Media has a long history of having a huge impact and has had different effects.

For example the media is largely credited with STARTING the Spanish American war with it's "Yellow Journalism".

Really I think that the media is mostly out to get ratings. And that means they need to get the sensational stuff. And it also means they'll tend to exaggerate , And regarless they follow the credo "if it bleeds it leads".

What that boils down it now is that if you can keep things going absolutely great the media will effectively be on your side as they mostly were during that actual "war" part of the war on our march to Baghdad. When things slow down or get hard the media will start talking about failures and troop casualties.

Though I think a newish issue is the general Liberal bias putting a bit more spin that would naturally occur just for ratings.