Blog 6 : Antiwar

        In class today, we discussed how war is reported in the press. Today, I feel the press are focused more on negatives or conflicts, rather than positive events. I feel the media today thrives on drama, conflict, political unrest to boost ratings and followers. This can be a very negative place with the power to influence society. This idea directly relates to how the press portrays war in the media. The role of the press leading up to war, is how they will always be in favor of it.  Sadly, the media highlights destruction. Not to mention, false media can play into this when completely different ideas or images are reported that’s not actually related to the article or is old news. It doesn't matter how against you may feel towards war, the press will always be in favor of war. 

        This is very troubling to me, as a country’s press is immensely focused on war and destruction for its own benefit.  For this week's blog we were assigned two anti war websites to explore, The American Conservative and Antiwar.com. While exploring these websites, it’s apparent they are antiwar websites and ultimately want to help make our world a better place. I feel these websites share their anti war thoughts because they want viewers to hear different perspectives.  Often these voices are overlooked because other websites only want to listen and write based on others with similar views. As a result, this makes it harder for other websites to be heard as people are drawn to the popular and powerful news networks.
    

      The press ultimately wants us to focus on the “drama”, rather than coming up with solutions on how we as a country can do better for this world. Therefore, most of the time our media is very misleading and attempts to sway opinions. Unfortunately drama, violence, and war sell. These websites want viewers to understand the other sides to disputes and how violence should never be the answer. While reading, I  came to the realization that I have never seen or heard of these websites before. You may wonder why that is, but I think it's purposely planned. I feel the media does this on purpose because they don't want viewers to read websites with conflicting views because this will hurt their overall status. They want the best publicity possible, so in order to do this they overcompensate their stories to outdo others. I plan to do a better job listening to the media and not allow myself to rely on one popular news source.