Channel 4 - When Britain Went to War

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Images of Conflict

  The first conflict to be covered by mass media was the Boer War of 1899-1902. Advances in printing, distribution and photography, along with an increasingly literate population, meant that descriptions and pictures of battles were widely seen. Key players in this new medium included the young Winston Churchill as a journalist for the Morning Post and cameraman William Dixon who brought home the real experience of conflict. The ground was prepared for the images of mass carnage that followed in the First World War that are still haunting today.

  Growing newspaper circulation meant the government was forced to pay far greater attention than in the past to public opinions. Consequently, it became more important to control the news, a point amplified by the arrival of television into the average home. Its power to influence was to prove decisive in the first conflict to be seriously affected by this medium, in Vietnam, which the US government found to its cost.

  Extensive film coverage of the Second World War, much of it lent an air of immediacy by colour, had tinged each subsequent conflict with the same feeling of the just war. But images of young children being napalmed undercut the US moral high ground. Anti-war demonstrations followed close behind, further fuelled by the speed with which aircraft could deliver casualties back to the US.

  Since then, wars have been fought in full media view and still risk government wrath in their commitment to independence and objectivity. However, for some this is tempered by commercial realities of selling newspapers and by the views of their target readers.

  Newspapers, branding Margaret Thatcher’s government a failure before the Falklands War, soon realised that their sales would improve if they went with the tide of jingoism whipped up by the government.   ‘Gotcha’ blasted The Sun when the Argentinian ship General Belgrano was sunk by the British taskforce. Although this was pulled off later editions as having crossed boundaries of sensitivity, it perfectly summed up the unquestioning support of the tabloids for military action in the Falklands. Headlines ranging from ‘Stick it up your junta’, to ‘High noon’, ‘This is it’ and ‘Wallop’ gloried in the attacks on the Argentinians, who had been dehumanised by the name ‘Argies’. Neutrality was a dirty word, a view supported by the government of Margaret Thatcher. Any media organisation criticising policy or presenting an objective view was branded a traitor. The BBC was called to account for its coverage, referring to ‘Argentinian troops’ and ‘British troops’ rather than ‘our soldiers’.

  Reporting from the Falklands was difficult. The Islands were relatively unknown to the public in Britain and because of the distance journalists were reliant on the military to get them there and information back. Long delays in news updates were compounded by the defence ministry that prevaricated over releasing details of military action. Famously, news of Thatcher’s cause for ‘rejoicing’ – the retaking of South Georgia – took five hours to reach the public.   The Gulf War of 1991 saw news management at its most slick. Precision air strikes by the Allied Forces on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq were shown on screens to demonstrate perfect successes, while friendly military personnel offered copious amounts of information.

  Issues behind the Kosovo conflict later the same decade made reporting more complex and less easy to control. Although very dependent on the military, journalists were able to find local contacts in their pursuit for a balanced view. However, emotive images of starving refugees were constantly used to justify the government’s humanitarian line, and arguing that bombing would lead to more reprisals on the ground, even though backed by many relief agencies, was branded as playing into the hands of the warlords.   The simplistic ‘for us or against us’ ultimatum is even more pronounced during current reprisals against Afghanistan following Al Qaeda’s 11 September attacks. Those speaking out are sidelined into the camp of terrorist sympathisers or naïve pacifists.

  Bush’s mission to root out terrorism, with echoes of Thatcher’s shoring up popularity, has now turned its attention to Iraq, citing stories of biological weapons even though little proof has been presented.

  In the quest to control, government has now learned that what the media needs more than anything is a story and if information is forthcoming from the military, news gatherers will be less likely to look elsewhere and discover something unpalatable. ‘It is best to let a thousand flowers bloom in the hope that the one true flower will be obscured by the others,’ as one Falklands veteran remarks in the series.

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