Tripoli Falls to The Freedom Fighters

[Crazyman93]

One of the things that makes America such a great country is the fact that we don't turn away requests for help.  We give aid to those who need it and will help just about anyone who requests it.  Be it a small african country, or Libyian Rebels who are fighting against a dictator who is executing them in the streets.

The only thing we've changed is who's doing the killing. And do you really think things will be better after all of this? Democracy just kicks in because we dropped some bombs? Why don't we just step over to Syria and start some shit there too. I'm sure we can afford that.

Yeah, this. I've actually read the Libyan rebels haven't been any better then the regime they're replacing, they'd drag people out into the streets and kill them just because. Of course, the US Government would never let the American Newspapers report this.

[Pterrydactyl]

It's just stupid to think that our government could control any part of the news even if they tried.

We can barly manage to keep our government under control much less the news.  Not to mention, if we DID have the news under control, you can bet your ass that it would have reported we found WMDs in Iraq a LONG time ago.

My personal experience with the news and reporters (we had a fox reported with our unit for  a time) is that they will go with whatever gives them ratings.  So if it gives them ratings to not show the rebels executing people in the streets, they won't do it.  Our government has little to no say in whats broadcast.

In fact, did you know that it's not illegal to broadcast blatant nudity over the TV?  It's just not profitable.  You see, the networks make money from the commercials.  And noone that pays piles of money is going to want to advertise if there is nudity being broadcast because the rating of the show becomes TV-MA-NS at a minimum.  You throw in some language or violence and it's TV-MA-LNSV which means your audience got cut into tiny pieces.  Thus, the advertisers drop from the big-money ones to the low-money ones, and that makes it less profitable.  It's not illegal to broadcast nudity, it's just not profitable.

How do I know this you might ask?  Because Digital Cinema FORCES us to take Commerce Classes relating to ratings, commercialism, and profitability.

I actually did a report on the TV-MA ratings, and found some crazy information.  For example, did you know that one of the few casts where N was actually used (N is pretty much only used for full-body nudity), was in the first episode of stargate when it was owned by showtime?

The official rating of the episode (under the new system), is TV-MA-LNV.  Language, Nudity, Violence.

So yea, while there is control over what it broadcast, it's not the government doing the controlling, it's the industry.

[undiscoveredbum]

If anything, the media has more control over the government than the other way around.

[Crazyman93]

How was any of that relevant at all?

I hate to shatter your views, but the Military can control what news gets out, because they're the ones that let reporters into combat zones.

[Pterrydactyl]

You have no idea.  I WISH we could have controlled what they wanted us to do when we had them with us.

If they were embedded with you for the day, expect to go DIRECTLY towards anything that explodes or shoots.

Normally, a unit stays within their sector, but when you have a journalist in your squad, it's a bit different.

I was unlucky enough to have this CNN reporter with our unit at one point:

Tripoli Falls to The Freedom Fighters

So, our mission was to hand out supplies to a local school (normally, this was done by the FSB troops, but our commander wanted to look good on the news, and since I was a gunner in the command convoy, I got to go with).

We arrived at the school and handed out stuff for about an hour.  Her camera-man took about 5 minutes of footage, none with her.  She talked with our commander and took photos for a bit, then waited in the HMMWV.  After the first hour, there was a huge explosion and smoke-plume off in the distance.  It was outside our AO so we kept handing stuff out.  That is, until the reporter DEMANDED that we take her there (despite the reports that there was a conflict between insurgents and IA and Coalition forces).  At first, we told her no, because we had our commander with us, and we had the supplies to hand out,  But after she called the brigade commander, we were ordered to go.  So, we split our patrol up into 2 groups (one to continue handing the supplies out), and the other took her to see the fighting.  Luckily, I got to stay with the group handing out the supplies.  When the other group returned to base (roughly 5 hours after we split up, and 3 full hours beyond their scheduled return time), our commander stormed into his office and the reporter left to go send her segment in.  I don't remember what her segment ended up being about (didn't really care), but I know that a lot of soldiers were pissed about it and there was nothing that could be done.

The media reports what they want.  The best our government was able to do, was to force censor any pictures or videos that showed the deaths of soldiers until their immediate family had been notified.  Which again, is STILL not always the case (I've heard more than a few stories of reporters who got their stories to the US before the "media blackout" was started and loved ones heard about the deaths of their sons, daughters, or husbands from the nightly news shortly before they were informed by the military).

If we can't even stop them from reporting long enough to properly alert the family of fallen soldiers of their loss, then there is NO WAY we could censor them about anything.

[Fake from State Jarm]

atonichis, stop disagreeing with crazyman based on personal experience. he is a guy on a forum, he clearly knows what he is talking about.