Citation

Takeuchi M. St. Andrews Univ. Bull. Res. Inst. 2001; 27(1): 159-167.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, St. Andrew's University)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The U.S.A. has been considered a developed country which adovocates liberalism. But as Noam Chomsky points out, in fact the manipulation of public opinion by the media has been carried out under the pretense of freedom of speech. The Task of this paper is to explain how the media of the U.S.A., especially The New York Times managed to reconcile the manipulation of public opinion with the condition of freedom of speech. In this second section I pick up some articles after the well-known 1995 rape of Japanese schoolgirl by U.S. Marines. Firstly I examine the possibility of the influence of many expressions which take the State power as the subject word. The readers can be influenced by those kind of wording. Secondly I analyze the world view of an editorial article which asserts to guard the civil liberty of American soldier. It is considered in the article that the civil liberty of American soldier is more important than the the rights to live in peace in Okinawa. We can imagine that there is a weak version of liberalism which is held by a part of editorial members. Thirdly I deal with indifferent attitude of an editorial article toward the violence offered to the women in Okinawa. The New York Times sometimes lacks the perspective of individual rights due to emphasizing the American world strategy too much.