Eliminating Truth:
The Development Of
War Propaganda
By David Miller
March 29, 2003
The attack on Iraq looks set to be the most censored conflict of modern
times. Media coverage in mainstream media will be controlled as never
before. The US is determined to eliminate independent reporting of and
from Iraq and it will go to unprecedented lengths to ensure that its
propaganda and spin will dominate media agendas in the UK and US and
it will expend massive resources in minimising critical coverage across
the world.
The US and UK governments
have shown themselves adept at learning propaganda lessons from successive
conflicts. In both Suez (1956) and most importantly Vietnam, the UK
and US governments came to believe that propaganda and media control
were key to winning wars. In the Suez debacle General Sir Charles Keightley
concluded in an internal government report in 1957 that the 'over-riding
lesson' was that 'world opinion is now the absolute principal of war'
The role of the media in the Vietnam war was believed by many to have
been a key factor in the defeat of the US and the victory of the Vietnamese.
But in fact the US media only started to feature dissent after the US
ruling elite became split on the war. Nevertheless Americas future
war planners decided not to risk uncensored press coverage of their
own conflicts. 'They determined - evidently beginning in the Reagan
Administration - that reporters would never again have the opportunity
to confuse the American public about the governments war aims,
whether deliberately or by accident'.
The lessons of Vietnam were
put into effect in the Falklands conflict in 1982. There was close control
of the 29 journalists who were allowed to accompany the military to
the South Atlantic and no independent facilities for reporting. A dual
system of censorship operated which ensured that journalists' copy was
censored on naval vessels in the South Atlantic and then again at the
Ministry of Defence in London before being released. The success of
the news management in the Falklands was not lost on the US government
as Lt Commander Arthur Humphries of the US Navy noted in 1983: 'In spite
of a perception of choice in a democratic society, the Falklands War
shows us how to make certain that government policy is not undermined
by the way a war is reported
Control access to the fighting, invoke
censorship, and rally aid in the form of patriotism at home and in the
battle zone.] This policy was followed in the invasions of both Grenada
(1984) and Panama (1989)
Humphries also noted that
if there was one deficiency in the policy, it was in failing to fill
the resulting information void with pictures. 'In the Falklands the
British failed to appreciate that news management is more than just
information security censorship. It also means providing pictures.
By the time of the Gulf War in 1991 this lesson had been well learned.
In the Saudi desert journalists were isolated from the fighting and
newsrooms were supplied every day with new footage of precision
bombs hitting their targets. This was the new clean war in which civilians
would not be harmed as smart technology enabled surgical
strikes. This was a systematic charade. Only 7% of the ordnance
was smart. The other 93% being indiscriminate weapons including
weapons of mass destruction. The smart technology turned out not to
be so smart and missed its target in 40% of cases according to official
figures. Needless to say we didnt see any of the footage of either
the dumb bombs or the smart bombs which missed. But even
when the smart weapons hit their targets, civilians died, as in the
case of the al-Amariyah bunker in Baghdad which was not a military installation
but an air raid shelter. This time the US and UK are claiming that most
bombs will be of the smart variety and that the technology has been
improved. According to the British Ministry of Defence, greater
attention to precision-guided weapons means we could have a war with
zero civilian casualties. This statement was falsified on the
first night of bombing when between three and five Iraqi civilians were
hit by shrapnel. The emphasis on the clean war again is an attempt to
divert attention from the fact that weapons of mass destruction such
as depleted uranium tipped shells and bunker buster and
daisy cutter bombs will be used. Conjuring up the smell
of freshly mowed grass, the daisy cutter is actually a bomb the size
of a small car which destroys everything in an area the size of a football
pitch. It is said to resemble a small nuclear bomb.
The pool
In past wars including the
1991 gulf war, the pool system has been the main means of control of
journalists in theatre a propaganda term adopted
by many journalists. The pool allows the military to control the movement
of journalists as well as almost everything they see. In 1991 the pentagon
tried to bully journalists not to operate outside the pool and some
adopted the value system so fully that they turned in any journalists
who tried to report independently. This time the Pentagon has got more
sophisticated and more determined to eliminate the possibility of independent
reporting. They have pressured journalists to leave Baghdad and by 18
march about half of the 300 there had left, including many of the key
UK and US journalists (from US networks such as NBC and ABC and UK press
such as the Times and Telegraph) who would likely have more credibility
in their own countries. The rules issued by the Pentagon were themselves
part of a process of spin. They are presented as voluntary and appeared
to some to offer unprecedented freedom to report the facts.
But on closer inspection, a number of clauses buried in the text indicate
the iron fist in the velvet glove. While the rules state that there
is no general review process of reports by the Pentagon,
a later section notes that if media are inadvertently exposed
to sensitive information they should be briefed after exposure on what
information they should avoid covering. A security review also
becomes compulsory if any sensitive information is released deliberately.
In a classic passage attempting to present strict censorship rules as
voluntary, the Pentagon notes that agreement to security review
is in exchange for this type of access must be strictly voluntary and
if the reporter does not agree, the access may not be granted.
The pool this time has a
further new feature known as embedding which entails that
reporters operate in close proximity to military units. They will not
be allowed to travel independently and some suggest that control of
the technology of communication will be controlled by the military too.
These new rules mean that journalists will don military uniform and
protective clothing and, the Pentagon hopes, start to identify with
the military. According to reports there are 903 journalists embedded
with US and UK forces, six times the number of journalists in Baghdad.
At US military headquarters in Qatar the daily briefings will be delivered
from a huge press centre complete with a mocked up studio with five
large TV screens to show accurate bombing runs. Topped of by tastefully
deployed camouflage netting installed by a specially flown in Hollywood
designer, the centre cost in the region of $250,000.
In a little noticed interview
on Irish radio, veteran BBC war correspondent Kate Adie has argued that
the Pentagon is entirely hostile to the free spread of information.
I am enormously pessimistic of the chance for decent on the spot
reporting, she said. But the threat to independent journalism
is potentially more severe. Adie reported being told by a senior
officer in the Pentagon that if broadcasters satellite uplink
signals were detected by the military they would be targeted down
even if there were journalists there. Who cares
theyve
been warned said the officer.
War does strange things
to both military and media. The Director of Corporate Communications
for the British Army Brigadier Matthes Sykes has a reported enthusiasm
for conflict. He is most animated when talking of his spells in
the field, indeed he admits that is where his heart belongs. Journalists
too suffer from the malaise of getting too involved. According to widely
respected Middle East reporter Robert Fisk many are back to their
old trick of playing toy soldiers. The former Daily Telegraph
editor Max Hastings admits he got too close in the Falklands war: I
was accused of getting too involved with the troops I have to
plead guilty to that. In Iraq now he worries for younger colleagues:
TV stations and newspapers tend to get overexcited in wars
Its a case of boys with toys, but the hardest thing to remember
is that this is ultimately all about lives. On the first day of
the attack, Iraqi missiles fired into Kuwait were unequivocally reported
on the main BBC bulletins as consisting of Scud missiles, even though
this had not been confirmed and doubt was cast on the hypothesis by
minority audience BBC programmes. BBC News 24, the globally available
service continually repeated the propaganda. Just after midnight (GMT)
on the morning of the 21st March BBC reporter Ben Brown repeatedly used
the word scud without any qualification. As many news outlets
pointed out the use of scuds would be a material breach of UN resolution
1441. But in fact the missiles were not Scuds as was confirmed the next
day. But by then the damage was done and the correction did not gain
the prominence of the original reports.
This is all a familiar pattern
from previous wars where the BBC bulletins seen by the mass UK audience
follow a distinctly propagandist pro-war agenda. As war approached in
the UK the government attempted to eliminate dissent by arguing that
past differences must be put aside to support our troops.
Dissent had already been under pressure from at least the beginning
of February when the Director of News at the BBC Richard Sambrook issued
a confidential memo to senior BBC management. Quickly leaked by angry
BBC staff, the memo showed that even before the biggest ever demonstrations
in British history the BBC was attempting to marginalise the broadcasting
of anti-war voices. Too much dissent was being broadcast, it claimed,
which 'forces our presenters to put the Bush/Blair position to callers
-- sometimes making us appear to be siding with govt. Not true in all
cases.' A tacit admission, if ever there was one, that much BBC output
is shaped to support war. As war started the first signs of patriotic
censorship appeared. The owner of more than 100 weekly newspapers Sir
Ray Tindle wrote to the editors of all his papers asking them to
ensure that nothing appears
which attacks the decision to conduct
the war. Drawing immediate protests from free media campaigners,
this example is sure to be the first of many infringements of independent
reporting.
The hackneyed phrase maintains
that truth is the first casualty of war, but this does not suggest nearly
clearly enough that it is a casualty because the US and UK governments
are making a concerted attempt to destroy it.