War journalism

1
War journalism

• Susie Gyöpös
• Markéta Moore

2
The first casualty in war is truth
(Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917)

• When the country goes to war, the corporate
  media are virtual cheerleaders

3
American Civil War (1861-1865)

• Reportial anonymity broken
• Reporting florid, subjective descriptions were
  the norm
  
• European coverage based on Union press
• British favored the Confederacy (bribery)
• Issue of security and sensitive information
• Attacks on journalists (arrests, censorship)
• 1864 Secretary of War Edwin Stanton began to
  issue his own reports

4
Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871)

• New era in European war reporting
• First use of wireless for
• transmitting news from battlefield
• French government prohibited journalists from the
  field Prussians were more accommodating
  
• Use of carrier pigeons during the Siege of Paris
• Reporting accurate, succinct
• Press of six countries present

5
World War I (1914-1918)

• Outlaw journalists (1914-1915)
• British public could not handle bad news
• Eye witness appointed officers
• Identifying armbands and uniforms for
  journalists
  
• 1915 Germany War Press Office
• Most journalists from the USA, no casualties
• Best covered western front of France and
  Belgium
  
• There was not the freedom of the old days, but
  there can never be again for the correspondent.
  (F. Palmer)

6
Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)

• Foreign fighters from Italy and Germany first
  reported by New York Times by the correspondent
  who was with Francos troops
  
• War was both confusing and dangerous for
  journalists
  
• Most correspondents committed ideologically
• to the Republicans
• Objectivity suffered as journalists joined the
  Republicans on the battlefront (Hemingway, Claud
  Cockburn, Eric Blair) fought against
  Nationalists
• Nationalist atrocities publicized, Republican
  were not

7
World War II (1939-1945) Censored war

• Selected reporters allowed special access to
  battlefields
  
• New forms of transmission (radio)
• Censorship negated some of the technological
  advances
  
• USA the Office of Censorship (1942)
• Office of War Information
• Press is a part of military organization
  (Eisenhower)
  
• Reporters scattered, many battlefields

8
Vietnam Uncensored war (1961-1975)

• First television war
• No formal censorship
• Typical age of a war correspondent 25-35
• Little experience of covering unconventional
  warfare
  
• 600 reporters at the peak (75 women)
• 45 correspondents and photographers killed in
  action
  
• Most journalists killed in helicopter crashes or
  by mines/snipers
  
• Most dangerous field Cambodia after 1970 11
  journalists disappeared in the first week of
  April alone
  
• 1969 Journalists at home protested against the
  war
  
• Daily briefings "the Five O' Clock Follies
• Rising stars Malcome Browne, David Halberstam,
• Peter Arnett, Horst Faas and many others
• Four correspondents won Pulitzer Prizes

9

• "Television brought the brutality of war
• into the comfort of the living room.
• Vietnam was lost in the living rooms
• of America--not on the battlefields of
  Vietnam." (Marshall McLuhan, 1975)
  
• "The press in Vietnam began with a kind of
  innocence," observed Bernard Kalb recently, "and
  developed a kind of deep-rooted skepticism that
  remains with us today."

10
Falklands war (1982) Abbreviated war
War between Great Britain and Argentina
Exclusion of war correspondents by the British
military

• Control of number of journalists as well as
  organizations - only 12 journalists (BBC, ITV,
  Reuters), no foreign journalists allowed
  
• Some journalists agreed to the Officials Secret
  Act
  
• Military censors American experience with media
  coverage of the Vietnam War
  
• Daily briefings by PR official spin
• Technology similar conditions as in
  Victorian-era,
  
• Military was reluctant to facilitate live
  transmissions
  

11
Gulf War I (1990-1991) Unseen war

• A new era in war journalism
• Instantaneous news in real time
• Satellite journalism
• CNN viewership reached more than 1 million
  (nightly audience about 7 million worldwide)
  
• Emerging stars Peter Arnett, John Holliman
• Media were skillfully manipulated and kept away
  from the battlefield
  
• Censorship and pool system superficial
  coverage
  

Images high-tech, no blood or dead bodies
12
Peter Arnett 1934, New Zealand
Pulitzer price for reporting in Vietnam (for AP)

• First Gulf War vilified as Baghdad Pete,
  turncoat, traitor and Joseph Goebbels of
  Saddam Husseins Hitler-like regime for his
  coverage from Baghdad during operation Desert
  Storm (for CNN)
• He reported on the bombing of Baghdad, likening
  it to a July 4 fireworks display
  
• His biggest scoop US military destroyed a
  shelter killing more than three hundred Iraqi
  civilians
  
• Bush administration suggested that he was a
  conveyor of propaganda
  

13
Celebrity journalists

• Henry Stefan Oppert Blowitz
• (1825 1903)
• One of the early war / political reporters
• an incurable romantic with a taste for melodrama
  
  
• and a love of the sensational,
• the facts collapse under the sheer weight of a
  powerful imagination
  
• Christiane Amanpour
• John Simpson
• Do you know John Simpson?

14
Arnett in Iraq in 2003 Speaking with enemy

• In March 2003 Arnett fired by NBC for
  anti-American bias after giving an interview to
  state-controlled Iraqi TV and criticizing US war
  plan and praising Iraqi officials
• Arnett later apologized to American people for a
  misjudgment and decided to stay in Baghdad,
  writing for the Daily Mirror.
  
• Arnett is a veteran journalist who has covered a
  handful of major wars..Why he chose to cross of
  the footlights and climb onto the stage and be an
  actor in this story is beyond me. All the worse,
  his performance was pathetic. (Bob Steel)
• "Peter Arnett became the story. That was a
  mistake." (Dennis Patrick of National
  Geographic)
  
• Any pretense he ever had of being a fair
  reporter is gonehe definitely put the nail in
  his professional coffin. (Kathryn Jean Lopez)
  

15
Arnett on his sacking in the Daily Mirror, 1
April 2003

• I am still in shock and awe at being fired I
  don't want to give aid and comfort to the enemy -
  I just want to be able to tell the truth
  
• I came to Baghdad with my crew because the Iraqi
  side needs to be heard too I'm not here to be a
  superstar. I have been there in 1991 and could
  never be bigger than that.
• Some reporters make judgments but that is not my
  style. I present both sides and report what I see
  with my own eyes ...
  
• But I want to tell the story as best as I can,
  which makes it so disappointing to be fired.
  

16
24-hour pressure

• In the old days, we had time to think before we
  spoke. We had time to write, time to research and
  time to say Hey, wait a minute. Now we dont
  have the time to say, Hey, wait a nanosecond.
  Just because we can say it, or do it, should we?
  
• (Gralnick, covered the Vietnam War for CBS News)
• James Forlong, Sky News
• March
• a missile launch from a
• submarine in the Gulf

17
The war on journalism

• November 2001, seven western correspondents
  killed in Afghanistan in one week
  
• Are journalists becoming legitimate targets?
• Attacks on Al Jazeera's office in Kabul in 2001
  and in Baghdad
  
• Should journalists carry guns?
• 42 journalists killed in 2003 (14 in Iraq)
• US soldiers were main danger to journalists-
• ultimate act of censorship (J. Simpson)
• How friendly can friendly fire be ?

18
Iraq War

• Invasion was a media event
• 600 journalists were carefully "embedded" with
  American and British troops
  
• Centcom heavy on message, light on news
• Sound bites Operation Iraqi Freedom, shock
• and awe
• Iconic images and stage events
• Jessica Lynch rescues manufactured by the
  Pentagon's "Combat Camera" crew
  

19
Coverage of Iraq War

• The UK media lost the plot. You stand for
  nothing, you criticize, you drip. It is a
  spectator sport to criticize anybody or anything,
  and what the media says fuels public
  expectations.
• The media thought they were going to get a
  one-hour-45-minute Hollywood blockbuster and it
  is not like that. War is a dirty, disgusting,
  ugly thing, and I worry about it being dignified
  as infotainment.
• (Air Marshal Burridge)
• BBC admits daily mistakes in Iraq
• Use of language

20
Media battle

• "News organizations should be in the business of
  balancing their coverage, not banging the drum
  for one side or the other. This is something
  which seemed to get lost in American reporting of
  the war," said Mr. G. Dyke (BBC)
• "News organisations should be in the business of
  balancing their coverage, not banging the drum
  for one side or the other. This is something
  which seemed to get lost in American reporting of
  the war," said Mr Dyke.

21
Why do some many journalists want to cover wars?

• Excitement (physical danger and personal risk
  without public disapproval)
  
• The awful truth is that for correspondents,
  war is not hell. It is fun. (Nora Ephron)
  
• Commitment
• When you go on an assignment.usually it is
  quite lonely, it is against advice of your
  family, your editors are reluctant and you do not
  do it for the thrill of it but for the commitment
  you have. (Boustany)
• Financial rewards
• Career boost

22
Wartime propaganda and the media the patriot
versus the witness

• Youre either with us or against us President
  George W Bush
  
• Japanese government warns media not to obstruct
  its mission in Iraq (January 16, 2004, AFP).

23
Ethical questions

• is it appropriate to request media outlets to
  refrain from reporting information that can
  influence security or obstruction of the
  completion of a mission?
• where does the reporters loyalty lie?
• In times of war, should the media cooperate with
  and trust the government and its actions or
  scrutinize them?

24
Bushs PR War

• The success of Bushs PR War was largely
  dependent on a compliant press that uncritically
  repeated almost every fraudulent administration
  claim about the threat posed to America by Saddam
  Hussein.
• The American media failed the country badly
  these past eight months re the Bush propaganda
  campaign,

25
Embeds vs Unilaterals

• Embedding journalists with US forces in combat
  zones in Iraq
  
• Medals for service for embeds
• WW1 precedent produced the worst reporting of
  just about any war
  
• You can write what you like but if we dont
  like it well shoot you (Korea, 1950)
  

26
Impartiality

• Journalists who try to be activists do
  themselves and the public no favor
  
• Independence is at the heart of the unique and
  essential duty of journalists in a democracy to
  seek and report the truth as fully as possible.

27
An uneasy marriage

• What if they gave a war and the media didnt
  come?
  
• The media and the military seem destined to be
  forever at odds.
  
• In a democracy like the United States, the
  public expects to get news, and they expect to
  get it from sources other than the government.

28

• "When I was young ... I thought of journalism as
  a guiding light. A journalist's job was to bring
  news,to be eyes for people's conscience.
  
• "It took nine years, and a great depression, and
  two wars ending in defeat, and one surrender
  without war, to break my faith in the benign
  power of the press. Gradually I came to realize
  that people will more readily swallow lies than
  truth ... For all the good our articles did, they
  might have been written in invisible ink, printed
  on leaves and loosed to the wind.

29

• "Journalism is a means and I now think that the
  act of keeping the record straight is valuable in
  itself.
  
• Serious, careful, honest journalism is essential,
  not because it is a guiding light but because it
  is a form of honorable behavior, involving the
  reporter and the
• reader."
• Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War, 1959

30

• The principles of reporting are put to a severe
  test when your nation goes to war. To whom are
  you true? To the principles of abstract truth, or
  to those running the war machine to a frightened
  or perhaps belligerent population, to the
  decisions of the elected representatives in a
  democracy, to the exclusion of the dissenting
  minorities, to the young men and women who have
  agreed to put their lives at risk on the front-
  line? Or are you true to a wider principle of
  reasoning and questioning, asking why they must
  face this risk. Let me put the question with
  stark simplicity When does a reporter sacrifice
  the principle of the whole truth to the need to
  win the war?
• Kate Adie OBE, Chief News Correspondent, BBC