The allegiance that the majority of the media took to government policy and the politicisation of its content began almost immediately with the start of the Cold War. This is evident with the early Cold War television reports often being scripted and sometimes produced by the defence establishment (Bernhard, 1999). This development of the media accepting governmental influence was essential to the production of public support for state actions. The initial role the media took was to motivate the post-WW2 populace into reaffirming and defending their national political and economic allegiances. While the private-owned Western media was obliging in the defence of Western economic and military interests, the state-censored soviet media was just as ready to defend theirs. All media succeeded in the production of public support for their government's actions against the foreign enemy. The Western Allied governments and the Soviet Union could never have produced or maintained sufficient public support and jingoism for the long conflict without the media's contribution

Media pollicisation and propaganda techniques were also used as a direct tool against the enemy. There was a direct contribution of the media to the war effort which saw the media engaging in antagonistic psychological warfare. This was achieved by dissembling propaganda into the Soviet Union via the radio, as an attempt to spread pro-capitalist sentiment into the soviet population and create a more pro-Western culture. The Soviet media also used the medium of radio within its own states and other countries as a form of transnational propaganda. Because the Soviet media was state-censored; it sought to legitimise its appearance by camouflaging its production origins. The USSR had many "international" radio stations that were indeed located in the Soviet Republic. These actions of the media show the progression from a seemingly more passive producer of public support and political compliance, to an active tool of the war itself (Chisem, 2012). The media on both sides of the divide were responsible for the production of public opinion, the contribution of propaganda, and maintenance of antagonism via psychological warfare. However, many western media outlets, such as voice America, BBC, and, Vatican Radio, sought a different approach. While maintaining political loyalty to their nation states, there governmental brief was to project the positive aspects of their nations into the Soviet Union. This was a form of gentle, yet cohesive, diplomacy (Chisem,2012). It sought to counteract Soviet propaganda by subversively offering a positive view of the perceived enemy. While doing this, the Western media soon realised the relevance of the fact that the Soviet Union was not a homogeneous society. The colonial empire consisted of many nationalities, such as Ukrainians and those from the Baltic States. By tailoring radio announcements to individual minorities, the West was able to construct a long-term strategy of disrupting territorial integrity. This was profoundly antagonistic to the Soviet state, which feared the growth of domestic separatists (Chisem, 2012).

The media of the Cold War era can even be accredited with the marketing of the conflict. It was American journalist Walter Lippmann who entitled the conflict as a 'Cold War' due to the lack of direct military warfare (Slaughter, 2012). However, the lack of military conflict was only absent between the UUSR and America. Because of the mutually assured destruction (M.A.D) of the two nuclear powers; the Soviet Union and the West only engaged in proxy wars with satellite states. One such example is the Vietnam War of 1955-1975. The U.S. government viewed involvement in the war as an essential preventative measure to halt the communist takeover of South Vietnam. This was part of the West's strategy of Communism containment.