Deception is Just as Bad as telling an Outright Lie

               I personally agree with this statement and the reason behind it is that sometimes there is not such a big difference between the way we would define deceiving someone or lying to someone. Deceiving would be considered convincing one of something that is not true, which is in the end lying, the only observable difference here being the premeditation or purpose behind a deceiving attempt. It is true that lying could have the same result overall yet it would lack the previously mentioned premeditation.

                Taking for example a documentary about the Invasion of Iraq in 2003, (Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMsK4F5VOsE) we can notice examples of deception which was applied and lead to a result which was the same as if an outright lie was told. One of the aspects that stood out for me was the difference between American media and Al Jazeera, and especially their views. The senior producer of Al Jazeera, Samir Khader, mentioned that people should be informed of exactly what is happening, “there is a war around you, something is happening in the world; you’re still sleeping; wake up!”. During the interview at the Military Centre, the military mentioned how Saddam Hussein has supposedly threatened the Americans with weapons of mass destruction, statement which is later discarded by the military when more questions on the topic are asked by the interviewer, by saying “I misunderstood your question”. This signals the deception of people at the time. They were deceived into believing that Saddam Hussein was threatening the USA, which was the reason for the attacks. Linked to this comes also the transmissions in which Americans mentioned that the casualties were limited, yet it was in contradiction with the images published by Al Jazeera. Overall, the American media as stated by Samir Khader was promoting the idea of people from both the USA and Iraq being under threat. This could be developed into a perception of safety provided by the action of military forces in Iraq, again deceiving the Americans. Journalist for Al Jazeera, Hassan Ibrahim, mentioned that he had faith in the American public that they were going to understand what is going on and stop the war, yet as we can see, the deception here was something that was in the way of this happening, showing again how deception can be as bad as a lie.

Al Jazeera was also initially accused of being biased, showing only footage of American troops and not of Iraqi troops and their negative actions, yet in defense, Al Jazeera journalists mentioned that there is no one that has that kind of footage, showing that overall every media, including themselves, can be biased in what type of information they present and what they leave aside, and this contributes to the deception of the population.