The Control of Information in the Iraq War and the Falklands War

Résumé du document

Essay title: Taylor has suggested that during wartime, governments try to establish a controlled information environment (p.31). Critically examine the implications of this for journalists in a war(s) of your choice.

Extraits

[...] Allan & B. Zelizer (Eds.), Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime. (pp.3 - 22). Abingdon: Routledge. Cook, E. (1920). The Press in Wartime. London: Macmillan. Hanrahan, B. [...]

[...] Further to the exploitation of the media as a domestic propaganda machine it was likewise covertly used to deceive German intelligence as a mode of psychological warfare. Knightley, again, recognised this by acknowledging that: "On the war front, information - propaganda is, perhaps, a better description - is used to keep the enemy guessing, to sap his will to fight, and to mislead him" (1990, cited in Taylor p.19). Another technique by which the British government tried to produce a `controlled information environment' is through the previously referenced `informal embedding process', which should be alluded to in researching the origins of the formal embedding process which, in turn, was used during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003 - 2011). [...]

[...] (pp.43 - 58). Abingdon: Routledge. Markham, T. (2011). The Politics of War Reporting: Authority, authenticity and morality. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Messinger, G. (1992). Propaganda and the State in the First World War. [...]

[...] Thus it came to be that many journalists began to passively rebel against this attempt to control the release of information by going out of their way to display objectivity and non-compliance with the Thatcherite government's severe demonising the Argentine troops. Markham supports this assertion through stating that: "When reporters are pooled, it is true that they tend to find other, often subtler linguistic ways to mark their professional distance and independence" (2011, p.137). One of these journalists was Brian Hanrahan who famously stated: counted them all out and I counted them all back" (2007), when giving a report on an air raid on which he could not state the number of British aircraft without giving away details to the Argentinian government. [...]

[...] Nonetheless, alongside this backlash there also stands professional integrity at having not withheld information which was in the public interest because, when reporting on war, there is very little which can be labelled as not in the interest of the public. What this decision fundamentally relates to is whether journalists, as informers of the populous, should hold themselves to similar standards as that of doctors and lawyers, but in regard to maintaining absolute objectivity, or whether they should comply with censorship, perhaps exercising self-censorship, in order to serve the welfare of governments and accordingly what these governments deem to be in the interests of the public. Bibliography: Allan, S. & Zelizer, B. (2004). Rules of Engagement. In S. [...]