Media as an instrument of war-1 (original) (raw)
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Ever since US military failure in Vietnam led to claims that media bias had undermined the war effort, the subject of wartime relations between media, the military and government has rarely escaped academic scrutiny. During the Cold War, both US-and UK-based studies of wartime media–state relations tended to emphasize the consistency between media and government agendas (eg Glasgow University Media Group, 1985; Hallin, 1986). During the 1990s there appeared to be a change, and a plethora of accounts emerged claiming that ...
Military Control: A Look at Media-Government-Military Relationships During the First Gulf War
With wounds, still fresh from Vietnam which ended 15 years prior, the American military prepared to embark on another incursion to remove a stronger foreign power from its weaker neighbor. One of those wounds felt by the American military establishment was how it believed the American media was partially responsible for its defeat in Southeast Asia. The ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ was the idea within American military circles that it had lost the war in Vietnam “because pessimistic press coverage tipped public opinion against the conflict.” Following Vietnam, President Ronald Reagan attempted to deviate from his predecessors’ relationship with the media to one of attempting to work with the media, but keeping the administration’s disdain for it behind the scenes. The first instances of the administration to work with the media in a “wartime” setting since Vietnam was brief incursions in Grenada and Panama, which were characterized by the Twentieth Century Fund task force as the “government’s failure, at the onset, to allow an independent flow of information to the public about a major military operation was unprecedented in modern American history.” In both engagements, the military held the media at bay and did not allow media boots on the ground until military operations were all but finished — contrary to its policy in Vietnam where the media at virtual free reign over the countryside. This presented a challenge in 1990 with the onset of operations in the Middle East to remove Iraqi military forces from Kuwait. During this time, the military enacted recommendations presented following Grenada from a commission chaired by retired U.S Army general Winant Sidle that included the creation of a national press pool “that could be sent within hours to the site of combat.” It was this press pool that will be the center of analysis for this paper. In this paper, I will begin with a review of relevant literature surrounding the media’s relationship with the military and government actors in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama and the first Gulf War. There will be an examination of the trust issues between the media and the military and government that stems from the wounds of Vietnam. Then, there will be a look at how the Defense Department enacted the press pool and how the media responded to it during the days leading up to and after the first Gulf War. An examination of the “CNN Effect” and how it changed the dynamic of wartime coverage by the American media will be followed by answering the fundamental question this paper will answer: Did the military control of the press work in controlling the message put to the American public during the first Gulf War and not repeat the same mistakes made during Vietnam? I will show that the military’s control of the press through rules and press pools did, in fact, allow the military and the government to control its message during the short time of engagement.
Media strategies and coverage of international conflicts : The 2003 Iraq War and Al-Jazeera
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IV Table of Contents V Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: International Conflicts and the Toppling of Opposing Regimes: A Review of Media Strategies and War coverage 8 2.1. Introduction 2.2. International communication. War Propaganda and Political Economy: Approaches to Media and Conflicts 11 2.3. Vietnam and the Falklands: A Question o f Media Control 2.3.1. Vietnam War and the power o f television 2.3.2. The Falklands and the restricted coverage 2.4. The Media and Military Interventions in the Arab World: The Suez Canal and the 1991 Gulf War 2.4.1. The Suez Canal War: The regime that remained 2.4.2. 1991 G ulf War: A regime yet to be toppled 2.4.2.1. Controlling the message: The news pool system 2.4.2.2. Al-Ameriyya: covering civilian casualties 2.5. The Media and the Military Campaigns in Kosovo and Afghanistan 2.5.1. The 1999 Kosovo War: The media and the toppling o f Milosovic 2.5.2. The 2001 war in Afghanistan: The media and the toppling o f the Taliban 2.6. News and the Mediatisation o f Conflicts 2.7. Conclusion
Reconsidering Relationship Between War and Media: Regarding Second Gulf War
States need to benefit from some persuasion techniques especially at wars. Besides on military superiority, it is important to control both rivals and allies psychology and way of thinking. Thanks to developments in communication technologies, states reach their actions and desires to public more effectively and more rapidly; however, these improvements are not unilateral process, while states' potential to permeation public sphere improves, people's capabilities to access diversified sources increase correspondingly. United States of America, which defines itself as a defender of liberal and democratic world, takes advantage of psychological means of war either. These means had shown itself especially at Vietnam War, First Gulf War and eventually, Iraq War in 2003. Iraq War counted as a turning point regarding usage of media, because during that war, while technological equipments increased ways of journalist
Innovations: A Journal of Politics, 2006
Since the Vietnam War, the opinions expressed by the American news media have been considered by many politicians and members of academia to be a powerful agenda-setting device. The term "CNN effect" has come to signify the power of the news media to "move and shake" American foreign policy, determining when to enter into and when to pull out of military conflicts. Despite the level of scholarship on this concept, very few works have examined the influence of news organizations on military strategy. This study attempts to redress this failing by examining the influence of negative coverage of American military strategy in Somalia, from 1992 to 1993, and the early stages of the Iraq War, from 2003 to 2005. This paper argues that, despite the high level of negative media coverage of these conflicts from both television and newspaper sources, this coverage had no discernable impact on American military strategy in either conflict.