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U.S. National Security
Wag the Dog and the Media
Wag the Dog:
Discussion Questions
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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.
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.
Wag the Dog:
Discussion Questions
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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?
The Media
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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
Media and Innovations
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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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Media and Innovations
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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%)
Rise of Internet
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1995: 3%, daily news
source
2008: 31%
Problems with the dominance of
TV
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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
CNN Effect
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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
1980: CNN
1996: Fox News and MSNBC
CNN Effect
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Gulf War (Peter Jennings)
Gulf War (BBC)
Iraq 2003
Problems with the rise of the
internet
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Anyone can post.
Images can be altered.
Stories move so quickly that fact-checking is
often left behind.
Readings
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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)