For governments at war, the media is an instrument of war or an element in war that is to be controlled.

The media is not at all homogeneous in the way it tells us about war.

Which suggests something about media and war: it's not just that events happen and the media documents and presents them. There is a third element: what the public is ready to accept, what the public wants to know.

The media is controlled.

The US military still blames the media for stories and images that turned the American public against the war in Vietnam.

All governments in all wars have used all the means at their disposal to put their own motives, decisions and actions, and the actions of their military forces, in the best possible light.