Compare And Contrast The Way The Media

Has Handeled The Falklands Conflict And The Gulf War Essay, Research Paper

Compare and Contrast the way in which the media has handled the Falklands War and the Gulf War.

“You can win the battle but lose the war if you don’t handle the story right.”

General Colin Powell in a speech to the National Defence University, 1990.

Both the Gulf War and the Falklands War were extremely different not only in how they were fought but also how the media covered them. In this paper there will be an examination of how the media performed with particular reference to the British Media in the Falkland’s and the American Media in the Gulf.

It is widely accepted that relations between the military and the media suffer from friction and at wartime this even more true. This it has been argued is due to the fundamental differences between the military and the media. The media sees publicity as the way to its success, whereas for the military secrecy is essential to the success of its operations. For the military information and the control of it is seen as a weapon (1). The British media suffered several problems in covering the Falklands. First of all there was the location of the islands. Being 8,000 miles away from the United Kingdom and more than 400 miles away from the nearest landmass and also being subject to a total exclusion zone the Ministry of Defence had the sole say in how many if any correspondents it would let sail with the task force. The MoD only accepted British correspondents and it has been argued that those that were accepted were vetted. In the end the MoD accredited less than thirty correspondents, which is a minuscule number when compared to the number that were present in the Gulf War. All the correspondents had to agree to censorship by the MoD at source (2). This censorship was made even more painful when the correspondents learned that no such censure would apply to stories written in Britain (3). This served to heighten tensions between the media and the military and showed that there was a mutual distrust between the two. The media reliance on the military was, as mentioned above, due to not only the location of the Islands but also due to the terrain and climate which made unsuitable for independent media operations, unlike the Gulf War.

Another problem faced by correspondents travelling with the task force was the difficulty involved in sending their reports back to the United Kingdom. Due to the difficulty in sending these reports the only effective way of transmission was controlled by the military. There was no provision made for live TV coverage and all video footage had to be flown back to the United Kingdom where it was first examined by military censors who would cut out any unsuitable material. Due to the length of time involved it was often three weeks before it was shown on television by which time it was invariably out of date. Spoken and written reports were allowed to be broadcast from those ships, which possessed a satellite communications system, MARISAT. Due to the limited availability of this system the media could only transmit at night thereby ensuring that most reports were often two days old when published (4) and if the military had to send information of higher priority then sometimes the report would not get sent until the following night.

Back in the United Kingdom the media face another problem. Some newspapers, it has been argued, supported the government completely and even taking it to the extreme and attacking other newspapers that expressed doubts over the campaign in the South Atlantic. This, it has been argued, created an environment in which to question the government was considered to be just short of treason. This was to repeat itself in the Gulf War. Even the BBC itself was accused of “damaging the country’s war effort” (5). However newspapers were also constrained by the ever-present threat of Schedule D Notices should they attempt to print something the government did not agree with. With the introduction of daily press briefings, another trend that was followed in the gulf war, there was a suspension of “off the record” briefings but these were later reintroduced as a means of providing more up to date and succinct information. The BBC itself was told by parliament that it was its duty to be patriotic and not to screen programmes which could be seen as defeatist or pro-enemy. This was after it screened an episode of Panorama on May 10th 1982 asking the question “can we avoid war.” and it was accused of pandering to Argentine propaganda (6).

Another development that was to occur among the correspondents on the task force was that they were to put patriotism above professionalism and thus lose the critical objectivity they could have bought to covering the campaign. It has been argued that they praised the courage, determination, loyalty and leadership of the British troops but down downplayed those of the Argentine forces. This it has been argued caused them not only to become an integral part of the task force but also to be instrumental in promoting propaganda for the British (7).

One phenomenon that was to first appear during the Falklands War was that of the Armchair Strategist. More often that not these would be retired senior military officers who would be asked on television to speculate on the next phase of the campaign, which was to lead to the co