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One of the most defining aspects of the September 11th attacks and the weeks and months following it was the accompanying storm of media coverage and its effects on the American populous, both readily apparent and otherwise. Since the dominant, corporate-owned media is the sole outlet of information for the average American citizen, the nation's perception of the attacks, their cause, and the resultant government and military actions taken in retaliation is based fundamentally on the way in which the media portrayed them. In the so-called Information Age, knowledge and more importantly, the control and dissemination of knowledge is power. However, who has most direct control over that power is not always evident, nor are the goals of those wielding it. The ways and degree to which the government, the dominant media, and the military shape society's conception of reality in the post-9/11 world are ever-changing; they demand our vigilance and awareness if we wish to obtain the truth about the United States' actions around the world in an unbiased light.

The news media has, in past years, been regarded by many as a largely trustworthy system of information delivery; in 1989, about the time of the fall of communism in Russia, 54% of citizens polled believed in the media to "get the facts straight" (Gallup). However, in the minds of many there lie seeds of doubt as to the virtual omniscience of the media, as well the verity of its information.

There is an increasing trend of distrust in the media's reliability to report the news accurately and in an unbiased nature; Gallup polls taken in 1999, before the September 11th attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, report a 77% confidence level that the mass media kept them "well-informed" on military actions. As of an September 2005 Gallup poll, only 13% place a "great deal" of "trust and confidence" in the mass media "when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly," while 37% invest a "fair amount" of trust - that makes a total of just half of Americans polled that trust the mass media as an accurate source of information. Also according to an August, 2005 Gallup poll, Americans are more interested in issues of national security than in past years, but 60% of Americans feel that they do not get enough information on military matters to make educated decisions.
With such a large degree of general public interest in military affairs in the Middle East, it is incongruous that the media supplies the

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