This paper will evaluate media coverage of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Specifically, it will agree with Noam Chomsky that "it's the primary function of the mass media in the United States to mobilize support for the special interests that dominate the government and the private sector" (Zmag.org).
Perhaps most wars are justified with lies. Certainly this has been the case in the history of the United States. In the 19th century legally binding treaties negotiated between the indigenous inhabitants and the American government were violated again and again with bogus justifications as the aggressively expansionist new nation gobbled up more and more of the land that it had solemnly promised to leave in Indian hands forever. The invasion of Mexico before the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War were prosecuted under trumped-up charges. The Tonkin Gulf incident used by then President Johnson to drastically ramp up the Vietnam War, in which it was falsely charged that North Vietnamese boats attacked American ships in international waters without provocation, has now been exposed as a complete fabrication.
So the lies used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq are nothing new, nor hs the fact that media were the weapon of choice with which to gull the public. At the turn of the century it was newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst who inflamed public opinion against the Spanish occupiers of Cuba with lurid accounts of their alleged atrocities. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, it was the New York Times (along with the Washington Post and the major television networks) which played the role of what Chomsky calls the "agenda-setting media".
They filter and mould news coverage "in all sorts of ways: by selection of topics, by distribution of concerns, by emphasis and framing of issues, by filtering of information, by bounding of debate within certain limits. They determine, they select, they shape, they cont...