War and the Media

by Ian Stuart, Auckland Bureau Chief for the NZPA

The wall-to-wall media coverage of the American, British and Australian military in Iraq has been astonishing. Never before has an invasion been covered so completely, so technically and so graphically, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We see live pictures of laser-guided bombs obliterating targets with pinpoint accuracy, of Coalition troops in fierce combat, latterly with Saddam's Republican Guard as they closed on Baghdad of a Coalition tank taking out a communications tower as a turret-mounted camera captures the hit.

There is nothing glorious, nice or pleasant about war, regardless of which side you are on. In the final analysis it's about weeping over coffins as the bodies come home. But are we getting the balanced cover from Iraq? We regularly see the flag-draped caskets of the Coalition casualties on their final journey home and we not so regularly hear of the tragedy of the war's collateral damage — the women children and innocent civilians who have died.

Can we expect that desired two-sided cover — completely balanced with equal emphasis on the invaded and the invaders. No, that's impossible, especially with the imbalance caused by the huge number of media `embedded' with units from Kuwait in the south to the Northern Iraqi city of Mosul and the Turkish border. It's impossible because it's a Coalition scrap. The Coalition calls the shots and have put restraints on the media, presumably in return for providing a berth in a warship or with a fighting unit.

Coverage of any war will always be weighted in favour of the good guys although it has been an uphill battle at times to convince the world the Coalition of the Willing are the good guys. But the military runs the show. Ask New Zealand-born journalist Peter Arnett. He told Iraqi television viewers the first war plan was not working and the Coalition was working on another. Guess what? The military didn't like it. Arnett's American NBC News bosses didn't seem to mind in the morning and even expressed some public support for him, but by later in the day he had been sacked by both NBC and National Geographic Explorer. Then the American media watchdog, Accuracy in the Media, chipped in with chairman Reed Irvine lambasting Arnett for making mistakes.

But was Arnett wrong? He made an editorial comment about the war, which the military brass did not like and he was sacked. He would not have said it unless he believed it to be right. Arnett is no fool. He won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting the Vietnam War. This time he has seen Iraq from both sides. He should know what he is doing although it was not the smartest decision to make his comments on Iraqi television. But his sacking raises a fundamentally important question about the military/media mix. There is an inherent danger about embedded media and that is the influence the military can have on the finished media product. Arnett will presumably no longer have the blessing of the Coalition to report the war.

We are told other reports have been prepared under military constraints. If that is because some reports could be strategically sensitive and possibly imperil Coalition forces, those constraints are understandable. Wartime censorship is a fact of life in any war for that very reason and most media can live with it. But if it is simply something the military does not like then the military/media marriage is doomed and the media will have to make its own arrangements.

That will not work either. The military controls the space and can say which media can come and go and which can't. So we are back to square one and a necessary symbiotic relationship. The media need the military to get close to the action and the military, particularly in Iraq need the media to win the PR war back home.

Both the military and the media also need to understand they are both on show and both accountable. If civilians die without `due process' being followed, without sufficient warnings, or simply at the hands of a trigger-happy soldiers, let the soldiers be brought to account through media exposure. Hopefully, the presence of the media will prevent such happenings. The media is there to report the facts, without fear or favour, nothing more, nothing less.

Hopefully, the New Zealand media have been doing that for as long as New Zealand soldiers have been in conflict, wherever that takes them. New Zealand defence forces have earned an enviable reputation overseas since they first left New Zealand shores in 1899 for the Boer War.

In East Timor there was a strong New Zealand media contingent and the stories they sent back to New Zealand undoubtedly helped the New Zealand public understand why New Zealand was in Timor. In 1999 moving out of Dili without an armed escort was advised against in the strongest possible terms. I arrived a fortnight after a Dutch journalist was ambushed and murdered a few hundred metres from the waterfront.

There is now a growing awareness amongst the military of the importance of a media presence in a conflict. That awareness still has some way to go to reach full maturity and defence planners should include a media contingent as a matter of course every time a sizeable force leaves our shores.

Then Brigadier Martyn Dunne, who led the New Zealand forces in Timor, realised the importance of the media in telling the story. He made sure journalists were with the troops in all theatres in Timor. A week after I arrived in Dili. I was with the first troops to enter Maliana and Bobonaro in the middle of the island and witness the aftermath of some of the inhumanities inflicted on the locals by the militia.

The story was filed on a satellite phone literally within minutes. Dunne is also realistic enough to know that balance is an essential part of any journalist's approach. Soldiers are now accountable anywhere they are deployed.

Good or bad, the stories will be told.

Ian Stuart

Ian Stuart, the Auckland Bureau Chief for the New Zealand Press Association, has been a journalist for nearly 30 years. He has written extensively on defence issues and won a Qantas Media Award for his coverage of New Zealand's deployment to East Timor in 1999. The views expressed in this article are personal observations and do not necessarily reflect the views of the New Zealand Press Association.