Controlling the Media is Necessary to Win and Prevent Wars (5 rounds)

I will refute his points in the order he presents them, and provide my own arguments alongside my responses. "You" is now the audience, not my opponent. __________________ spencetheguy's burdens in this round are to prove that 1) it is necessary to control the media in times of war 2) it is necessary to control the media to prevent wars R1 and R2 was pretty confusing about these, so I thought I'd clear this up. Overview) "my opponent missed one important fact [...] ti was all perfectly legal." This is essentially the 'fact' I am arguing against. I am saying that freedom of the press and freedom of speech should NOT be "moderated" during times of war, and my PERSONAL belief is that it should NEVER be moderated. I have provided a reason why this is true at the end of my case, when I talk about who defines what wars are necessary. He does not refute that, and says that I am "misguided". I don't believe I am misguided, especially when I am questioning how the resolution/topic is evaluated in the first place. My argument here is that the only agent that can legitly say what is necessary or not is the people, and they cannot decide if they do not have all the information. John F Kennedy explained why this issue was so impertinent in his speech "The President and the Press", delivered on April 27th 1961: "The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment." He continues, with his own thoughts and a solution, one which I agree with and one which will serve as my 'counterplan' for this debate. "I have no intention of establishing a new Office of War Information to govern the flow of news. I am not suggesting any new forms of censorship or new types of security classifications. I have no easy answer to the dilemma that I have posed, and would not seek to impose it if I had one. But I am asking the members of the newspaper profession and the industry in this country to reexamine their own responsibilities, to consider the degree and the nature of the present danger, and to heed the duty of self-restraint which that danger imposes upon us all." I have two other responses to his first argument - 1) Vietnam was not an officially declared war; if he chooses to continue to use this response, you do not meet your third burden because Vietnam is now 'not a war'. By doing this he also changes his definition... and I am no longer sure what the advocacy is. 2) Actually there are a lot of conspiracy theories regarding the controlling of the media. I can provide you a link to one if you want. S-A) 1) I don't see how getting rich has to do with winning or preventing wars. Getting rich does not necessarily require misrepresentations of foreign countries. Misrepresenting foreign countries does not necessarily mean getting rich. 2) "the US was already clambering for war" - Where's your proof? 3) "we both agree was wasteful/unnecessary to protect/presence all that mishmash" - But I do not agree with your methods. As I started explaining last round and extrapolated on this round, censorship is not the way. In R2 I already refuted this: "However, the governments of Spain and America themselves did not know what caused the [battleship to explode] (my bad, I meant to type that last round), and because of that the media is free to speculate." 4) I never advocated that Spain blew up the ship. Refer to previous point. 5) I have a new argument: Even though he is using the S-A war as an example to prove that it is necessary to control the media to prevent unnecessary wars, this is a perfect example to disprove his other burden: We didn't control the media here, yet we won the S-A war! Therefore it is not necessary to control the media to win wars, and he loses the debate already. WW2) He did not refute any of my points. Vietnam) "when the US left millions of vietnamese fled the country to escape the oppressive communists." - Even if there were millions, my Eisenhower quote still stands - "80% would vote for Communist, Ho Chi Minh" "those left behind were placed in reeducation camps where hundreds of thousands of south vietnamese died of hunger and exposure compared to the 50 thousand Us troops that had died so far. the south thrived while the US aided them drive out an forigen and oppressive invader producing more and sustaining a stronger economy than its northern counterpart. this all collapsed when the US left." - This is refuted by Mike Gravel - "You can now, John, go to Hanoi, and get a Baskin Robbins ice cream cone. That's what you can do. And now we have most favored nation trade! What did all these people die for?" His next few lines are very confusing... I believe at one point he says that he supports the CON ("is this evidence that i presented show that it was a mistake to leave? the suffering and death that we left in our wake is that right? i say no."), but even if you overlook that, he is still not affirming/supporting his own side. He says "we neither won or lost" - I can for sure, say that we LOST: We didn't achieve the goals we marched in there with. Which was, by the way, wrong to begin with. But we couldn't have won that war anyways: NV knew our rules of engagement which were pretty wack (ex: missile systems could not be bombed unless they were known to be fully operational, enemies could not be pursued into surrounding countries, etc.), the US was supplying things the Russia, who in turn used those to give weapons to NV, who then used those to kill our troops........ all arrows point to us losing more troops if we stayed there. "this caused an uproar because the media portrayed it so strongly and negatively." Good. We shouldn't be fighting a war we aren't supposed to be in anyways. Our purpose was to give democracy, which wasn't going to happen, according to Eisenhower, so it was a useless war to begin with. he hasn't showed how we should win all wars, and I have proved that we couldn't have won Vietnam anyways. "america celebrated as this action of inhumanity brought japan to its knees." I can tell you, there were a lot of people that didn't like the atomic bomb. Just look at the whole hippie era. "as you can see the power of the Media can make a small incident seem huge and a horrible action seem humane. " But censorship is not the answer. "however, this argument does not adress my argument" It COMPLETELY addresses his argument: It argues that the assumptions his case is based upon are COMPLETELY FALSE. "i will admit defeat if my opponent can provide sufficient argument that if the Media is given free reign it will report accurately and relatively to the actual events to inform and not to just make money in times of war." I win in 2 ways: 1) He doesn't meet his burdens, he has the burden of proof, and 2) that is not my burden, all i have to do is show that it is not necessary and I have done that, PLUS he NEVER shows that the media ONLY wants to make money and doesn't care about the reliability of its sources. By the way, the money thing is nontopical. Just if you didn't notice.