Censorship on Anti War Views:

       

    There are many reasons why antiwar voices and views are rarely if ever heard on mainstream media. Antiwar voices have always existed in the United States, a major example of this was during the Vietnam War in which there was a massive uprising among college students protesting the war. Since this major event caused distrust between the government and the younger generation, the government now does its best to keep these voices out of the mainstream.  

A major part of this is that the media has corporate interests so networks such as Fox, CNN, NBC and others don’t want to paint a narrative and give voice to these antiwar views as it can harm their brand. They need to sell ad time and have sponsors, and both of those things could quickly become hard to do if they started to alienate their viewers and the CEOs and people in charge of other major businesses. These billion-dollar companies do their best to maintain that value, and to appeal to the people in charge rather than these smaller groups. These companies can also have a form of censorship for smaller ones to drown out the news and opinions they’re posting.   

Another reason is these media sources don’t wish to villainize the United States. In the recent wars the USA has been a part of, such as the wars in the middle east, to many Americans the USA was already on thin ice in terms of public opinion. If the media were to push out strong voices that spoke out against the country it would generate divide within the nation and could cause tensions to boil over between the United States government and the people. Instead, the media would want to focus on what these other countries are doing wrong and focus on the idea of supporting the troops no matter what. 

 Another reason is that the news sources don’t want to upset the government. As many of the sources the major news networks use are government officials, speaking out against what they’re doing could cause them to lose sources and in turn money. These rich owners and shareholders also don’t want to create enemies within all parties in government by speaking out against them. The strong nationalism and patriotism also cause antiwar voices to be covered. As the government and media want to unite the people to back and cheer for the United States in these wars. Patriotism has been around since the United States conception and it’s within the best interests of the people with power to keep it that way.  

These are all reasons I believe people rarely see and hear antiwar news and voices. These voices are forced to use independent and smaller outlets and blogs to post their opinion. These voices can now be hard to find, and often many people will have never heard them. This can harm the country however, as it drowns out voices wanting to be heard and makes it so less people know and could even join in and try to get antiwar voices into the limelight. Fortunately, these voices are still out there and able to be found and heard. It just takes more effort and time to find them, and there are less out there than the mainstream ideas and views.