The U.S.A. - Libyan Confrontation

One needs to adhere to standards of objeetivity while assessing foreign governments and their policies. The appraisals of the Administration of President Ronald Reagan and the reporting on the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya by the U.S. mass media. are based on st~reotyping. The Jamahiriya, the Libyan Arab people and its leader Muammer al-Kaddafi have inereasingly beeome targets of the Reagan Administration as well as widespread mass media attaeks. Neither the U.S. Govemment, nor the U.S. information industry giyes, on the other hand, an aeeurate picture of the world it purports to deseribe. Information, as mueh as it influenees behaviour, is also a means of control. For instance, the same government and the same media had portrayed several liberation movements as "terro-. ri5tic".