The role of the media in boosting military spending

Abstract

Military spending in the USA and the UK is far in excess of defensive needs. The rationale for such spending now has little to do with defence, and is based on the capacity to intervene unilaterally and globally. This rationale, while favoured by political and military elites, has no clear popular mandate. It is here that the media play a role: not in simple-minded boosterism, but in creating a climate in which it is difficult to countenance cutting military budgets. There are four main elements of this unwitting complicity: the news media tend to focus on shortfalls rather excesses in the military budget; they tend to provide few comparative figures that might communicate the size of military budgets; they allow support for the troops to spill over into assumptions about support for military spending; and they allow the establishment of spurious links between the terrorist threat and defence spending.