Wag the Dog and the Media

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What point are the filmmakers trying to make with this satire?
What threats are portrayed? Threats to whom?
Who/what is threatening?
Why was war the go-to diversion?
What role does emotion - specifically fear - play in the movie?
Analyze the scene with the CIA agent.

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“There is no war.”
“Of course there’s a war - I see it on TV.”

…And to go to that war, you've got to be prepared. You have to be alert, and the public has to be alert. Cause that is the war of the future, and if you're not gearing up, to fight that war, eventually the axe will fall. And you're gonna be out in the street. And you can call this a "drill," or you can call it "job security," or you can call it anything you like. But I got one for you: you said,
"Go to war to protect your Way of Life," well,
Chuck, this is your way of life. Isn't it? And if there ain't no war, then you, my friend, can go home and prematurely take up golf. Because there ain't no war but ours.

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The film portrays many trappings of war, such as songs and propaganda. What are the implications of these in real life?
Which elements (actors, relationships) of domestic politics are important, and why?
Similarities/differences with the president’s actual relationship to the media in regards to national security?

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1st Amendment: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”
Press = Link between the president and the people
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Media and president are mutually dependent
T. Roosevelt: began meeting with reporters regularly, built a pressroom in the White House, and had an aide give daily briefings
Wilson: began holding regular press conferences

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Telegraph --> wire services
1920s: Radio
1950s: Television
1980s/90s: Cable and
Satellite
1990s/00s: Internet
2000s/10s: Cell phones, social media
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Each innovation -
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Increases potential # of potential news sources
Allows the president to communicate more directly with the people

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Rise of television
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1959: 19% of people get most of their news from television alone
1997: 69%
2003: 86% cite TV as main source of info about
Iraq war (only 4% cite
Internet)
2013: 55%
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Rise of cable
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1995: 23% of Americans watch cable news daily
(62% watch network news daily)
2008: 40% (34%)
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Rise of Internet
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1995: 3%, daily news source
2008: 31%

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2013: 55% say TV is main source of news
Even important stories only receive ~75 seconds of coverage, on average
Stories that are more exciting are privileged
General lack of in-depth reporting due to concern for ratings
E.g.: Presidential sound bites
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1968: 42 seconds, on average
1996: 7 seconds, on average

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The idea that CNN (and, later, its competitors) influences US FP significantly
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Agenda-setting
Impeding policy
Speeding decision making
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1980: CNN
1996: Fox News and MSNBC

 Gulf War (Peter Jennings)
 Gulf War (BBC)
 Iraq 2003

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Anyone can post.
Images can be altered.
Stories move so quickly that fact-checking is often left behind.

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Junod (2003), “The Falling Man”
Krug and Niggemeier (2013), “Enhanced
Reality: Exploring the Boundaries of Photo
Editing”
Mermin (1997), “Television News and
American Intervention in Somalia: The Myth of a Media-Driven Foreign Policy.”

“…by that time [2003] it was clear that despite the best efforts of the American government and the American media, the legacy of 9/11 was not going to be moral clarity but rather moral unease — an almost vertiginous sensation of the ground giving way beneath our feet, along with just about everything else. That sensation, alas, has never gone away, and it is what has been mined brilliantly by the makers of Mad Men. If, in
2003, America was finally able to look at a two year-old photograph suggesting that it had to revise what it thought it knew about how people died on 9/11, by 2007 it was primed to watch a prime-time melodrama suggesting that it had to revise what it thought it knew about how people lived in 1960. It was ready to hear that what it had always regarded as American exceptionalism got its start as American entitlement, and was always fated to fall back to earth.”
-Tom Junod, “Falling (Mad) Man” (2012)