Wag The Dog Essay

The movie “Wag the Dog” is an outrageous film about a fictitious Presidential Campaign, whose media staff creates a fake war with Albania, in order to get their candidate reelected as President. In their effort to create this war, the media team for the President has to break every single rule in the PRSA Code of Ethics. Although their strategies and tactics may not be the most preferable, some techniques used throughout the film can correlate with the outside world, and even the election cycle we are going through today.
Throughout “Wag the Dog” the media team led by Conrad (Robert Deniro), formulated a media plan that broke every single aspect of the PRSA Code of Ethics. Some of those core values include: advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence, loyalty, and fairness. One example of their negative campaign practices includes, the way they manipulated the Albanian Footage to make it look more realistic to the American Public. Although this video was helpful in developing their story, it was also dishonest as it lied to the American People about the actual events occurring in Albania. Another example where they went against the PRSA Code of Ethics was when they chose Albania as the country to be …show more content…
One of my favorite parts in the film was when Winifred called the Press Secretary and told him specifically what Conrad wanted him to say. This idea represents how much control was actually held by this media team, and most likely why they would have been so successful. In addition to the information being given out, this movie also depicts the amount of news that stations choose to pick up. Much like in this campaign season, the media in “Wag the Dog” looked to pick up all political news they could, which in a way could be a bad thing as many stories are not factual, like the