Universiteit van Amsterdam
Master Thesis 2018
The faulty coverage of the Iraq war: the role of
embedded reporting in modern American
journalism
Tijmen Goes 10420045 Ruud Janssens American Studies UvATable of Contents
1. Introduction……….….3
2. Chapter one: Free Roaming, No Access, and Press Pools……….…13
1.1 Introduction……….13
1.2 “Free Access” in Vietnam………...14
1.3 “Denial of Access” in Grenada and Panama………...18
1.4 The “Pool System” in the Gulf………...21
1.5 Conclusion……….…...25
2 Chapter two: The Vices and Virtues of the Embedded System…..……...27
2.1 Introduction……….27
2.2 Criticism on the Embedded System………...28
2.3 Debunking the Criticism………32
2.3.1 Access………....32
2.3.2 Difference in tone………..35
2.3.3 Safety…...39
2.3.4 An Improved Collaboration…...40
2.4 Conclusion………..43
3 Chapter three: The Use of Moral Rhetoric and the Marketability of
Drama……….………45
3.1 Introduction……….45
3.2 Framing and the Use of Moral Rhetoric………46
3.3 Selling a War………...…...49
3.4 Conclusion………...52
4 Conclusion………...………...54
Introduction
The coverage of the Iraq war in 2003 was notable because of the 24/7 news networks. The “around the clock” channels reached a majority of the American viewers. CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and Fox News dominated the news cycle. The major networks ratings increased immensely; viewing figures gathered in the US for the first five days following the formal declaration of war indicated that Fox News viewing ratings went up by 379 percent, CNN by 393 percent, and MSNBC by 651 percent. The growing preference among viewers to turn to 24-hours news channels for breaking developments sparked a shift in war reporting.1 Especially in the United States, journalism is a market place, in which the newspaper or TV station presents the story to draw an audience.2 Not only did the major media outlets enjoy more popularity, they were also considered to be most trustworthy news providers.3 These outlets, or the so-called mainstream media, define the dominant frame of the news. The mainstream media refers to what Professor in Linguistics and public intellectual Noam Chomsky describes as: “The elite media that sets the agenda of the news. They set the framework in which everyone else operates. They are major, profitable corporations linked to outright owned bigger corporations, who are on top of the private economy.”4
Improved technology enabled networks to show detailed animations of missile fires, troop movements, or enemy camps.5 Correspondents were able to carry around improved light-weighted camera’s, enabling networks to visualize the war even more. There were more live pictures from battlefields than any other war: “Feeds from every front,” battle action in split screens, crosses to Washington, New York, or Doha followed by pictures of combat in Iraq. Competition between the networks led to an incessant drive to be the first “to break the news,” and even what one commentator called “war hysteria.”6 The inevitable outcome of this hysteria was that in the heat of the moment accuracy and careful research of the information were sacrificed. An unwillingness to challenge military information or to check facts resulted
1 Stuart Allan and Barbie Zelizer. Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime. (New York: Routledge, 2004): 7. 2 Kylie Tuosto, “The Grunt Truth of Embedded Journalism: The New Media/Military Relationship,” Stanford
Journal of International Relations 10, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 2008): 22.
3 Allan and Zelizer, Reporting War, 6.
4 Noam Chomsky, “What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream,” Z Magazine, October 1997,
https://chomsky.info/199710__/.
5 Danny Schechter, “WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception,” Released June 17, 2004, video, 45:12,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkkAXkhKg98.
6 Phillip Knightley. The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth Maker,
in the allegations that the media acted as propaganda.7 By taking in a pro-war stance, the mainstream media limited its range of discourse: thus it contributed to large scale of misconceptions among the American public.
The media coverage of the Iraq war is considered to be controversial: media outlets were accused of embracing a pro-war stance, negligent in fact checking, and producing one-sided images. According to critics of this media coverage, a major cause of the media’s shortcomings was ‘embedded journalism.’ Embedded journalism refers to reporters being attached to military units involved in armed conflicts. The reporter eats, sleeps, and patrols with his military unit 24/7. The war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq were the first wars wherein the term became widely used.8 More than 600 reporters, from American and international news organizations, were accredited in Iraq and Kuwait City under the embed press system. During the Iraq war of 2003, embedded journalism earned itself a bad name, as
The Independent correspondent Patrick Cockburn underlines: “The phrase came to evoke an
image of the supposedly independent correspondents truckling to military mentors who spoon-feed them absurdly optimistic information about the course of the war.”9 This press system is supposed to be the “antagonist” of the unilateral press system, which is usually seen as the independent form of warzone coverage. As the journalists operating within the unilateral press system are not working within the responsibility of the military, they are free to cover a side of a conflict that embedded reporters are unable to, is the argument.
In the scholarly debate, the practice of embedded journalism has been labeled as a propaganda campaign, a way to highlight the perseverance of American soldiers and an effort to keep journalists away from civilian misery, as media and journalism professor Greg McLaughlin states in his book The War Correspondent: “The twin system of embedded reporting and media briefing used in Afghanistan and Iraq was a propaganda triumph for the U.S. and its coalition partners and a professional humiliation for the journalists who opted into it.”10 Influenced by military-media relations in the past, the Pentagon outlined the
7 Noam Chomsky, “Illegal but Legitimate: A Dubious Doctrine for the Times,” Gifford Lecture Series. Filmed March 22, 2005 at the University of Edinburgh, video, 51:28,
Accessed on 9-5-2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEvIDiVheys.
8 Chris Hedges, “War Reporting is Like Sports Coverage – Political Economy of War,” L.A. Times Festival of
Books, Filmed on CPAN 2 at UCLA, video, 17:45,
Accessed on 14-5-2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A07yPeD4TiI.
9 Patrick Cockburn, “Embedded Journalism: A distorted View of War,” The Independent UK, November 23, 2010,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/opinion/embedded-journalism-a-distorted-view-of-war-2141072.html.
management and control of the media during wartime in Afghanistan and Iraq. As McLaughlin states: “From an instinct to simply censor journalists and deny them access to the warzone, western militaries have learned to include journalists into the war effort, relying on their patriotism, and giving them the right information and the right pictures (on military terms) is a much more effective form of control than an attitude of outright hostility.”11 Responses from journalists who reported as embeds from Afghanistan and Iraq, as McLaughlin continues, were “divided between those who protested loudly their integrity and objectivity and those who admitted openly that although they were only able to offer a partial view of the conflict it was either that or not bother reporting at all.”12 The embedded system created a situation in which a correspondent created a bond with the soldiers he is embedded with, magnifying a correspondent’s partiality towards the soldiers, and therefore, the argument is, the war.
Not only does the embed system generate the apparent lack of objectivity towards soldiers, it also provides a close-up, dramatic, and sanitized narrative for the U.S. news networks and newspapers. This ensured the Hollywoodization of the war, creating a narrative that misrepresents the factual gruesomeness of it.13 Moreover, there is another problem: the quantity of embed reporting. As professor of Sociology Andrew M. Lindner states: “Articles by embedded journalists were both more prominent and more widely available than coverage from other vantage points.” Due to this dominance of embedded reporting, the American newspaper reader and television viewer receive a majority of the soldier's experience of the war, “emphasizing the American war effort, while downplaying the effects of the invasion on the Iraqi people.”14 In the eyes of many critics of current-day news reporting the news coverage of the Iraq war is symbolized by the loss of professional impartial journalism.
From the government’s perspective, the war coverage is seen as a great success.15 The Pentagon searched for the best way to control the media and to prevent any negative coverage that might erode public support for the war. Vice President Dick Cheney’s anecdote illustrated the hostile nature of the relationship between the military and the press: “I do not look on the press as an asset. Frankly, I looked on it as a problem to be managed.”16 In the
11 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 157. 12 Ibid., 145.
13 Tuosto, “Grunt Truth,” 22.
14 Andrew M. Lindner, “Among the Troops: Seeing the Iraq War Through Three Journalistic Vantage Points," Social Problems 56, no. 1 (2009): 45.
15 Christopher, Paul and James J. Kim. Reporters on the Battlefield: The Embedded Press System in Historical
Context. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2004: xiii.
16 Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson. Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq, An Oral History Guilford: Lyon’s Press, 2004: VIII.
build-up of the Iraq war, the Bush administration planned on how the U.S. media could help the war effort. The Department of Defense (DOD) implemented the PAG program: the Public
Affairs Guidance on Embedding Media During Possible Future Operation/Deployments in the U.S. Central Commands Area of Responsibility.17 The program’s main purpose is “guidance, policies, and procedures on embedding news media during possible future operations/deployments” in military areas of responsibility.18 The policy is that “media will have a long-term, minimally restrictive access to U.S. air, ground, and naval forces through embedding. Media coverage of any future action will, to a large extent, shape public perception of national security environment now and in the years ahead.”19
The DOD further argues that it is necessary to tell nothing but the truth to journalists, before others misinform them. The document appears to make a gesture of goodwill to journalists, amplifying the democratic ideals of informing the public and telling the truth. However, in the scholarly debate, the PAG is often labeled as a propaganda strategy, especially since the intentions of the program to help the press seem to contradict the DOD’s main objective: providing support for the durability of the coalition reinforcing the U.S. military operations, and whose perception can affect the duration of that involvement.20 The PAG enabled the military to utilize an important tool: the program was used as a leverage to strengthen the war effort securing informational superiority.21 Critics often portrayed the relationship between the media and the military as a battle between revealing the truth versus covering up truth. The embedded press system used in Iraq was in the government’s eyes the ideal press system: government officials believed that it will likely be the system used in future operations. As Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke asserted: “This will be the model now, I believe, unless you know otherwise, for the future.”22
This round-up of critique in embedded journalism has led to the idea that, in the news reporting on the Iraq war, the government (the Bush administration and the military) ended up as a winner at the expense of the media and the American public. The government designed a media strategy that provided the necessary conditions to create support for the invasion of Iraq using embedded reporters that enabled media outlets to depict a dramatized version of the war. The U.S. mainstream media did a feeble job in covering the war, limited by their pro-war
17 Katovsky and Carlson, Embedded, 401.
18 Public Affairs Guidance on Embedding Media During Possible Future Operations/Deployments in the U.S. Central Commands Area of Responsibility, Department of Defense, 3 Feb 2003. Section 1.
19 Ibid., 2A. 20 Ibid.
21 Glenn T. Starnes, “Leveraging the media: the embedded media program in operation Iraqi freedom,” USAWC
Strategy Research Project, March 8, 2004: 6.
bias. At least, that is the perspective according to the modern western ideology wherein we accredit journalism as a vital democratic pillar that takes in the role of an independent watchdog. It notes journalism as an object of study with a set concept and widely shared understanding of how to practice it correctly. However, there is a certain lack of coherence in the field of journalism as an academic discipline wherein a journalist reports the factual truth.23 Often, journalism consists of economic or political priorities, wherein news is directed towards corporate market goals or to support certain political policies. Especially publishers, who have different priorities than individual reporters, are led by corporate targets. Their goal is to sell the news. This conflicts with that of the reporter’s priority: reporters set themselves the task of the independent observer, and are less dependent on sales figures and market shares. While this is not the case for every reporter, the majority of journalists consider themselves operating on “behalf of the public.”24 However, this “behalf” does not clarify the practice of “good” or “bad” journalism. There is not a set interpretation of what professional journalism entails. The perception of a journalist as professional or impartial differs from perception of the journalistic task that an editor, reader or publisher will have.25 The different perspectives on journalism, with their political or economic priorities, are part of a larger debate that transcends the embedded system. However, this debate overshadows the embedded system profoundly. The dissensions about what defines good journalism surfaces in war reporting.26 The conflicting priorities within the media, within the public, cause opposing ideologies that influence the reporter on an individual level. Thus, it is debatable whether, with the embedded reporter as the pivot on which everything turns, the media coverage misrepresented the grimness of the Iraq war, and whether the media misinformed the American public, While the discussion on what constitutes good journalism targets the embedded reporter, the debate should include larger issues.
At first hand, it seems like the press and the military have irreconcilable aims. As one tries to observe the military in action, and the other tries to win the war as quickly and painlessly as possible, preferably without witnesses who illustrate the horrific face of battle.27 It seems that the embedded system creates an inevitable conflict: that of persevering national security versus the right of free press. The historical debate on the embedded war coverage is
23 Mark Deuze, “What is Journalism? Professional Identity and ideology of journalists reconsidered,”
Journalism, Vol 6, Issue 4 (November 2005): 443.
24 Yariv Tsfati et al., “What is Good Journalism? Comparing Israeli Public and Journalists’ Perspectives,”
Journalism, Vol. 7(2) (May 2006): 152.
25 Tasfati, “What Is Good Journalism,” 153.
26 Sean Aday et al., “Embedding the Truth: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Objectivity and Television Coverage of the Iraq War,” The International Journal of Press and Politics Vol. 10 (1), (Winter 2005): 4.
an ongoing discussion between matters of pragmatism, a conscious deal with the devil in order to get the story, and the co-option in a propaganda war; embedded journalism works because it is ideologically inscribed into the professional assumptions of the majority of embedded war reporters. However, putting these conflicting ideologies against each other is too simple. 28 The needs of the media, public, and the military do not have to be mutually exclusive.29
Also, the historical debate on the embedded system is part of a larger debate: what constitutes good journalism or in what capacity can journalists be completely objective? Society’s ideas about the role of journalism has evolved over time. Scholars as Greg McLaughlin or Phillip Knightley expose how our concept of professional journalism was different decades ago. As journalism is sometimes labelled as the ‘first draft of history’, it claims to present an objective reality at the start. Often, a period of time is needed in order to distinguish, in hindsight, facts from falsehoods. McLaughlin and Knightley, who are very critical (or even cynical) of the history of war correspondence, tried to de-mythologize the cultural representation of reporters, aiming to depict the reporter’s image that is closer to reality.30 The use of periodization in their study sheds a different light on war reporters in Vietnam, Grenada or Iraq, and on journalism as a whole during a particular time period.
Opposed to Mclaughlin or Knightley, are sources that highlight the difficulties correspondents encounter. A prior example is Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson’s
Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq, An Oral History, which strongly emphasizes the
personal narrative, thereby underlining the human aspects of war correspondence. Thus, creating more understanding of the reporter’s motives and sympathizing with their actions. This different approach is significant, as it sheds a different light on the embedded system critique and, in particular, how reporters themselves reflect on “objective journalism.”
Opposed to this microlevel approach, are the sources that transcend the embedded system debate. Prior examples are Professor of Media and Public Affairs Robert Entman and Professor of Global Communications and Public Policy Matthew A. Baum, who analyze the concept of framing in American media and the elasticity of power of the (government) elite. Although their studies go into a different historical debate, the results of these studies overshadow the debate on objective journalism profoundly. Their studies illuminate the role of powerful public figures and the way these figures dictate the dominant way of thinking
28 Elana J. Ziede, “In Bed with the Military: First Amendment Implications of Embedded Journalism,” New
York University Law Review, Vol. 80, (October 2005): 1310.
29 Paul and Kim, Reporters on the Battlefield, XIV. 30 Knightley, First Casualty, IX.
about a particular subject. The elite narrative becomes more readily accessible than other alternative storylines, therefore excluding other “facts.” This concept is not solely applicable in journalism, as it includes other fields of work as well.
Furthermore, there are sources that enter the historical debate more analytically. These sources take the Iraq War as a case study. They assess the biased tone in individual stories or how the war was portrayed on a macro-level. A prior example is Sean Aday et al.’s
Embedding the Truth: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Objectivity and Television Coverage of The Iraq War. By studying a total of 1820 stories on multiple American networks (only TV
media), Aday tried to emphasize the differences in bias between networks. Like Aday, these sources conclude their research “based on figures.” However, the borders of their research are subjective, as there is no fixed definition of “biased tone” or “the mention of civilian casualties.” As there is no set interpretation on professional journalism as a whole, analytical studies entering the “objective journalism” debate are supported by subjective definitions. Despite this, these analytical studies do contribute to the historical debate on embedded journalism.
In this thesis, I will analyze the role of embedded journalism in war reporting. I argue that the embedded system used in Iraq contributed to a better overall coverage of the war and that it does not exclude the priorities of the three constituencies: the press, the military, and the public. The negative connotations of the embedded system as an unreliable partial source in war correspondence are caused by different factors influencing the public perception of war. The majority of embedded correspondents fulfill their task as an observer and do not fit the image media critics accuse it of. The criticism addressed at the embedded system and at how reporters fulfill their journalistic task should be redirected towards the media at editorial and organizational levels which are conflicted by trying to sell a war to their audiences. The role of the embedded reporter discussed within the historical context of the military-press relationship will illustrate that the embedded system is the best option in war coverage, considering the priorities of the media, the public and the military. It contributed to a better nuanced view of the Iraq war, and the misconceptions surrounding it are misplaced.
I will support my thesis statement by the following argument. First, I will emphasize the priority of the military and their need for operational security. By analyzing the historical context of the military-press relationship, I will illustrate how the embed system is the most sufficient reporting system in war zones. The history of war coverage illustrates the difficulties that are pared to the military-press relationship. The modern western ideology of independent journalism is still in development, especially during times of conflict. The primal
characteristics of an impartial observer documenting events for history are not as self-evident as we expect them to be. The development of modern journalism and technology combined with the military’s search for the balance between operational security and information emanated in a system that best fulfills the priority of the press, the public, and the military. Second, I will clarify the criticism on the embedded system. By illuminating the scholarly debate surrounding this press system, I will set out the structure to counter these arguments. The elaboration of the scholarly critique of the embedded system will allow me to counter those arguments and support my argument that the system’s main alleged deficiencies emanate from factors that are out of the embedded correspondent’s range of responsibility. I will support my counter-arguments by analyzing the embedded reporter’s self-reflection and scholarly arguments in favor of the embedded system. These arguments will illustrate that the negative connotations intertwined with the embedded system are unjustified. By illuminating the perceived vices and virtues of embedded reporting, I will conclude that the discussion surrounding the embed system displaces the more important line of enquiry and critique that should be directed at the media at organizational level. This leads to my third point: the needs of the public, and therefore, the needs of the editor. The microcosm of the embedded reporter was allowed to stand in for the larger role of the media. In analyzing other factors shaping the war’s representation, I will illustrate that the overall feeble reporting of the media is due to the media at organizational levels, that try to sell the war to their audiences. The use of moral rhetoric ignited by the American government influenced the media in their coverage discourse, and therefore influenced the reporter on an individual level. These circumstances place the embedded system, or rather the single reporters, in a different light.
My first chapter is devoted to historical context of the military-press relationship. This chapter will focus on three main elements; censorship, denial of access, and deliberate misinformation. It illustrates the contradictory issues of informing the public and the desire of military secrecy. The history of the relationship between the press and the military is one of extremes. The romantic idea of the war correspondent in the role of watchdog during military conflict covering facts that the military tries to uphold is unwarranted. Often, the relationship is marked by correspondents who rallied behind the flag and lacked the critical attitude challenging military reports or actions. Certain images and outcomes in conflicts altered the military-press relationship into one that can be described as hostile or contrary. The embedded system used in Iraq emanated from previous wars and its entailed issues between the military. These events will illustrate that this system is the best guarantee for military secrecy, the reporter’s safety, and providing access and information.
My second chapter is devoted to the debate surrounding the embedded system. It addresses the role of the embedded system in the Iraq coverage. The critique directed at the embedded system can be separated into two sections. First, the system influences the reporter on a personal level. Second, the system provides a situation wherein the reporters, whether or not unintentionally, contributes to the Pentagon’s media strategy. The system’s nature causes the correspondent to apply layers of self-censorship. This self-censorship shapes certain conditions which magnified, in the case of the Iraq war, the overall feeble coverage. These critical arguments combined shape the image of the embedded system as a symbolization of partial journalism. I will counter these arguments in the second part of this chapter. I will illustrate the opposite part, with the help of scholars who are in favor of the embedded system after studying personal experiences of the embedded reporters themselves. The second part will distinguish four main objectives that differentiate embedded and unilateral reporting. It asserts that embedded correspondents are aware of their limited views during war coverage and that it is not within their responsibility to provide a broader perspective. This will counter the argument of the single-vantage point as major contributor of one-sided reporting. Second, I will address how the system influences the reporter on a personal level. The correspondents admit that they did grow a bond with the unit they were embedded in, but I will argue that despite this loss of objectivity, they remained doing their job as observers. A strengthened bond between a journalist and the person covered does not frustrate the job of depicting what is happening. Third, I will address how correspondents target the issue of self-censorship allegations of taking in a pro-war stance. Fourth, the embedded system provided the necessary conditions for an improved relationship with the military. The system enabled both parties to their job and facilitates the best option considering press systems in war zones. The general response of the embedded correspondents illustrates that they were well aware of the disadvantages of the system and that despite these disadvantages they were able to do their job as a journalist.
My third chapter is devoted to the role of the editors and media outlets in shaping the public perception. The media have a prominent role in shaping political attitudes about a particular issue. This chapter addresses how the U.S. mainstream media covered the war and what factors influenced them in misrepresenting it. It addresses how the Bush administration used moral rhetoric to sell its war-on-terrorism policies, which was echoed throughout the media (particularly by Fox, which represents the recent developments on how media produce a more adversarial news coverage). The American media’s marketplace is tuned to the public’s biases. The dominant frames of the public, which were shaped by misconceptions,
became the priority of the editor. These developments illustrate how the status of current modern American media influences the reporter on a personal level. The embedded-system coverage provided the media at an organizational level the stories that were within the government’s frame of the war.
This will lead to the overall conclusion on how embedded journalists in Iraq did their job. Covering war and military conflicts is a balance of many needs and principles. All circumstances accounted, journalists have an extremely difficult task in reporting war events. The embed system, despite its flaws, contributes to a better nuanced view of war time. Though the press’ interest in gaining access to information to inform the public contradicts with that of the military’s need for security that ensures operational efficiency, the two institutions do share commonalities. Both aspire to serve the public. One tries to defend its citizens, the other tries to inform its citizens: both are critical in sustaining a democracy. This system balances the needs of the press, the military, and the public. Dismantling the embed program will not eradicate the problem of less biased reporting. The criticism directed at the embedded reporter is too excessive. The correspondents have shown that the problems intertwined with the embedded system are not within the responsibility of the reporters. The embed system is often the only option to witness action up close. The embed’s narratives should aid to an overall multi-sided perspective on a war, but they should never be the leading ones. If the embed system overtakes the overall news coverage -something that happened during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 - it will lead to a one-sided coverage that mispresents the war’s actual nature. It falls to the editorial staffs of the media outlets to present a balanced story. The current status of an adversarial media environment driven by the market endangers objective journalism as a whole and limits the reporter on a personal level. These developments caused a situation wherein articles were enormously skewed towards the soldier’s experience, which magnified the dramatization of the war. This dramatization of the war influences other coverage of the war, producing faulty, hasty reporting that later is discovered to be untrue. The media must aim to cover a range of perspectives in war reporting and provide information more equitably. The variety of vantage points, minimizing the appearance of the embedded reporter in the overall news coverage, leads to a more nuanced depiction of a war. These adaptions need to be made to preserve good journalism in wartime.
Chapter one: Free Roaming, No Access, and Press Pools
1.1 Introduction
William Howard Russel is regarded as the first war correspondent covering the Crimean War of 1854.31 Russel’s reports on the British military troop deployment caused protests by the authorities in London. The main critique on Russel’s articles in The Times was that they contained valuable information for Russian enemy forces.32 This led to a general order on February 25, 1856, which forbade “publications of details of value to the enemy, authorized the ejection of a correspondent who had published such details, and threatened future offenders with the same punishment.”33 This order is marked as the first formal military censorship on war reporting.34 Despite the fact that the hostilities between Britain and the Russian empire had ceased before the issue was officially implemented, the order established a precedent for upcoming war conflicts.35 Russel’s story indicates how long the military-press relationship exists and it marks the beginning of adversarial priorities of free press and military secrecy. War reporting evolved, during the many wars and foreign operations that followed, into the embedded system used in Iraq. Throughout war correspondence history, censorship, denial of access, and misinformation have marked the relationship between the media and the military. By examining the relationship’s history, this thesis will illustrate that alternatives to the embedded system are not the solution. Even from the media’s perspective, the embed system will provide more possibilities to cover the military than an unregulated battlefield. The embedding process provides more support to the free press principles than other press systems while also securing military priorities, as professor of Law Elana J. Zeide concluded in the New York University Law Review:
Military restriction of the battlefield will not facilitate the dissemination of comprehensive information. Neither the removal of formal governmental support and control. … The formal restrictions of an embed program at least render governmental authority more transparent and accountable than an officially regulated media.36
31 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 1. 32 Ibid., 94.
33 Knightley, First Casualty, 15. 34 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 95. 35 Knightley, First Casualty, 15.
Military conflicts will always be pared with contradictory values and conflicting priorities. The embedded system is the most effective one in balancing both the military’s need for secrecy and operational security and the press’s need to provide the public information on what their government is doing.
This chapter will focus on how previous conflicts shaped the embedded system in Iraq. It targets three main objectives: censorship, denial of access, and deliberate misinformation. These objectives are intertwined with the apparent freedom the press enjoyed during a particular conflict: free access, denial of access, and press pools. The chapter illustrates the development of the dilemma of informing the public versus the issue of military secrecy. The history of the relationship between the military and the press is one of discrepancies. The romantic idea of the war correspondent as the role of watchdog during military conflict covering facts that the military tried to hide is excessive. Often, the relationship is marked by correspondents who rallied behind the flag and lacked a critical attitude towards the military. The origins of what we now consider professional journalism is a relatively recent phenomenon. The embedded system used in Iraq emanated from previous wars. The history of the military-press relationship will illustrate that the embedded system balances best the interests of military secrecy priority, reporter’s safety, and providing access and information. 1.2 “Free Access” in Vietnam
While war correspondence dates back all the way till the 19th century, modern war reporting is marked by the Vietnam War (1965-1975). New technology provided conditions that changed war correspondents’ work. The TV, now present in almost every American household, caused a boost in making a war more visual. The end of the Vietnam War is considered to be the all-time low point for military-press trust. The military felt betrayed by the negative anti-American press coverage. The press, on the other hand, felt repeatedly misled by misinformation from military briefings.37 The Vietnam War shaped the relationship between the military and press in future operations. Two major misconceptions emanated from the Vietnam War concerning the press’s role. First, the idea of the war correspondent as the mythical hero who puts himself at risk in order to get the truth. Second, the idea that the press’s hostile approach towards the military led to the loss of the war. The apparent “decisive role” of war correspondents and photographers in Vietnam that created an anti-war consensus determining the loss of the war caused the military’s post-Vietnam efforts to control the
media.38 Media critic and author of the book The War Correspondent Greg McLaughlin describes it as follows:
One of the most enduring myths in the recent history of war reporting is the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’, the widespread believe that the mainstream U.S. media were opposed to the Vietnam War and openly hostile to the U.S. military and its South Vietnamese clients and that as a result of their critical coverage they lost the war for the U.S. This of course bears little to no relation to the media’s actual coverage of the war, yet it has shaped and influenced political and military control of the media in subsequent conflicts.39
The Vietnam War created the modern image of war correspondents: bold and courageous, battling their fears in order to get to the truth. Images of the correspondent as an adventurer or risk-taker, or even dare-devil or fortune-hunter in the negative sense, were fueled by their celebrations in novels and films.
First, it is a misconception to depict the war correspondent as the mythical hero who is “bold and courageous,”. Out of those 700 journalists, only a small minority had correspondent experience or even studied journalism. As accreditation mechanics were straightforward and easy, anyone could sign up as a reporter.40 The idea of the “freewheeling journalist undermining military security” was applicable to a few. The vast majority of the accredited journalists stayed in Saigon and depended on the military-press briefings as their principal source of information. Only a few reporters made “regular forays in the field.”41 It was by far too dangerous to roam around in the field. The fear of being killed by Viet Cong was more than reasonable: 45 war correspondents were killed during the Vietnam War, and 18 were listed as missing.42 The dangerous part aside, journalists did not consider meeting with the Viet Cong since “they had nothing to learn. The VC is the enemy, they were evil, end of story.”43 Furthermore, the different characteristics of the Vietnam War with that of previous wars required a different kind of war correspondence. Political issues were more complex, the enemy invisible, and progress unmeasurable. Correspondents needed time to adapt to the shocking things they encountered.44 These experiences even became an argument for journalists to carry arms, which is considered to undermine a journalist’s status as an 38 Douglas Kellner, “War Correspondents, the Military, and Propaganda: Some Critical Reflections,” International
Journal of Communications, 2 (2008): 302.
39 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 112. 40 Knightley, First Casualty, 442.
41 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 116. 42 Knightley, First Casualty, 445. 43 Mclaughlin, War Correspondent, 116. 44 Knightley, First Casualty, 423.
observer.45 McLaughlin debunks the image of the Vietnam reporter as a critical journalist. The majority of the reporter held good relations with their military sources. They described their experiences as “us” rather than “they,” and they remained supportive of the U.S. troops: “with a few exceptions, the American press corps in Saigon was composed of ordinary journalists who knew where their sympathies lay.”46 This is in line with the notion that Vietnam reporters considered “their” war as “the” war. The journalists’ acknowledgement of their limited view seen in Iraq was not fully developed during the war in Vietnam, as journalist Jeff Gralnick, active in both wars, underlines:
War is a macro kind of thing. You have no idea how the war is going how your war is going, so never turn what you have in front of you into something that end with cosmic conclusion about the war and policy themselves. Many of us 35 years ago did just that and many of us regret it to this day.47
There are circumstances in which a correspondent had to deal with contradictory sentiments: on the one hand one tries to prevent certain things from happening from a human perspective and on the other hand you have remain aside and just report what you see. In what capacity do you decide to cover the full grim story, or do you pick a side? Peter Arnett, the Associated
Press photographer who captured a Vietnamese monk setting himself on fire described the
conflicting notions as followed: “I could have prevented that immolation by rushing at him and kicking the gasoline away. As a human being I wanted to, as a reporter I couldn’t.”48 He adds: “I was horrified, but I still took a picture of a Buddhist monk deliberately burning himself to death. My response to the question - why I didn’t you stop him? - was that I am reporter, not a fire engine, or what we call a guardian angel, someone who helps others in time of trouble.”49 Reporters got dragged into the Vietnamese political struggle, facing the difficult challenge of not to interfere in the course of history. Accusations from the military for “being unpatriotic” or “being a parasite” influence the reporter in his ability to remain an observer. Even if the correspondent challenged the military’s reports, or illuminated the brutality of the war, editors labeled the stories as “too tough” for the American reader.50
45 “Assessing and Responding to Risk,” Committee to Protect Journalists, accessed August 8, 2018,
https://cpj.org/reports/2012/04/assessing-and-responding-to-risk.php#3. 46 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 113.
47 Howard Tumber, “Prisoners of News Value,” in Reporting War: Journalism in Wartime, ed. Allan and Zelizer (New York: Routledge, 2004): 196.
48 Knightley, First Casualty, 446.
49 Peter Arnett. “The Reporting of the Vietnam War: Learning to Live with Controversy,” Pulitzer Prize Winners Workshop, accessed on April 17, 2018,
http://ppww.hkbu.edu.hk/eng/BIO/peter/BIO_peter_m.html. 50 Knightley, First Casualty, 428.
Second, it is a misconception that the apparent hostile media fueled an anti-war consensus that predetermined the loss of the Vietnam War. The government’s failing policy led to an eroding support of the war. The first failure was the U.S. government’s support for the undemocratic Diem regime in South Vietnam. It tried to influence the press by emphasizing that Diem’s shaky business was better than the communists in North Vietnam. The increasing international criticism of the Southern Vietnamese government for the brutality against its own people, with the Buddhist movement as main example, caused international disapproval of the American support of the Diem government.51 Another policy failure are the lies about the progress of the war. The large-scale military intervention in Vietnam is characterized by fighting against an invisible enemy since the Vietcong opponent took cover among the population.52 The war had no clear frontline, no clear enemy, no clear purpose, and no need for general sacrifice, leading to the war’s vicious outcome.53 Whole villages were burnt to the ground to exterminate the Vietcong. American planes dropped chemicals that destroyed forests to deprive the Vietcong of hiding places. They dropped napalm bombs, a gelatinous form of gasoline that burns the skin.54 It was a war in which military success “had to be measured in numbers – numbers of incidents, of destruction, defection, weapons lost, weapons captured, villagers relocated, areas searched, areas cleared, and the body count.”55 The U.S. army pursued the enemy in ‘search and destroy’ missions that often did not distinguish combatants and civilians. Yet, the government argued that all was going well. The credibility gap between what the government was accentuating versus what actually happened strengthened the American public to question the U.S. government’s war effort.56
The massacre at My Lai is considered to be the prime example of the racist and brutalized nature of the Vietnam war and how the media dealt with this kind of events in the first years of the war. On March 16, 1968, an American battalion killed between 90 and 130 villagers. Acting “under the orders of the platoon commander,” the battalion slaughtered the whole village, including small children and the elderly. There were several reports on what happened at My Lai, in the army and in Washington. Yet, the story only reached the international news in December 1968. During this time period, numerous new facts surfaced.
51 Zi Jun Toong. “Overthrown by the Press: The US Media’s Role in the Fall of Diem." Australasian Journal of
American Studies 27, no. 1 (July 2008): 61.
52 Jan van Oudheusden, Amerika, een kleine geschiedenis (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2016), 124. 53 Knightley, First Casualty, 418.
54 Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty: An American History, Seagull 4th edition, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014), 1000.
55 Knightley, First Casualty, 418. 56 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 117.
However, the story got limited attention: many political and military authorities neglected the reports and the big newspapers barely made an effort digging into this. The major outcry only happened after Time and Newsweek published the My Lai story, after picking up the story from a journalist who dug into it at home in the United States.57 It removed a taboo on talking about the nature of the Vietnam War. Army veterans appeared on TV confessing they committed murder, torture or rape. Suddenly, journalists recalled having witnessed similar stories as seen in My Lai: stories about the murdering of civilians including children, women, and elderly. Previous incidents that passed along with little to no notice reemerged. Editors who first labeled the stories as “too tough” now deemed them suitable. A common defense from correspondents was that they indeed knew that civilians were being killed, but they did not write about it since the killing of civilians was “ordinary,” and that there was no point in bringing it up since the American public was not ready to listen.58 The My Lai massacre illustrated the U.S. army’s involvement in Vietnam and the way the media covered it.
Concluding, the general idea the U.S. military and its South Vietnamese clients lost the war due to the hostile attitude of the Vietnam war correspondents is a misconception. The overall majority of war correspondents lacked a critical standpoint towards what the military did. The idea of heated clashes between the truth-seeking journalist and the military spokesmen is a myth. The majority of the correspondents accredited in Saigon remained in the city. They lacked journalistic experience and educational background. Furthermore, war correspondents faced multiple difficulties that discredited or highly influenced their role as an observer. The press and military held relatively good relations. The majority of journalists supported the government’s policy in Vietnam and the reasons of the eroding public war support in the U.S. had to do with the atrocities committed by the U.S. army, the number of casualties, and the lies told by multiple administrations. The negative coverage only became apparent after the American public at home understood that the United States was stuck in a quagmire.59 The loss of the war required a scapegoat, which the government found in the press.60 As Arnett concludes: “We did what we had to do to undermine a bad policy. The loss was the fault of those who planned that war, and who refused to change their losing policies when it was clear those policies would not succeed”.61 Despite the misconceptions about the military-press relationship during the Vietnam war, they did influence post-Vietnam military operations and relationship with journalists.
57 Knightley, First Casualty, 431. 58 Ibid., 434.
59 Aday et at., “Embedding the Truth,” 5. 60 Paul and Kim, Reporters on the Battlefield, 37. 61 Arnett, “Vietnam War.”
1.3 “Denial of Access” in Grenada and Panama
The common military’s perception of a hostile media in Vietnam provoked the government’s necessity for a clear government media strategy. The post-Vietnam era is considered as an all-time low point in trust between the military and press.62 After Vietnam, the press persisted in the idea that it is their constitutional right to cover the military’s actions and to supply the citizen’s right to know what their government is doing. Opposed to the press remained the military’s desire for operational security and the increased resistance against anything that might endanger that. This ‘ongoing battle’ between the government and press led to different press systems throughout U.S. operations in Grenada, Panama, and the Gulf. The U.S. military was keen on precluding Vietnam symptoms. American military planners learnt from the successes and failures of the British military and their media policy during the Falklands War in 1982. The first lesson was that the military must give regular and friendly media briefings, cultivating a relationship based on trust. The other lesson was that it was better to exclude the media from the battle zone rather than permitting them access. The crucial part in both lessons was control: control access to the battlefield, invoke censorship, and only provide your own information. The media strategy unfolded in a manner where control over the situation is more important than the military’s relation to the media or the citizen’s right to know. With these lessons in mind, the U.S. invaded the small island of Grenada in the Caribbean Sea in 1983.63
The political debate on President Ronald Reagan’s reasons to invade a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea remains unresolved. His own arguments were “the concern for the welfare of American citizens living on Grenada,” and “the urgent request from nearby Caribbean countries” concerned about the political developments on the island. Others suggested that Reagan needed a ‘victory’ to boost his approval rating after the attack on U.S. marines in Beirut.64 A military success story would also improve his re-election chances.65 It was the administration’s goal to preclude any possible negative press coverage. The key feature of the new press strategy was learnt from the way the British army handled the press during the Falklands War. The military emphasized the importance of secrecy before the invasion, which meant that the press ought to be kept in the dark as much as possible. The military commanders of the operation in Grenada were left in charge of the media by the Pentagon.
62 Paul and Kim, Reporters on the Battlefield, III. 63 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 123.
64 "Invasion of Grenada." Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 18, no. 44 (October 1983): 1857.
This delegation of media responsibility led to an all-out denial of access for any journalist until the operation was carried out and its objectives were secured.66 The top military commanders in charge, who were active as juniors in Vietnam, had a strong dislike for the press.67 The military commanders gave permission for a small press pool, not more than 15 reporters, to come to the island.68 The correspondents were restricted to preselected locations, their film or audio tapes were sometimes confiscated, and the only information they received was from the army press briefings, which contained barely to no information. McLaughlin concluded that reporters relied “almost entirely on erroneous Pentagon briefings.”69
The correspondents received criticism for their indolence: for their willingness to accept the government’s briefing policy. The media should have been less receptive on the matter of accepting the Pentagon’s information as “the truth” and more eager in thinking about the strategic value of propaganda.70 The complete disavowal of journalists in Grenada was the military’s answer to the deteriorated relation with the press in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.71 But, from the military’s perspective, this system has deficiencies as well. A total comprehensive ban is practically impossible. While a small island like Grenada is doable, it is physically impossible to restrict the press in a bigger country such as Iraq.72 After Grenada, the media and public accused the administration of violating the First Amendment.73 The Sidle Commission, a commission created to improve military-press relations for future operations, concluded with a list of recommendations that intended to satisfy both the media’s need for information and the military’s need for operational security. Among the list of recommendations were that the military should pay more attention to its obligations to the media and that it should help with logistics.
The invasion of Panama was launched by the George H.W. Bush administration to overthrow the regime of Manuel Noriega. The military considered the operation a success: within a week, combat operations had ceased, followed by units withdrawing and the start of nation-building activities. Head Commander of the operation in Panama Carl Stiner concluded: “the strategic direction of the military is considered to be ‘error free.’ Old lessons are confirmed and no new lessons to be learned.”74 However, preparations for the newly
66 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 124. 67 Paul and Kim, Reporters on the Battlefield, 39. 68 Ibid., 39.
69 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 126. 70 Ibid.
71 Paul and Kim, Reporters on the Battlefield, 40.
72 Ziede, “In Bed with the Military,” 1339. 73 Paul and Kim, Reporters on the Battlefield, 40.
74 David R. Gray and Charles T. Payne. "Studying the Anatomy of a Peacetime Contingency Operation: A Staff Ride of Operation Just Cause." Army History, no. 28 (Fall 1993): 18.
created media press pools contained, intended or not, multiple logistical errors. Military commanders present in Panama were not notified of a possible press presence, which led to an unprepared army not able to provide access to the battlefield. The military’s improvised media center was beset with technological problems. The invasion was already over by the time all logistical malfunctions were repaired. The (un)intended negligence of the administration’s effort to fulfill the recommendations outlined by the Sidle Commission enlarged the gap between the press and the military.75 The coverage of the Panama intervention is defined by journalists who were isolated on U.S. bases like cattle, restrained from any information. This ‘muzzling’ of the press resulted in the perception that the intervention in Panama was swift and bloodless.76 The media complained about how they were treated by the military. Another commission was created to concentrate on the troubled military-press relationship, as seen before in the aftermath of the invasion of Grenada. The Hoffman Report, as the concluding commission report was named, criticized the Department of Defense for its excessive secrecy and noted that its military briefings lacked valuable information. The commission came up with more recommendations outlining the military’s duty to provide proper media accommodation and to brief the media daily by senior officers.77 In this system, the public is solely dependent on government information and media speculation. Denying all press coverage goes against the ideology of free speech and the common perception of the citizen’s right to know what their government is doing. It completely misbalances the needs of the public and the media. Also, from the military’s perspective, a complete ban would be physically impossible in other operations. Furthermore, a complete ban would lead to political uproar by the media and public that only damages the military’s support.
1.4 The “Pool System” in the Gulf
The military-press relationship in the First Gulf War is characterized by the Pentagon’s effort to control all information and images through press pools and military briefings. The system restricted media access to the battlefield: all correspondents were accommodated in pools that were surveyed by military escorts at all times. Reporters were subjected to censorship, misinformation, and were deliberately brought to non-newsworthy sites. Hence, the media coverage of the First Gulf War is marked as non-critical. The media acted as conduits of the
75 Kim and Paul, Reporters on the Battlefield, 41. 76 Knightley, First Casualty, 485.
77 Ted Galen Carpenter, The Captive Press: Foreign Policy Crises and the First Amendment. (Washington: Cato Institute, 1995), 219.
George H.W. Bush administration that misinformed the public with spin and sometimes outright lies.78
The Gulf War is also characterized by the military briefings and the 24/7 live coverage of the major news outlets. CNN introduced live broadcasts from the front line, depicting the war as a video game, demonstrating American firepower. Beforehand, general Schwarzkopf instructed that the media briefings would contain more information than the briefings in previous conflicts. The amount of information delivered by the military was more than the briefings in Grenada and Panama. However, the value of information provided by the briefings was limited. There was no body count in the Gulf war, civilian or military. The briefings consisted of how much enemy equipment was demolished, but this excluded any casualties who presumably manned them.79 The Pentagon’s policy to refuse to reveal the number or Iraqi casualties is in itself not unconstitutional, but the tight-lipped approach to numbering enemy casualties is contradictory to democratic ideals about a transparent government.80 The reason behind this was that “the public no longer had the stomach for a war in which a large number of civilians were going to be killed.”81 The military’s policy was to change the nature of war itself. The language used in the media briefings sketched an idea that only mechanics are involved on the battlefield. The Vietnam body count characterizes a bloody, violent war. The Gulf War was depicted as a sanitized bloodless war. Schwarzkopf’s plan worked: the daily briefings provided stories that pleased the present media, but it lacked any serious information that could damage the war effort.82
From a military perspective, the First Gulf War is seen as a success. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, and former legislative assistant to Dick Cheney, Pete Williams stated that the First Gulf war was “The best war coverage we’ve ever had.”83 The combat footage received by the American public at home increased war support. The public’s perception that the media provided an “excellent” coverage of the war shifted approximately between 63 and 79 percent during the entire operation.84 The military’s high approval ratings are compatible with the public’s approval for the media war coverage. Another reason for the military’s increased credibility is, according to Williams, the decision that the Pentagon would only state what it knew to be true. As a counter argument to the accusation that the
78 Kellner, “Critical Reflections,” 307. 79 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 134.
80 Matthew J. Jacobs, "Assessing the Constitutionality of Press Restrictions in the Persian Gulf War." Stanford
Law Review 44, no. 3 (February 1992): 675.
81 Knightley, First Casualty, 495. 82 Ibid., 495.
83 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 129. 84 Paul and Kim, Reporters on the battlefield, 45.
military briefings were limited, he argues that the Pentagon waited until the initial field reports were confirmed. The Department of Defense preferred to say nothing at all, positive or negative, precluding overestimated victory claims or deceptive appearances.85 Williams disagrees with the accusation that the press was not able to do its job and that they were denied access. He counters that, from the start of the war, war reporters were present within media press pools. As the operation continued, and grew, more correspondents were able to be accredited to a unit. The military did everything within its limits to provide access to the battlefield. As Williams stated:
They visited ships at sea, air bases, Marines up north, and soldiers training in the desert. They went aboard AWACS radar warning planes… reporters described the remarkable speed with which the US military moved so many men and women to the Gulf with so much of their equipment.86
The procedure of censorship allowed the military to review and possibly repeal coverage that might “endanger” military operations. According to the Department of Defense, only five items were submitted to the Pentagon for review, of which one was eventually blocked.87 Williams concludes with his belief that the press pool system accomplished three things: “It got reporters to see the action, it guaranteed that Americans at home got reports from the scene of action, and it allowed the military to accommodate a reasonable number of journalists without overwhelming the units that were fighting the enemy.”88
The government’s remarks on the press pool system are rose-colored.89 First, there is the claim that press pool was successfully accommodated. The control depended on the degree to which media would go along and police themselves. The overwhelming number of accredited correspondents led to competitiveness. Journalists who operated independently were called out by the pooled correspondents to the authorities. Violations of the press pool agreement were followed by repercussions. In this way, independent journalists were frustrated in doing their job by their own colleagues. McLaughlin stated: “The top news networks, papers, and magazines managed the pools and controlled from within according to different priorities.”90 The military’s control on the media became easier as it divided itself.91
85 Pete Williams, “The Press and the Persian Gulf War.” United States Defense Technical Information Center, (January 1991): 5, accessed on June 13, 2018,
http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA512306.
86 Williams, “Press and the Gulf,” 5. 87 Ibid., 6.
88 Ibid., 8.
89 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 129. 90 Ibid., 131.
Second, the claim that the media pools allowed journalists to see “all the action” is out of proportion. “First-hand action” was barely accessible for the press pool correspondents. The action coverage consisted of jets taking off, the firing of far ranged artillery missiles, and destructed enemy military equipment. The coverage on Iraqi casualties or heated combat skirmishes was limited.92 The military decided which stage of action was covered. The press was escorted in a way that the military had the power to define the coverage. ABC correspondent Judd Rose’s anecdote illustrates the military’s selectiveness: “We wanted to visit a Patriot anti-missile battery because it had been used against a Scud missile attack the previous night. Instead the military sent the pool to a garage were trucks were being prepared.”93
Third, the military’s ability to review press pool prints and potentially censor them is questionable. The government’s potential restraint on the freedom of press undermines constitutional rights. Prior restraints on publication are only justified when they form an eminent threat to national security. There is no stricter test in law than a potential government imposed censorship. The Supreme Court “never upheld a prior restraint on publication, even under extreme circumstances where national security was believed to be in peril.”94 The constitutional norm for legitimate governmental censorship is so insurmountable that an imposed prepublication review agreement can be considered as unlawful.
From the media’s perspective, the Gulf War is considered a failure. McLaughlin argues that correspondents present at the daily media briefings failed to challenge information provided by the officers. If journalists investigated further, or at least tried harder in questioning the information they received, they would have found out that the Pentagon offered valuable information, as McLaughlin argues: “An experienced and resourceful journalist could easily extrapolate hard information from the welter of statistics the military did release on a daily basis as a kind of fodder for those happy to take what they were given.”95 He condemns the vast majority media’s attitude towards the daily briefers and judges them for their lack of professionalism.96 The system used in the Gulf War shows that the military’s restrictions to limit the correspondents in accessing truthful information is not so much the fault of government. The problem was how the vast majority of journalists responded to the military’s attempt to shape public opinion. The correspondents accredited in the Gulf failed in multiple respects. They lacked the determination to challenge government
92 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 132. 93 Knightley, First Casualty, 490. 94 Jacobs, “Press Restrictions,” 678. 95 McLaughlin, War Correspondent, 134. 96 Ibid.
reports. They propagated their countries war effort. They willingly called out their colleagues. They were lazy in accessing information in other ways and they minimized the brutal nature of war.97 The organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting stated that the most prominent censorship happened in the U.S.: “The euphoria at the beginning and the end of the Persian Gulf War bracketed one of the most disturbing episodes in U.S. journalistic history. It was a period in which many reporters for national media abandoned any pretense of neutrality or reportorial distance in favor of boosterism for the war effort.”98 The Gulf War is considered to be the most “covered” war in history, but it was also the most “covered-up” war.99
The coverage of the First Gulf War illustrated that it is not just the military violating First Amendment rights. Also, it illustrated that limited information is not solely due to a certain press system. The press, at home and on the battlefield, has an eminent task in fulfilling the job of independent observer. Yet, this war has shown that this idea is not as self-evident as it seems. The coverage of the First Gulf War is marked as non-critical. The media acted as conduits of the Bush administration that misinformed the public with spin and sometimes outright lies. The government’s sustained control in providing information and images through press pools does not mesh with the priority of the public and - if the media strives for a better implementation of the role of modern journalism - the priority of the media either. The system restricted media access to the battlefield: all correspondents were accommodated in pools that were surveyed by military escorts at all times. The reports the pools did cover were restricted to censorship. The Pentagon’s system produced such a tight control over information that it assured stories were positive. The press pool system misbalanced the needs of the public and media.
1.5 Conclusion
There have many moments of tension between the media and the military in war reporting. However, their interests are not fundamentally opposed. Governments need sympathetic media coverage to legitimize and sustain the war effort, while, with very few honorable exceptions, editors and journalists share many of their government’s ideological assumptions about war and are anxious not the undermine the national interests. This anxiousness has led to feeble coverage in previous wars.
97 Ibid., 140.
98 Jim Naureckas. “Gulf War Coverage: The Worst Censorship Was at Home,” Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, April 1991, accessed on August 24, 2018,
https://fair.org/extra/gulf-war-coverage/.
99 John Pilger. “The Lies of Old,” in Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq, ed. David Miller (London: Pluto Press, 2004), 19.
In Vietnam, the general idea that the U.S. military and its South Vietnamese clients lost the war due to the critical attitude of the Vietnam war correspondents is a misconception. The overall majority of war correspondents lacked a critical standpoint towards what the military did. Despite the “free access,” correspondents failed to cover the atrocities committed by the military, as editors deemed them to be “too harsh” for the American public. The common military’s perception of a hostile media in Vietnam provoked the government to create a clear government media strategy. This led to a system wherein the media was completely restricted from the battlefield in Panama and Grenada. The system results in a situation wherein the public is dependent on speculation and government (mis)information. Denying all press coverage goes against the tradition of free speech. It completely disbalances the needs of the public and the media. Also, from military’s perspective, a complete denial of access would be physically impossible in other operations. The military-press relationship in the First Gulf War is characterized by the Pentagon’s effort to control all information and images through press pools and military briefings. The system restricted media access to the battlefield: all correspondents were accommodated in pools surveyed by military escorts at all times. Reporters were subjected to censorship, misinformation, and were deliberately brought to non-newsworthy sites. The coverage of the First Gulf War is marked as non-critical. The media acted as conduits of the Bush H.W. administration that misinformed the public with spin and sometimes outright lies.
Although faced with real obstacles concerning censorship, misinformation, and denial of access, many reporters accepted the agendas and briefings of the military. Many of them reproduced military statements that spread the idea that war was acceptable or even a necessity, rather than challenging what the government was doing. The history of the military-press relationship illustrates that the role of the reporter on the battlefield is still developing. It also illustrates the military’s approach towards the press and their role in democracy. These developments have led to the embedded system in Iraq. This combined with modern-day technological improvements made the embed system the best option. In this day and age, a system with free roaming journalists that might resembling reporting on the Vietnam War is impossible. The increased risk on the battlefield will not stop journalists from covering the war. Reporters would enter the field of military operation without the army’s protection, not only risking their own lives, as UCLA professor of law Elana J. Zeide notes: “reporters would endanger themselves and American troops. The security threat will be magnified, especially since modern technology increases security breaches. As a result, the government is likely to
