TV and movies hamper American PR effort.

• Position: Your Life - Image tarnished through mass media - Brief Article

Efforts to battle terrorism may be hampered by misperceptions about America in movies and television shows, warns Melvin Sharpe, a public relations professor at Ball State University, Muncie, Ind., and a member of the International Public Relations Association. The U.S. faces a war of global public relations where credibility is the key and will be the main factor in achieving, winning, and maintaining global public support.

"The media are vital in an increasingly democratic interdependent world," he emphasizes. "The messengers can complicate the communication process simply because of the many choices people have in the acquisition of information and because of the need to compress information into media sound bites that can be instantaneous and sometimes misleading."

Since the inception of the motion picture industry and the development of television, America has been exporting a steady diet of Hollywood and television productions. Many of them seem to suggest the U.S.'s social problems are far greater than those experienced in other cultures and countries. "This image...