media and war

Media and war (see also war correspondents). In 1995 the former BBC journalist Martin Bell, a distinguished inhabitant of the media-war interface, stated that ‘the media and the military are partners in the same enterprise’. This might at first glance be interpreted as meaning that both deal with the cutting edge of policy decisions, but it really points to the unsettling truth that for cultures enjoying the full impact of the digital revolution, war has become just another aspect of show business. Just how true this is became apparent during the Gulf war, when millions safely at home thrilled to images from cameras in laser designating aircraft showing the tiny minority of bombs that were both ‘smart’ and accurate destroying bridges, buildings, and vehicles—or more exciting yet, the pictures transmitted by TV cameras in the noses of the bombs or missiles themselves. The latter were particularly open to comparison with video games, in that the consequences of their impact were not, of course, even vicariously experienced. When the real business end of war was broadcast towards the end of the war with footage of the charred wreckage and casualties along the Mutla ridge, north of Kuwait City, it persuaded Pres Bush and his advisers that the public might be revolted if they continued to ‘pour it on’ and was one of the reasons given for bringing combat operations to an early halt. But there is no evidence that the viewing public shared this jejeune equation of war with a sporting event, or that people in general are more upset by real gore and destruction on screen than by the fictionalized version, and this consideration may not be so influential in future.

Indeed one of the problems the media have with covering war is that reality cannot compete with the ‘ultra-realism’ of films like Saving Private Ryan. To capture the same thing in action would require large numbers of suicidal TV crews and even then could not deliver the choreographed impact of the same event when staged, where the consequences of getting a scene wrong may be expensive but are not fatal. Although moving pictures were produced as early as the Second Boer War and in WW I, they were often posed after the event and were not shown to the public until much later. The British film of the battle of the Somme was, unusually, shown when that operation was at its height. Even action footage, although it awoke the public to some dim idea of what hell the soldiers were going through on the western front, showed men just falling down untidily when hit and could not begin to convey the intimate agony involved. Technological advance made it possible for movie crews to be very much nearer the action during WW II, but even the extremely dedicated German cameramen, at a very high cost to themselves, were seldom in the right place at the right time. Still photographers actually produced the more telling images of the physically and psychologically wounded (the now-clichéd ‘thousand yard stare’), as well as moments of high drama if not of high danger like the raising of the stars and stripes at Iwo Jima. One notable exception was the film coverage of the liberated Nazi concentration camps, which captured a reality far beyond the ability of normal people to imagine and hardened public attitudes towards the perpetrators—not enough, perhaps, but more than words could have achieved.

It is conceivable that at some not-too-distant time, ‘virtual reality’ may tap into the brain itself and only then will non-participants be able to experience the full overwhelming impact of the sights, sounds, smells, and above all the bowel-loosening terror of war. Until that time media coverage of combat will remain essentially voyeuristic, titillating rather than satisfying, and will be handled as such by those conducting military operations. The influence of the international news media on governments' willingness or otherwise to initiate military operations and on their conduct has become a detailed and significant part of any western military planning. The RAF's Air Power Doctrine of 1991 states that ‘the conduct of war is affected by group passions, cohesion and determination. A significant war effort cannot be sustained by a democratic state in the face of public hostility or indifference.’ US field manual FM 100-5 (Operations) similarly recognizes that the importance of understanding the impact of raw television coverage is ‘not so that commanders can control it, but so they can anticipate adjustments to their operations and plans’. These are poignant words.

The nadir of media coverage of ‘bang-bang’ may well have been plumbed during coverage of the civil wars in Central America during the 1980s, where the rights or wrongs of the conflicts were decided in the bars of comfortable hotels in the capital cities and hinged entirely on which side made it easiest for the TV crews and journalists to get their required combat footage in time for the evening news programmes. Media management tended to be better managed by the insurgents and there is always the unspoken consideration, very noticeable over the last 25 years in the coverage given to the motives of men of blood such as the IRA, that reporters who do not toe the terrorists' line may not merely lose access to the ‘decision makers’ but also their lives. This consideration is not, of course, absent from the calculations of politicians. By assassinating Mountbatten and Airey Neave, and by nearly blowing up PM Thatcher and her cabinet at Brighton, a definable predisposition to see their point of view was achieved.

Even with micro-miniaturized cameras transmitting events via satellite in real time to faraway studios, the impact of media coverage grows up the chain of command. It is never going to influence the handling of a particular situation by a given platoon, but it may cause colonels, generals, and even presidents or prime ministers to give orders that will affect how another platoon in a similar situation will react. In 1993 former British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said that ‘the public debate is run not by events, but by the coverage of events’, but most in the business are wary of politicians seeking to share their responsibility with the media. A government with a clear policy in which it has confidence is not swayed by media coverage and indeed makes sure that its own case is properly presented. What the media can unmask mercilessly is a politician or a military spokesman fudging the issues, as it did most tellingly in Vietnam, showing that if indeed there was ‘a light at the end of the tunnel’ it was a very dim one, and the tunnel extremely hazardous. Far more often there is an unhealthy symbiosis between governments and those who wish to preserve access to decision-makers for cheap, easy, and mutually beneficial interviews where the hard questions are not asked and the absence of answers is not revealed.

The impact of television was increased by the appearance in the 1980s of 24-hour news channels, broadcasting constantly. The ‘CNN factor’, named after the Cable News Network based in Atlanta, Georgia, was recognized by military leaders and politicians alike, and by the mid-1990s commentators joked that CNN occupied the sixth permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Other satellite channels with a global audience were British Sky Broadcasting and BBC World Television. Large media organizations can have news teams deployed on both sides of a conflict, with analysts in the newsroom back home to interpret and comment on events, fundamentally altering the position occupied by the media in earlier generations, when reporters were the hostages of one side or the other.

But the media are not monolithic, and neither is their target audience. Print and broadcasting, broadsheet and tabloid newspapers, photojournalism, TV, and radio are all different. So are reportages that give individual correspondents' views at a particular place and time, general news reporting, features, and expert analysis. Military operations and exercises are good for television, but require vivid pictures to earn a place in a news programme, whereas descriptions of the evolution of military doctrine, tactics, or strategy may be limited to specialist magazines or, with luck, find a place in broadsheet newspapers. The media target audience and that for ‘media operations’ also varies. There are four main categories: the reporter's own country; an international audience; the ‘host nation’; and the ‘enemy’. A military force has to do more than keep the public at home informed. A higher priority in media operations, especially in a peacekeeping situation, is to influence the local media in the area where it is operating. In this case, media operations become intertwined with psychological warfare.

The choices made by media organizations are often extremely arbitrary, affected by the personal interests of correspondents and editors, by the natural life of a story; boredom soon sets in and there is competition from other stories. Media organizations also have to make hard choices based on what they can afford. The principal reason why the flight of Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq in April 1991 received much media coverage, which probably influenced western states into trying to help them, was that equipment and personnel were still in the area from the Gulf war. Bosnia received wide coverage because it was relatively easy to get to: contemporary conflicts in Africa, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and elsewhere in the former USSR were much more difficult and expensive to cover, and received less attention.

Most unusually for a major war, there was a strong group of western correspondents in Baghdad at the outset of the Gulf war, who provided film of the first Allied air strikes simultaneously with the announcement that hostilities had begun. The Iraqis decided it was in their interest to allow an international media presence, not least because the basement of their hotel provided one of the few command and control centres not likely to feature in the nose camera of a bomb. They also manipulated the media presence, for example with the alleged bombing of a ‘baby milk factory’, complete with a sign in English proclaiming it as such. But conversely the broadcasts from Baghdad provided the Allied command with useful additional intelligence throughout the war. Media coverage of the more apparent-than-real success of Patriot anti-missile missiles in Israel and Saudi Arabia was also militarily significant. The presence of more than 2, 000 media persons in Saudi Arabia could have betrayed the coalition plan for the envelopment of the Iraqi forces from the west, but the nature and scale of the movement was carefully disguised as a training exercise. Meanwhile Gen Schwarzkopf's headquarters staff were assiduously briefing the media on amphibious operations, helping to keep Iraqi attention on the US Marines offshore rather than the opposite direction.

The use of the media to influence one's own side is as old as communications. Julius Caesars's accounts of the Gallic wars were manifest propaganda, and Douglas MacArthur notoriously used the press to influence decision-makers during WW II, although it went less well with him when he tried the same technique on Truman during the Korean war. There was much sniggering when the US Marines stormed ashore into the teeth of whirring cameras and clicking shutters in Somalia in 1992, but no one was laughing when MacArthur waded ashore at Leyte in 1944. This was partly because the latter was a legitimately dramatic moment, but the two incidents do illustrate the high and the low side of using the media to draw attention to oneself. There can be no argument but that subsequent media coverage of dead US Rangers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu after a failed raid was the clearest expression of the role of the fourth estate in war, correctly posing the question of whether US national interests were sufficiently involved to be worth the cost.

Coverage of fighting in the Balkans represented the state of the art both in terms of the technology involved and the commitment of resources. Unusually, it also aroused passions usually kept under professional wraps. It may yet come to be seen as a defining event for many young intellectuals who were there, much like the Spanish civil war nearly 60 years earlier. The terrain in the war zone was rugged, the climate treacherous, and the divisions between the warring sides unclear. In the first year, reporters suffered heavy casualties, mainly among locally recruited television camera operators who had to get close to the action to obtain pictures. They learned rapidly, acquiring body armour, cross-country and armoured vehicles, satellite communications (the terrestrial telephone network had been disrupted), and expert local guides, known in the trade as ‘fixers’. They worked closely with the UN forces, particularly the British, who realized the media were essential to maintain public interest and support at home, and could also affect their mission. One British commander admitted that when negotiating with local factions, a television crew was a valuable adjunct, as the factions would know their conduct would be reported, worldwide. The media was sometimes the only means of recording agreements, and agreements made on camera are less easy to repudiate.

Media coverage of war is, if ever the cliché were justified, a two-edged sword. It may be useful to a commander in obtaining intelligence, in influencing public and political opinion, or in misleading the enemy. Or it may betray his plans and otherwise highlight his lack of the qualities necessary for command. Generalship has always demanded competence in a very broad range of activities from its practitioners; handling the media sensibly and positively is merely one of them, and by no means the most demanding.

Bibliography

• Bell, Martin, In Harm's Way (London, 1996).
• Bellamy, Christopher, Expert Witness: A Defence Correspondent's Gulf War (London, 1993).
• Knightley, Phillip, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Mythmaker (London, 1978)

— Christopher Bellamy/Hugh Bicheno