What began as a teaching unit centred on the mass media construction of the so-called War on Terror, turned into a broader reaching critique of celluloid versions of the modern war, that which we label ‘terror’ and the nebulous ‘war on terrorism’.

Psychologist Stanley Milgram noted the disturbing fact that there is "a propensity for people to accept definitions provided by legitimate authority", not because those definitions are rooted in reason, but because "those in authority acquire, for some, a suprahuman character". I don’t believe that the media coverage of war and terrorism has been contrary to Milgram’s observations. Hence, the great need to smash the one-way moral lens through which we have viewed war.

The teaching of the media must, I believe, initially impart knowledge of how reporting occurs. To understand how journalists function as mouthpieces for military press releases is essential. For example, in 2005, according to the American Journalism Review only three news organizations - Newsweek, Associated Press and the Washington Post - had full-time reporters stationed in Kabul in Afghanistan. All were American. What they published focused mostly on feel-good stories, superficial change and unopposed reportage of the Bush administration's claims. There was little to no critical coverage of the effects of the on-going US military occupation due to journalists being hunkered down and conducting what Robert Fisk called ‘motel room journalism’.

The second and more subtle thing students must understand is how to look beyond the ideological framework in which mainstream knowledge is packaged and understood. After school students watch a 40-minute-long excerpt from Black Hawk Down (a racist film by any measure) it is a relatively easy task to ask them to criticise the overtly gung-ho, never-leave-a-comrade-behind bravado of the film. What is difficult is to get students to see the film in a wider frame as a cultural artefact of colonialism. This is the challenge.

Alternative voices of war and terrorism are, in my research, found in the alternative press and in ordinary people. They are rarely in the public sphere. Alternative sources of war reporting such as the rise of Arabic websites (in English), web reporting, blogs and video-sharing sites have offered alternative versions of events. They do, I believe, usually reinforce the prejudice that the news is full of balderdash. What my teaching has attempted to do is to understand and shift the ideological mind-set.

How does one change teenagers’ ways of looking at war and terrorism? One is to encourage them to mock it and reverse the roles in the form of satire. The second is to study alternative views. Thirdly, students should read historical distortions of war and terror. Most importantly, without visiting a war zone, one must feel the indignation of being lied to and desire an alternative narrative fabric which to understand violence perpetrated by both state and civilian.