common that young children understand the idea of
us vs. them. War has also been documented since the beginning of
time. It has been written on walls, written with ink, and filmed in
various ways. It has been in the view of every person since the start of
time in all of these ways. Today war is one of the largest covered topics
in media. Understanding why people fight is just as hard to understand
as why people choose to write it down. Looking at the pre-modern
history of war documentation and comparing it to the modern practices
of war documentation will prove that not only have the methods
changed but also the intended meaning upon the viewer. That war in
media has a negative affect one people of every nation if seen as
much as it is today. The specific time periods that will be looked at are
the early 1900s, around the time of WWI, towards present day. The
wars that will be examined will be; WWI, WWII, Vietnam, The Cold War,
the continuing conflicts of Middle East, and Terrorism as its own type of
war.
Understanding the beginning of documented war starts before
any of the already mentioned wars. The first wars documented can be
dated back before words were around, as many were on cave walls.
The reason that these wars are not focused on is because there was no
real media at the time. This is not to say that people were not affected
by the paintings, only to say that there was not a wide spread
influential media. Starting with WWI covers more of the world and so
there are multiple photographs, newspapers and large sources of
media to interpret. It is also one of the first wars where there were both
photographs as media and mass-produced written texts (Goldstein,
23).

This would have been a common image for people back home in
to receive from their family that were on the front lines. Many
photographs like this were not used to communicate to the viewer to
join the military; these photos were used to show that life on the front
was not constant fighting and that their friends were still hanging in
there (Goldstein, 44). These photos were used to raise morale for the
people back home. These were not the only types of photos that
people would see back home.
War is nothing new to these people that have fought in wars
previous. This is one of the first times that cameras were on the
battlefield, for those that fought in previous wars they might have
wanted to see what was really going on not just the posed pictures that
keep morale high. Photojournalists omitting these images change the
narrative of the war and how it is viewed. What is really going on in
these images? The image of the soldiers in a line, the viewer can see
that it is clearly posed, that this is most likely not the norm of what
happens everyday. The mud and dirt on their faces shows that they are
far from clean far from civilization even though they are fighting for
their civilization. Many of them are sitting showing the fatigue they
have been facing; they may have not slept for days on end. Yet this is
the image that is chosen for newspapers back home. Is there really a
difference between the posed warrior and the warrior at war?
The pictures with the warriors in combat are not very different
from the images with them at rest. There is no rest in war. There is
always the constant threat of an enemy attack. Both images represent
this both have them in their uniforms, muddy faced. The only
difference is their weapons position when in combat. There is motion in
the combat photos, showing the realism of the battlefield that nothing
stays still. The primary reason that these pictures were not chosen
could be argued that they convey multiple meanings. Such as a viewer
could see a photo of a soldier charging at the enemy and understand in
a totally different way than the creator intended. A viewer could think
that the soldier could be running away or they are running to their
certain doom. On a battlefield there is confusion everywhere with the

smoke and the bullets and the explosions. Making it easy for its
meaning to be lost. The same is true if someone is shot or dead in a
photo, who are they does this mean our nation is losing? This is most
likely the reason why photos at this time did not make it into
newspapers or regular media and that it would take a longer time to
get them into widespread media.

People back home would not see images like this in their daily
newspapers (Goldstein, 66). The reason they would not is the nations
of the time whether it be Brits, Turks, French, Germans or Americans
would not want their people to panic or think that their boys were
losing the war or dying. This time period is 1910-1920; this means that
newspapers and nation leaders understood that there was a negative

effect of these images on their people. The images that people did see
were more on the persuasive side.

This is the type of images that would be mass-produced and have the
largest influence on their native peoples. It is called propaganda, and it
is one of the first types of mass media (Goldstein, 23). Each image is a
reflection of culture and a call to arms for each nation. To break down
these images is also important in understanding the values of this
time. First masculinity is at a high point at this time, all of these images
target men or young men, and the reason that we know this is because
every image has women absent. At this time there is no women in the
military (Goldstein, 67). That does not mean that women do not see
these images they are not the target audience though. The images are
also a reflection of the people that would be joining these faces
resemble that of an average native in correspondence to the nation.
How did these images have such a great impact? Examining the
image of the Anti-German propaganda one can understand how it had
a better effect. The image is made for a younger male, like most of the
others, as it shows a female character in distress. The reason that the
creator is targeting younger males is the fact that they are the ones
that fight wars. The female character is naked as well, showing that
she is a type of sexual goal that needs to be protected. The German
army is also depicted in a non-human way. By dehumanizing the
enemy it makes it easier for a would be soldier to carry out their
orders. The image ignores what it looks like to be a soldier and focuses
on protecting something more primitive in a younger mans mind,
protecting there right to love someone else. A very manipulative
technique for an army advertisement.

World War One can be seen as the start of war media. The start
can be identified with propaganda. World War Two takes many of these
same types of media and brings it to an even larger scale with the
adaption of film cameras that can capturing moving images.
World War Two forever changed how the world sees war forever.
It was one of the first wars that were documented to persuade the
viewer that war was a terrible thing. There a book that interprets WWII
journalists works and tries to make sense of their meanings. The book
is called War, Journalism and History: War Correspondents in the Two
World Wars by Fiona Frisken. Two WWII journalists had radically
different views on the war; it is evident in their works that they wanted
an underlying meaning to come across to anyone that read their work.
Vera Brittain was a British Nurse turned war correspondent. She
had a very specific goal with her journalism. It was to have her
audience understand that war was horrible and that its images could
be used to persuade others that people should not be killing each other
(Frisken, 39). She was also a devout Christian and pacifist (Frisken, 40).
These ideals came out in her writings of the war. She did not take
photographs yet newspapers always paired her writings with
photographs from the war. This creates and alters its meaning of her
writing. Why was she important? She understood that these images
although terrible could be convincing enough to stop violence. This can
be seen as the first justification of why media would start using such
images more and more.
The images from World War II show a much realer version of
what war looks like than previous images of past wars. The images of
the young men storming the beaches of Normandy are quite intense
and give the viewer a sense of fear and nervousness and duty all at
the same time. It is hard to say how this was done with these photos as
a moving person most likely snapped them. The images were much
less of a planned narrative. Yet they still show bravery and a sense of
duty as the image is taken from behind the soldiers moving forward as
none are on the retreat. Showcasing that specially US soldiers do not
run from a fight. An image like this seen in the nation of origin could
cause more young men to join the fray.

The second journalist that is examined in this book was a

German cameraman named, Hans Ertl. He was responsible for two
types of work he made German propaganda films and German
newsreels (Fisken, 177). He understood that his work as propaganda
filmmaker would shape the way people would think about the war. He
states that he did not like the films he created yet the Nazi party had a
large hold over what he created and how he created it (Fisken, 179).
This idea that those that create the largest viewed media are not
what they want to make is intriguing. It questions every aspect of
normal life, if it is being shaped in a specific way. He also stated that
his images had a great power over the German peoples and that his
even his newsreels had to be approved by German propaganda
ministry (Fisken, 178). This leads to a new question of whether news
can be trusted. Obviously Nazi Germany is a very different place from
the United States the question can still be asked, are the images in

American media honest, and are they approved by someone that

wants a clear message in mind?
The next war that should be examined is known as the war in
Americas living room. The Vietnam War was the first televised war in
United States history. The time frame that it occupied was from 19611973, the reason it is important to look at this war and how it
interacted with the media has a lot to do with the technology of the
time. Unlike WWII the camera had become color, radio stronger and
the ability to broadcast videos faster than ever before made it easy for
TV stations to broadcast videos taken on the front line for the first time
(Hallin, 103.)
This war is also important for two other reasons having to do with
rhetorical matters. The first is the controversy of what the war was
being fought over and the controversy surrounding the images that
would be broadcast, and if they were ethically correct to be shown.
Television news came at the same time that Vietnam War started. The
CBS and NBC news stations took their present day forms in 1963,
expanding from fifteen minutes to thirty minutes (Hallin, 105).

As I sat in my office last evening, waiting to speak, I thought of the many times
each week when television brings the war into the American home. No one can
say exactly what effect those vivid scenes have on American opinion. Historians
must only guess at the effect that television would have had during earlier
conflicts on the future of this Nation: during the Korean war, for example, at that
time when our forces were pushed back there to Pusan; or World War II, the
Battle of the Bulge, or when our men were slugging it out in Europe or when
most of our Air Force was shot down that day in June 1942 off Australia.

LBJ, April 1, 1986

This
statement by LBJ is another indication that perhaps the images that
were eventually going to become very common on television would
detrimental to the mental state of those that view them. He too was a
nations leader that understood that these images although powerful
would be judged for a deeper meaning. That the meaning could also be
damaging, so why did these images persist? In 1973 a study was
conducted to see where Americans got most of their news from, 58%
said TV, 28% said newspapers (Hallin, 106). The simple answer is
people wanted to know what was happening and the easiest way to
see it happen was through a TV.
This leads to present day news showing graphic images everyday
about the conflicts around the world. This entire specialized war media
from the time of WWI was leading up to its present day
representations. Now the question of whether or not this is ethically is

no longer a question, the new questions are what to watch this new
type of media on. The beginning of this ultra technologically lightning
fast live streaming war was the product of September 11 2001.

This would be the catalyst to many new questions for the most
modern era of news transfer. Before it would take weeks for a
newspaper to come in during the time of WWI and WWII, it would take
days for telegrams to make there way from news station. It would take
days for a video to make its way from a Vietnam battleground to the
US. Today it takes less than a few seconds for a video of a live event to
go from ones cellphone onto a CNN news broadcast, where reporters
are in the field with their cameras with our soldiers broadcasting live.
This raises the newest and most important question, is this ok for us to
see, should there be a line that should not be crossed when faced with
the idea of is it too much and too fast? Is the constant bombardment of
these images numbing to the human mind and does it make the
people of the world less caring due to what they have already seen?
This next series of images are now the day-to-day norm of a normal
news broadcast. All of these next images are from NBCs website.
In present day media most journalist and writers understand that
what they publish carries significant meaning and that most images
will be critiqued. That many of photographers images will be picked
apart by other sources of media to find any underlying meaning that
could be imposed by the creator.
For example the images below have very clear objectives. The
first image has American soldiers standing over an unarmed, dead
civilian. Most likely a viewer would see this and wonder if the US

soldier was the cause of the death or if they arrived after and it was
just another innocent person that was caught in the cross fire.
American soldiers also have a different represented meaning in
different cultures. Yet knowing that many of these images will not be
seen in those cultures adds another dimension to their meaning. In
those cultures American soldiers would be seen as tyrants, in America
they are seen as heroes. So by placing the soldier over the body an
American viewer would assume that this image is heroic and that the
soldier is fighting to avenge the fallen person as an act of global
policing. This is where the damaging effects come from. The confusion
of these images of what is being fought over and the amount of blood
leaves the viewer in a state of confusion. The viewer is left to make his
or her own meanings out of these images.

To understand if there is a detrimental effect on the human

mind of this over graphic war images there is an article that examines
how images changed in media from the time of September 11, called
Secret Casualties: Images of Injury and Death in the Iraq War Across
Media Platforms, William Silock. He argues that there two points. The
first point is that the war in Iraq did not start a trend of graphic images
in mainstream news. That the second point is that journalists

consciously chose to avoid graphic images due to harm that they know
exits in repeating these images.
Silcock references a survey that was taken in 2004 of by the
Pew Research Center that shows that 70% of Americans would not
want to see graphic images of what was happening in Iraq. That a
simple image that resembles the images seen from the WWII news era
would do just fine in creating an idea of what the battlefields look like.
This is the real proof that these types of images are damaging to
human minds. It has been alluded to that in WWI newspapers thought
that the images would be too damaging if seen too often. The leaders
have also said it, much like with LBJs quote, and no the viewer
themselves also see these images as detrimental. Yet they still persist
even in todays news, even after the statistics show that it is unnecessary.
The reason why war has become such a large portion of media
coverage is vast. How it went from black and white photos to radio
messages to TV to anywhere at any time is due constantly growing
news structure and information consuming society. One thing is clear
though as long as war is a constant there will always be an opinion why
its happening and a camera there to capture what is happening, and
people will just learn to accept it and create their own meanings and
understandings as they have since the beginning of war
documentation.

Works Cited
Fisken, Fiona A., and Yvonne McEwen. War, Journalism And History :
War Correspondents In The Two World Wars. Frankfurt: Peter Lang AG,
2012. eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 26 Nov. 2015.
Goldstein, Donald M., and Harry J. Maihafer. America In World War I :
The Story And Photographs. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 2004. eBook
Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 26 Nov. 2015.
Hallin, Daniel C. The 'Uncensored War' : The Media And Vietnam. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1986. eBook Academic Collection
(EBSCOhost). Web. 26 Nov. 2015.
Silcock, B. William, Carol B. Schwalbe, and Susan Keith. "Secret
Casualties: Images of Injury and Death in the Iraq War Across Media
Platforms." Journal of Mass Media Ethics 23.1 (2008): 36-50. Print.