Is spin harmful?

In my view, a government has got certain powers that its population has given it. When this power is unchecked, it will corrupt. The media is a vital tool to check how authority uses its power, and if the media does not function, the populace loses its grasp on its own government, and with it the grasp on their own rights and lives. I personally believe that the media has a duty to pursue investigative journalism, in order to find out and report about what is going on elsewhere in the world. The need to include extensive backgroun information is especially important in conflicts, including the current one in Iraq that has the potential to spiral out of control and become a danger for the entire world. If the invasion of Iraq was in fact illegal, then we are all guilty of having allowed it. Not just policy makers, not just the media, but all of us.

Even if it doesn’t seem like we live in a democracy at times, we do still live in free countries, with a law system, and a more or less representative government. We have rights, and duties, and I believe that, more often than not, people are inclined to forget about what it means to live in a democracy. Power is too easily given away to our representatives, and as long as there is bread and games, you won’t hear any complaints. But it is not that simple. We, as civilians, have the obligation to know what is going on in our name. If a UN soldier shoots a rebel in Afghanistan, then we should realise that he did so because of us. We should not be lulled into thinking that these affairs have nothing to do with us, because we could very well find that we are the very reason for them in the first place.

The media is a tool for us to inform us about backgrounds, problems, and occurences in order to make us more qualified to make the right decisions and have our governments take action. The media is not a tool for governments to change this information in order to lead us to believe that what is happening is something else, or not happening at all, or happening in our best interest. That is not called information gathering, that is called propaganda.

Like I said in the introduction, spin is the same as propaganda, only slightly more insidious perhaps, and less obvious. But we should remember that it still is propaganda. It just sounds more attractive. We have been living in ‘The Information Age’ now for quite a while, but in the course of this study I have noticed that gradually this is changing into ‘The Misinformation Age’. Not quite a happy thought, and only by being wary, and vigilant, can we make sure that the powers that be might fool others, but not us.

This has been a very hard topic to research. The war in Iraq is still raging, as the insurgents gain in strength, public support in the UK and US is decreasing, and more and more examples of excessive violence by Coalition forces come out in the open. As I have followed the war progressing on TV and in other media, the one thing that I have noticed is that there is a very great deal of information available that we don’t get access to through mainstream media. It takes special effort to find those things that are essential for proper understanding of the world today. I am convinced that I myself, after having dug deep into the subject, still have much more to learn that I already did about this subject, and it shocks me to learn how little the general public knows about conflicts that are being fought in their name. Even though I have tried to somehow conclude this project, it is far from over. I have gotten into the habit of checking sources, obtaining background info, and finding opposing views, and this is something that is becoming more and more important for all of us to do.