Critical Review Essay: When Media Goes To War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion,
and the Limits of Dissent
In the book, When Media Goes To War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the
Limits of Dissent, the author Anthony DiMaggio’s main argument is that most of the news
reported by major media programs is actually government propaganda. An example of this
is the investigation of the coverage of Iran and its nuclear program. “The CIA estimated in
late 2006 that there was ‘no firm evidence of a secret drive by Iran to develop nuclear
weapons,’ whereas a 2007 comprehensive examination from over a dozen U. S.
intelligence agencies […] concluded that there was a high probability that Iran stopped
work on its suspected nuclear weapons program more than four years earlier”
(DiMaggio135). I agree that instead of the government choosing what to put out into the
media stream, they need to tell all of the information about that certain topic.
I n this book, Anthony DiMaggio uses convincing evidence to show that the government is
feeding the information to the news sources and not letting the whole story to come out.
One example is the Iran Nuclear Program and how supposedly they have been developing
a nuclear bomb for the past ten years. But in reality the National Intelligence Estimate
“concluded that there was a high probability that Iran stopped work on its suspected
nuclear weapons program more than four years earlier” (DiMaggio 135). DiMaggio’s
makes the point that the research on the American and British coverage of Iran’s Nuclear
