News or Weapons of Mind Destruction: Press in America from Colonies till Obama

Abstract

American democracy claims free, objective and critical press that disseminates truthful information with the backing of the First Amendment under the US Constitution. This study is an endeavor to understand the obscure and mysterious concept of truthful information and working of press on the crucial matters of American foreign policy and national interests. This truthful information might be truthful and actual reality for one nation and untruthful and deception for another. Mediated truths are wrapped in myths and value systems of the society which is prone to trap in propaganda and agenda of information disseminators/manufacturers in American democracy. Freedom of expression is the hallmark of American democracy but freedom of thought is hijacked by the information controllers and mind manipulators to get the public support for covert and overt objectives either for direct personal benefit of oligarchy or for national interests which might also be indirect personal interests of the opulent class. Employing pragmatic and historical criticism methods with theoretical frameworks of propaganda and agenda setting this study performs a critical and analytical analysis of prime events in American history covered by the press from colonial era till the presidency of Mr. Barack H. Obama to discover the reality of truthful information and its effects on the American society and the world. The study discovers that to achieve the national and personal interests, people’s thoughts have been enslaved through the army of words and images dressed in mendacious information, fabricated and false facts and danger. People are just pawns and the actual power lies in the hands of powerful and rich class and media is serving their interests by destroying the critical thinking capacity of the minds of people on the matters of national security and foreign policy. People think what they are told to think about because journalism is in invisible chains in American democracy since the very beginning resulting humanity is suffering.

Keywords: Journalism, Democracy, Truth, War, Peace, Press history, Press freedom, Foreign policy, America