The Military and the Media

Individual volumes shed light on key contemporary military, strategic, and security issues of current interest. Each book in the series is truly a library in a book, including both a narrative summary treatment of the issue and reference features such as a chronology, biographies, and relevant primary sources. The series provides a quick, in-depth examination and current perspectives on controversial and in-the-news military, strategic, and security issues - both at home and around the world. It is sure to stimulate critical thinking, while providing ready-reference answers, primary documents, and next stops for student research and the interested general reader.From the rise of anti-war sentiment during the Vietnam War until today’s situation in Iraq, in times of war, and especially in a society as open as that of the United States, the perceptions the public forms about the morality, costs, benefits, and efficacy of military engagement are vitally important. Those perceptions have the potential to significantly affect the scope and direction of military engagement, as the history of American military conflict and the current commitment to Iraq repeatedly demonstrate. Media/military relations have grown more complicated with the dramatic changes new technologies have wrought in news and information gathering and distribution. This reference handbook provides an inclusive historical overview of the major issues and developments in the military-media relationship in the American context, an analysis of the current state of that relationship, and its larger political and social sources and consequences.