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BACK TO : The Gulf War of 1991
The British Media and the Gulf War by Greg Filo and G McLaughlin THE BRITISH MEDIA AND THE GULF WAR (A GLASGOW MEDIA GROUP REPORT 1993) By Greg Philo and Greg McLaughlin When the Gulf crisis began in August 1990, most people in Britain had no detailed knowledge of the Middle East and there was no desire to go to war with a country such as Iraq. Yet in a short period, a majority of the population was convinced that a war was necessary, that it would be morally justified and that it would very quickly destroy Saddam Hussein. This change in public belief resulted from a very successful campaign of mass persuasion by politicians, the media and others in favour of military action. Voices against this were drowned by the chorus for war. This chapter reviews some of the main elements of that campaign. THE PORTRAYAL OF IRAQ AND SADDAM HUSSEIN Because most people knew so little about Iraq, it was possible for the media and politicians to present the conflict in very simple terms. Saddam Hussein was shown as a monster similar to Adolf Hitler. The war was then presented as an offensive against Hussein rather than against the people of Iraq. Thus, as the war broke out, one of the major tabloid newspapers had as its headline: 'GO GET HIM BOYS' (Daily Star, 16 January 1991). The Daily Mirror and the Sun are the two largest papers in Britain with a combined readership of around 20 million people. On the day the war broke out the Daily Mirror divided its front page into two sections. The first section had a headline saying 'THE HEROES'. This was over pictures of a young British soldier and an RAF pilot. The pilot is quoted as saying: 'It would be a hell of an end to my career to KO Saddam'. The second section has the headline 'THE VILLAIN' , which is over a picture of Saddam Hussein. On 10 January the Sun published an editorial calling for war and demanding that Iraq and its leadership be 'destroyed once and for all' but said nothing about the effects of the war on the mass of the population who live in that country: SO LET THERE BE WAR -Today the world teeters on the brink of war. There is only one guilty party -the Iraqi leadership. The time has come for them to be punished. Iraq and Saddam Hussein must be destroyed once and for all. But, in fact, the Iraqi leadership would be well protected from the effects of bombing. The destruction would mostly be felt by the civilian population of cities and by the conscript army which was located in Kuwait. The British media did not report in this period that most of the population of Iraq was composed of Shi' a Muslim and Kurdish people who were themselves oppressed groups within the country. Consequently, some of the moral issues involved in attacking the Iraqi population could be avoided by focusing attention on the character of Saddam Hussein. THE 'INEVITABILITY' OF WAR The propaganda device of equating Saddam Hussein with Hitler was a crucial element in the argument for using military force. It must be said that the propaganda had an element of truth since Saddam Hussein was a truly monstrous figure, but he clearly did not constitute the same threat that Hitler had been in 1939. The purpose of linking Hussein and Hitler was to rule out any policy apart from war. Anything short of military force (for example using economic sanctions) was seen as 'giving way' to dictatorship. In Britain the word 'appeasement' has special connotations -it is associated with the Munich Agreement of 1938 and the policy of making concessions to Adolf Hitler. Thus, in the context of the Gulf War, economic sanctions were equated in the tabloid press with appeasement. The Sun referred to 'spineless appeasers' who believe 'a combination of sanctions and sweet reason will be enough' (16 January 1991). The Daily Express referred to 'the appeasers and the give-sanctions-a-chance-brigade' (16 January 1991). The names describes 'the notorious appeaser's remedy of "giving sanctions longer to work"' (15 January 1991). This is an odd combination of ideas. The destruction of a national economy does not imply 'appeasing' its leader. The appeasement policy in relation to Hitler had nothing to do with any attempt to destroy the German economy. But the equation of Saddam Hussein with Hitler, and the disparaging of any alternatives other than fighting, were important element in the arguments for using military force. In the national British press only the Guardian argued against using force Its editorial on 15 January quoted a CIA report that sanctions had stopped 97 per cent of Iraqi exports. BBC news also ran a brief item two days before the outbreak of war that pointed to the success of sanctions. An American economist was interviewed and stated that they were having: 'More than ten times the impact [than on] economies in past episodes, where sanctions have succeeded in achieving their goal' (BBC 1, 21:00, 14 January 1991). These, though, were exceptions. The general flow of media coverage overwhelmingly suggested that war was inevitable if 'negotiations' failed. We can see s clearly in this front page from the Sun: 'IT LOOKS LIKE WAR - Battle stations as Gulf talks collapse. War in the Gulf looked inevitable last night as last ditch peace talks failed' (10 January 1991). We can see the same themes on television news. Thus, after the collapse of President Mitterand's last-minute attempts at negotiation, we hear that: ' All efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Gulf crisis seemed to have ended in failure tonight' (BBC 1, 21:00, 15 January 1991). And on ITN: 'War in the Gulf looks unavoidable. Iraq said tonight that it was ready for it. It rejected any final peace initiatives' (22:00, 15 January 1991). There are no headlines suggesting that if 'negotiations' fail then the west could develop its successful policy of economic sanctions. The juxtaposition of 'negotiations' and 'war' is therefore crucial. They were the two alternatives presented to the public. If one 'failed' then the other was 'necessary'. Once the war had begun, there was some discontent amongst British journalists about manipulation of the media by politicians and military authorities. In one brief moment (in an early-morning programme) a BBC journalist comments on how 'negotiations' had been used by politicians to prepare the public for war. He is the BBC correspondent in Paris and he is asked by another journalist about changes in French public opinion: We have the last-minute peace initiative which, I am told, President Mitterand knew perfectly well didn't stand a chance. But he did it for internal opinion, to persuade the French public that he really had done everything and there was no alternative. And he's coaxed them slowly in press conference after press conference into believing that war was the only option and I think he has been remarkably successful. (BBC 1, 10:00,23 January 1991) The tabloid press in Britain greeted the outbreak of war with the same patriotic fervour they had shown in the Falklands War of 1982. The Sun printed a Union Jack across the whole of its front page and invited its readers to cut it out and display it in the windows of their houses (16 January 1991). Today had its whole front page devoted to a picture of a young sailor with the headline: 'YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS HIM' (16 January 1991). Later, when there were British casualties and captured pilots were shown on Iraqi television, the Sun screamed for vengeance with the headline: 'BASTARDS OF BAGHDAD' (22 January 1991). Television was more discreet. In fact, with echoes from the Falklands War, the BBC was attacked in the popular press for referring to 'the British troops', rather than saying 'our troops' or 'our boys' (Sun, 16 January 1991).i There was another argument that was used successfully in Britain to press for war. This was that a new type of conflict was now possible -a war that could be fought almost without casualties. THE CLEAN AND EASY WAR By presenting the war as a fight against Saddam Hussein, the issue of what would happen to the mass of the Iraqi population was temporarily avoided. But as the war developed, there was a growing concern about the effects of bombing on civilians. The western military countered this by emphasizing the 'precision' and 'surgical ' nature of the bombing. After the war it was revealed that in fact only 7 per cent of the bombs dropped were 'precision' or laser- guided weapons. But as the war began, both press and television in Britain became obsessed with the sophistication and power of western weaponry. Newspapers featured extensive maps and diagrams showing different types of weapons and their capacity for destruction. The Daily Express, for example, had such a map next to an editorial supporting the decision to go to war. Beneath the map were the words: 'THE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY - How the massive fire power of the allied forces in the Gulf lines up against Iraq's army' (16 January 1991). Television news showed pictures of the Prime Minister in a Challenger tank giving the thumbs-up sign. Both news and current-affairs programmes featured an extraordinary number of interviews with military personnel. ii Television coverage at this time was criticized for its fascination with the military and for its naive approach to the view that killing and destruction could be 'managed' and 'controlled'. The television critic of the Observer newspaper commented that 'when this is all over, a lot of hacks are going to be ashamed of themselves' -because they 'did not hoot incredulously when an apparently sane Colonel talks of a "hands-off' war' (13 January 1991). The excitement in the media about military technology was given an additional boost when the Americans began to show video pictures of successful bombing raids. The conflict had now become a Star Wars video game.iii The Daily Mirror captures the atmosphere: The world watched in awe yesterday as Stormin' Norman played his 'home video' -revealing how allied planes are using Star Wars technology to destroy vital Iraqi targets. Just like Luke Skywalker manoeuvring his fighter into the heart of Darth Vader's space complex, the US pilots zeroed into the very centre of Saddam Hussein' s Baghdad. (19 January 1991) On BBC 1, David Dimbleby, who was their anchor man for news about the war, spoke of 'the most vivid description anybody can ever have seen of the precision bombing that has been carried out by the US forces' (10:00, 18 January 1991). When interviewing the US Ambassador, he says the bombing, suggests that America's ability to react militarily has really become quite extraordinary, despite all critics beforehand who said it will never work out like that. You are now able to claim that you can act precisely and, therefore--to use that hideous word about warfare--'surgically'. (10:00, 18 January 1991) The Pentagon videos seemed to transfix journalists. At the briefing in Riyadh, in a whole room filled with reporters, not one asks: 'If the Americans, videos of bombs landing on target, do they not also have videos showing where they have missed?' In some instances, journalists' fascination with hi-tech weaponry sat uneasily with the humanitarian ethos of broadcasting. The assumption that 'surgical precision' ensured low civilian casualties helped to resolve their dilemma. This was exemplified live on BBC when two analysed replays of the Pentagon videos. Like two sports commentators, David Dimbleby and defence correspondent, David Shukman, were almost rapt with enthusiasm. They called for freeze-frames and replays and they highlighted 'the action' on screen with computer 'light-pens': SHUKMAN: This is the promised hi-tech war .Defence contractors for some time have been trying to convince everybody that hi-tech weapons can work.... [It's] certainly always been the case that a number of us have been very cynical about the claims of these manufacturers [describes bombing of Iraqi Air Command HQ, Baghdad]. The allied strategy had always been to endeavour to avoid civilian casualties. Now, by isolating that... building [draws circle around subject], pinpointing... the most vulnerable part of it, they are able to destroy [it]; no doubt kill all the occupants of it but... without causing casualties amongst the civilian population around. at this point does Dimbleby rationalize the moral implications of the high-tech war' : DIMBLEBY: Let's just see the final stages of that attack again! [VTR replay]. It does strike one that there is something appalling about watching the destruction of human life which is conducted in such a surgical style as this. I know it's irrational -a bomb in the Second World War falling at random from the sky is just as horrific -but one knows that in that building there is the staff of the Iraqi air-defence forces who are about to be bombed out of this world by the most astonishing technology. (BBC 1, 18 January 1991) What is interesting here is an apparent acceptance that bombs 'falling at random from the sky' are an obsolete technology and that the entire allied bombing campaign was being conducted using 'smart' weapons. This is hardly surprising in the first few days of the war since information was being filtered through official channels. In that period, the only available evidence of the results of the bombing was shown in the very same, selective Pentagon videos. So, with little or no information about the bombing of cities such as Basra, and with no enquiry into the possible inaccuracy of hi-tech weaponry, the allies were able to present a story of a hi-tech operation to destroy military targets in and around Baghdad. Some newspapers such as the Sun showed an open delight in the destructive power of the allied forces. In one edition, it ran a full-page feature on the weaponry of the B-52 bomber under the heading: 'DEATH CARGO OF THE JOLLY GREEN GIANT' (24 January 1991). This report ended by quoting former defence chief Alexander Haig: 'I ordered B-52 carpet combing raids in Vietnam and I have seen them reduce men and material to jelly. They will turn Iraq into a talcum powder bowl' (24 January 1991). In the Daily Mirror a complete front page was given over to the headline: 'WE'LL BOMB THEM TILL THEY'RE NOT THERE ANY MORE' (19 January 1991). The effects of the bombing on civilians became dreadfully apparent with the destruction of the AI-Amiriya bunker on 13 February. The Sun claimed that the event was a fabrication -that it had been made up for Iraqi propaganda purposes. Its front-page headline was: '10 FACTS TO DAMN SADDAM' (14 February 1991). The lead story beneath this headline suggested that the bodies found in the burnt-out bunker could have been brought there from elsewhere: Saddam Hussein tried to trick the world yesterday by saying hundreds of women and children died in a bomb attack on an 'air raid shelter'. He cunningly arranged TV scenes designed to shock and appal. ...The charred bodies covered with multi-co1oured blankets could have belonged to anyone. ...The hidden 'civilian' casualties may have been Iraqi military casualties. (ibid.) The television news showed more concern for the suffering of the Iraqi population, but even so, both BBC and ITN were very nervous about carrying material on civilian casualties.iv When ITN reported the bunker bombing, it announced that it had cut material sent by its own reporter in Baghdad, because it was 'too distressing' : NEWSCASTER: The Iraqis didn't censor any part of Brent Sadler's report, but we at ITN did edit out some scenes because we regarded them as too distressing to broadcast. (ITN, 13 February 1991) The Americans defended their action by stating that the bunker was a military installation. The BBC took up this theme and their reporter in Baghdad was questioned intensively on the issue by the newscaster: NEWSCASTER: A few moments ago, I spoke with Jeremy Bowen in Baghdad and asked him whether he could be absolutely sure that there was no military communications equipment in the shelter, which the allies believe was there. BOWEN: Well, Peter, we looked very hard for it. ..I'm pretty confident, as confident as I can be that I've seen all the main rooms. ... NEWSCASTER: Is it conceivable it could have been in military use and was converted recently to civilian use? BOWEN: Well, it would seem a strange sort of thing to do.... NEWSCASTER: Let me put it another way Jeremy, is it possible to say with certainty that it was never a military facility? The newscaster closed his interview with a final qualifier to camera: 'Jeremy Bowen speaking a few minutes ago -subject, of course, to Iraq's reporting restrictions' (BBC 1, 18:00, 14 February, 1991, newscaster's emphases). But after the war an ITN journalist, Nick Gowing, revealed that US intelligence had been at fault: With world attention focused elsewhere, sources have [now] told ITN that in the White House, on 27 February, the US National Security Advisor, Brent Snowcroft, told the [British] Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, that US intelligence had been at fault. In other words: the bunker bombing was a military mistake.v The issue of civilian casualties was politically very sensitive. In the period of the war both BBC and ITN were afraid of being accused by British politicians of showing 'Iraqi propaganda'. Such propaganda might include anything that gained sympathy for the Iraqi population. Consequently, in the early days of the war, pictures of civilian casualties provided by the Iraqis were accompanied by heavy qualifications that suggested they might not be authentic. These qualifications reduced the emotional impact of the pictures and protected the broadcasters against future criticism. The examples that follow are all from a single ITN item. The newscaster introduced it by stressing that most of it was filmed by a Jordanian cameraman using an ITN camera: The latest pictures to come out of Iraq show extensive damage caused, the Iraqis say, by allied bombers. ...This is an image of life in Iraq that Saddam Hussein is anxious for the world to see and believe. ...The pictures were supplied by the Ministry of Information. ...As propaganda it graphically illustrates the suffering. ..[the pictures are] being used as a weapon. ...As a means to influence world opinion. ... Iraqi-supplied material draws natural suspicions about its authenticity ...these people are claimed by Iraq to be recent victims of the bombing but they have not been independently verified as such. (ITN, 21:45, 26 January 1991) By 1 February, ITN had its own personnel in Baghdad and showed dramatic pictures of the effects of cruise missile strikes in civilian areas. In one telling sequence, the reporter, Brent Sadler, debunks the myth of the 'hi-tech', 'clean and easy war' : [holds up debris of Cruise missile] Simple gun-fire brought down this hi-tech weaponry, a computer-guided system for which this Iraqi woman articulated her hate. WOMAN: This is not a game! Those are human lives! (ITN, 22:00, 1 February 1991) But it was only after the war had ended that its full human costs were made more apparent. AFTER THE WAR The contradictions involved in using military force were shown clearly at the end of the war when the Iraqi army, which was fleeing from Kuwait, was destroyed at the Mutla Gap. The horror of this destruction influenced public opinion, but there was an additional contradiction revealed by the British journalist, Kate Adie, who reported from the scene. She noted that many of the Iraqi soldiers were in fact Kurds, who were themselves an oppressed group within Iraq. Those who died there 'turned out to be from the north of the country, from minority communities, persecuted by Saddam Hussein -the Kurds and the Turks' (BBC 1, 21:00, 1 March 1991). The bulk of the army in Kuwait had in fact been Shi'a Muslims. This was revealed by ITN: 'The Shi'as have a powerful incentive for opposing Saddam Hussein. Most of the thousands of conscripts who died in the trenches of Kuwait were Shi'as' (ITN, 22:00,4 March 1991). As the war ended, it emerged that the western military had actually destroyed an Iraqi army composed mainly of these oppressed groups while leaving the troops who were most loyal to Saddam Hussein (the Republican Guards) intact as a military force. Hussein then used the Guards to violently suppress revolts by the Kurds in the north of Iraq and the Shi'a Muslims in the south. When this happened there was a substantial change in the attitudes of some of the British media. The political consensus was split and the leaders of both Britain and the USA were attacked in the press and on television for ignoring the plight of the Kurds. This new campaign was led primarily by the Guardian, the Daily Mirror and by television news, which consistently criticized these politicians with the charge that they had invited the people of Iraq to revolt against Saddam Hussein. The politicians were being challenged to show that their statements about a 'war for democracy' were more than cynical rhetoric. Perhaps one reason for the strength of the media response was that much of the British media had themselves endorsed this rhetoric. There were now many doubts being expressed about the morality of the war and there was a growing feeling amongst journalists that the media had been manipulated for crude political purposes. Certainly, one result of the war was that journalists became more aware and concerned about the processes by which public consciousness is shaped There were occasional discussions between journalists about this that were broadcast during the war and which were unlike anything seen before on public television. The following example from the BBC was broadcast live to a small morning-time audience but it is still extraordinary since it is between two senior journalists, David Dimbleby and Mark Mardell. They had an open discussion in which they criticized the 'news managers' for manipulating public opinion: DIMBLEBY: I'm getting a bit uneasy about the way that this war seems to be being presented politically. There seems to be, creeping in, a feeling that Washington and Number 10 ought to be able to raise and lower expectations at will about this war. They start off with everybody terrified there will be casualties, and so they say it's been a very successful first day. They then see newspaper headlines and public opinion thinking, or they think it thinks, that the war is going to be over very quickly, so they then induce a mood of pessimism. Now you are reporting this morning that Number 10 is very keen to make sure that people don't feel pessimistic. I'm not sure that I like the idea of my opinion and yours and the public as a whole being subjected to this kind of psychological pressure about the war. ...Don't you get the feeling that there is slightly too much pulling of the levers of public psychology on this? (BBC 1, 10:00, 23 January 1991) Mark Mardell replied: '1 always get that feeling to be perfectly honest' (ibid.). He also referred to 'fear of the Vietnam factor' as one explanation of the official approach to 'mood management' .Releasing too much information about the progress of the war, it was thought, might sway public opinion against seeing it through to the end. Philip Knightley suggests that these fears had been acted on long before the Gulf crisis. The system of strict accreditation of journalists to 'media pools' was devised by the Ministry of Defence and implemented during the Falklands War in response to the debate in the USA about the media's role during the Vietnam War.vi The degree to which British journalists accepted the MoD's restrictions was heavily criticized at the time, not least by American reporters. The ABC's London correspondent, Walter Rogers, thought that a more defiant approach would have changed the situation entirely: 'If the British press had stood up to the [MoD] and said, "Ain't no way we're going down there and playing by your ground rules!", the [MoD] would've had to have backed down.' vii Asked why he thought British journalists played along, Rogers put it down to cultural specifics: 'Because you're tradition-bound and it is the tradition here [in Britain] that if a journalist wants to get along, he's got to go along with the government.' Yet, the British way of doing things made a considerable impact in America. The pool system was adopted by the US in advance of its invasion of Grenada in 1983 and perfected by the time it invaded Panama in 1989.viii Few American journalists refused to compromise. At its annual conference in Japan, 24 April 1991, the International Press Institute issued a condemnation of reporting restrictions during the war; these, it said, had 'prevented a balanced picture of events, including the full extent of human suffering'.ix Even in the aftermath of the war, when strict media management was no longer in effect, current-affairs and documentary output on British television tended to focus on what was happening outside Iraq. A picture of 'the full extent of human suffering' was still missing. In May 1991, John Simpson introduced a special BBC documentary series on the effects of the war on the people of the Middle East and referred to a most noticeable gap in television' s saturation coverage of the war: ' As for the human casualties, tens of thousands of them, or the brutal effect the war had on millions of others ...we didn't see so much of that.' x We cannot explain such absences by government restrictions alone and it is not correct to see the British media as being simply forced along by politicians in the early stages of the war. Many of them, especially the popular press, were willing participants in a mood -of patriotism and near euphoria. They could not resist such a 'good story' and the chance to present a real war as a kind of Hollywood movie in which 'our side' were the 'good guys'. xi Only later did some of them contemplate the human cost. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTES i See Glasgow University Media Group, War and Peace News, London: Routledge, 1985. ii David Morrison, Television and the Gulf War, London: John Libbey, 1992, p. 70. In a sample of 5,388 appearances by interviewees, 23 per cent (1,188) had direct links to the military, with another 95 appearances by 'military academics', and 148 by Defence Secretary, Tom King. However, there is no indication as to the number of appearances by alternative or oppositional voices in this sample. Instead, Morrison fixes an 'Others' category which, at 40 per cent (2,156), is by far the largest. The American media monitoring group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), showed that in a sample of 2,855 minutes of US TV news coverage of the five-month build-up to the Gulf War, only 29 minutes dealt with opposition to war. At a special conference on US news coverage of the war in New York, December 1991, the denial of access to oppositional voices was a central issue. Some criticisms of this came from unexpected quarters, including Daniel Gergin, Director of Communications for the Reagan administration, 1981-4 ( Guardian, 4 January 1991). iii Morrison, Television and the Gulf War, pp. 41-62. In a survey of 212 children, 146 responded to the question 'What sticks in your mind?' about television coverage of the war; 17 (12 per cent) referred to the Pentagon videos. Out of 150 156 Greg Philo and Greg McLaughlin children who said they talked about the war with their peers, 45 (30 per cent) said they discussed weapons and equipment. Asked if their parents made a point of talking to them about the Gulf War, 13 per cent of a smaller sample of76 children referred to discussions about weapons and equipment. iv Ibid. pp. 71-3. Morrison observed 8,028 images in his sample of coverage. Only 1 per cent were of death and injury, compared with 7 per cent from military press conferences and 5 per cent showing military equipment and manoeuvres. v N. Gowing, Spectrum, ITC, summer 1991. vi P. Knightley, 'Here is the patriotically censored news', Index on Censorship, April-May 1991, pp. 4-5. vii Channel 4, Diverse Reports, 7 January 1983. viii P. Schmeisser, 'The pool and the Pentagon', Index on Censorship, April-May 1991, pp. 32-4, and R. O'Mara, 'In a gulf of darkness', ibid., pp. 30-1. The full potential of the pool system seems to have been underestimated in some circles, even by critics. For example, in its Gulf War bulletin, Article 19 pointed out that the system was not 'activated' until the latter half of the invasion of Panama, since the media were kept isolated at US bases, well away from the action (Stop Press: The Gulf War and Censorship 1,15 February 1991, p. 6). After Panama, the US Department of Defence commissioned a review of its relationship with the media. The end result, the Hoffman Report, criticized the Department for excessive secrecy and noted that the pictures and reports sent back from Panama by the news pool were of 'secondary value' (N. Levinson, 'Snazzy visuals, hard facts and obscured issues', Index on Censorship, April-May 1991, p. 27). In view of the fact that the most critical phase of the invasion was carried out without public knowledge, it could be argued that the pool system was very successfully activated from the outset. ix Guardian, 25 Apri11991. x BBC 2, Our War, 25 May 1991; a four-part documentary series on the effects of the Gulf War on Kuwait, Israel, Egypt, Jordan and on the Palestinian people xi The gung-ho tone of reporting was much in evidence in the coverage of further bomb attacks on Iraq in January 1993; see G. Philo and G. McLaughlin, 'ITN passes the Tebbit test', New Statesman & Society, 29 January 1993, p. 17. |