From the First World War to the 2003 Iraq War The American

Wyższa Szkoła Języków Obcych w Poznaniu
Katedra Języka Angielskiego
Natalia Hetnar
From the First World War to the 2003 Iraq
War
The American mainstream media
coverage of an international conflict
Praca licencjacka
napisana pod kierunkiem
dr Agaty Maćków
Poznań 2007
3
Contents
3
List of illustrations
5
Introduction
7
Chapter One
The American media during the wartime: The coverage of the
First and the Second World War
1.1
The First World War seen through the American
media………………………………………………………..
1.1.1
9
10
The American media in the face of censorship
and propaganda…………………………………………….
10
1.1.2 The American journalists and their everyday
work…………………………………………………………
13
1.2
World War II covered by the American media………… 15
1.2.1
The great names of the American journalism………….. 15
1.2.2
The major obstacles – censorship and journalistic
equipment………………………………………………….. 18
Chapter Two
The American media coverage of the Vietnam War and the Persian
Gulf War
22
2.1
The Vietnam War footage.……………………………….. 25
2.1.1 The image of the Vietnam War
in the pre-Tet period.……………………………………..
25
2.1.2 A new image of the Vietnam War……………………….
26
2.2
The Persian Gulf War coverage.………………………… 28
2.2.1 The American media and the Pentagon.………………… 29
4
2.2.2 The phenomenon of a “clean” techno-war.…………….. 31
2.2.3 CNN during the Persian Gulf War.……………………… 33
Chapter Three
The American media coverage of the 2003 Iraq war
3.1
37
Embedded Journalists, Unilaterals
and Combat Camera Teams………………………………. 38
3.1.1 Embedded journalism in practice……………………….. 38
3.1.2 Unilaterals …………………………………………………. 41
3.1.3 Combat Camera Teams…………………………………… 42
3.2
An image of the 2003 Iraq war
presented by the American media……………………….
44
3.2.1 Sanitized footage of war…………………………………. 46
3.2.2 Technological advancement and its consequences……. 48
3.2.3 The most symbolic coverage of the 2003 Iraq war……
50
Conclusion
54
Bibliography
56
5
List of illustrations
Figure 1 America’s Answer – the United States official war picture
10
Figure 2 The Battle Cry of Peace from 1915
11
Figure 3 The Stars and Stripes newspaper
13
Figure 4 American field artillery resting after march
13
Figure 5 Life in the U. S. Army - Signal Corps
14
Figure 6 A French officer and his British ally at the front
read the New York Times
Figure 7 Robert Capa
15
16
Figure 8 American soldiers searching for mines
near a destroyed German tank, Normandy, June 1944.
One of Capa’s pictures
16
Figure 9 Ernie Pyle (in the center)
17
Figure 10 Edward R. Murrow
18
Figure 11 Alan Wood – the American journalist in a trench
19
Figure 12 A burial of the American seamen. November 1943
20
Figure 13 Army troops wade ashore on "Omaha" Beach
during the "D-Day" landings
Figure 14 William Randolph Hearst speaks to his reporters
21
23
Figure 15 The infamous yellow journalism
of William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal
24
Figure 16 Vietnam. Walter Cronkite of CBS
interviewing Professor Mai of the University of Hue
24
Figure 17 General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, head of South Vietnam’s police
and intelligence, executing a prisoner in 1968
27
Figure 18 Running civilians during the War in Vietnam, 1965
27
Figure 19 War planes flying over burning oil wells during Desert Storm, 1991
28
Figure 20 The picture taken by Smart Bomb during the Persian Gulf War
31
Figure 21 U.S. military aircraft. Tuesday 15 January 1991
32
6
Figure 22 M-3 Bradley cavalry fighting vehicle from the 2d Squadron,
4th Cavalry (24th Infantry Division). 19 December 1990
32
Figure 23 Documentary of the Gulf War
33
Figure 24 Peter Arnett and CNN crew taping in Baghdad, 1991
35
Figure 25 Peter Jennings “steps on” the Middle East in A Line in the Sand,
ABC News, 1991
36
Figure 26 U.S. Army photo by Spc. Gul A. Alians
42
Figure 27 U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Jose E Guillen
43
Figure 28 Fox News headline and animation in the coverage from Iraq
45
Figure 29 MSNBC Breaking News
45
Figure 30 The American forces in Karbala, Iraq
46
Figure 31 An Iraqi civilian wounded in an aerial bombing in Baghdad
in front of U.S. soldiers
47
Figure 32 Explosions on the outskirts of Karbala, Iraq
48
Figure 33 The first actual photograph
49
Figure 34 The second actual photograph
50
Figure 35 The altered photograph as published on March 31
50
Figure 36 An American soldier covering the statue’s face with an American flag
51
Figure 37 The toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue
51
Figure 38 Jessica Lynch recapturing
52
7
Introduction
From the very beginning the media, especially the American ones, that is television, radio
and the newspapers have been highly interested in covering various worldwide or local
wars and conflicts. The reason for such behavior is quite obvious. First of all, reporting a
war is a chance to reach a wider audience of people watching television, listening to the
radio or reading the newspapers, which is connected with a higher profit for the
broadcasting companies and for the press. Secondly, the media managers send their
journalists to different places around the world where a war is happening to gather some
crucial pieces of information and demonstrate them to the international public. However,
the quality of news coming from the front lines is different, when various types of media
are concerned. On the one hand, the coverage of war presented by the American
mainstream media is far from reality in most cases. It may be characterized by a very progovernmental attitude toward a conflict and a generally sanitized image of war. On the
other hand, the alternative media which, however, are less popular than the first ones,
demonstrate war as it really is. Usually, they try to answer on tough questions concerning
the wartime, and find the reasons for the outbreak of war, which is unusual in the
mainstream media case. Besides, they are more objective and instead of losing their energy
on looking for some useless sensation they focus their whole attention on the relevant
problems. Moreover, the alternative media present the arguments of both sides, that is the
followers and the opponents of a war, which is rarely practiced by the mainstream media.
And finally, the media participation in war is a great chance to develop the journalists’
skills of working in hard conditions, under immense stress, gain new experiences as well as
promote itself around the world. However, the problem of the American media is that their
fast-moving promotion turned out to be the domination over the media from other
countries:
Przeciętny człowiek wie tyle, ile mu pokaże amerykańska telewizja. Wszystkie
inne telewizje, z naszą [polską] włącznie, kupują materiały od telewizji
amerykańskiej i wzorują się na niej. Wiemy o świecie tyle, ile chcą, abyśmy
wiedzieli, trzy wielkie sieci amerykańskiej telewizji. Nie uprawiają cenzury,
jaką znamy z czasów komunistycznych, ale manipulację [An average person
knows as much as the American television shows them. All other TV stations,
8
including the Polish ones, buy materials from the American television and then
model themeselves on it. We know about the world as much as the three biggest
networks of American television want us to know. They do not use the
censorship we know from Communistic times, but manipulation] (Kapuściński
2006: 118-119).
The fact is that almost all the present day pieces of information coming from wars, military
conflicts, and terrorist attacks are strictly controlled by the American media. According to
this, is it possible that the coverage of war the worldwide audience is supplied with is
objective and truthful?
The following paper has been written with the purpose of answering the above
question and showing the reader all the possible aspects of the fascinating phenomenon
which is the American mainstream media operating during the time of war. It starts with
the outbreak of the First World War, goes through the Second World War, the Vietnam
War, the Persian Gulf War and finally ends with the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United
States and their later consequences such as the 2003 Iraq War. The main goal of the whole
work is to demonstrate the way in which the American mainstream media were covering
the conflicts mentioned above. Moreover, it shall provide the reader with all the substantial
facts connected with the topic of the paper such as relations which were established among
the journalists, the American government, and the U.S. Army; methods of information
gathering; new technologies used in war coverage; different forms of war propaganda and
much more.
9
Chapter One
The American media during the wartime
The coverage of the First and the Second World War
The First World War was not only the time of death and destruction, but also the time of
great technological revolution. The scientific progress of those days was seen on the
battlefield, as well as in the coverage coming from the front line. For the first time in
history, the journalists covering WWI were able to benefit from newly invented equipment
such as camera. However, in spite of fast technological development of the journalictic
devices, they were still too primitive to be used in everyday war footage. Moreover, people
had no access to television then. So, they were forced to learn about the course of war from
the newspapers and the radio mostly. WWI was also the first conflict, the images of which
were strictly controlled by the American government and used in a propaganda campaign
then. It was the First World War when the U.S. government established two crucial
documents – the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act, the aim of which was to prevent the
journalists from betraying their country and its allies. However, the above problem will be
discussed later in this chapter. Now, as we can see, these were just the first simple attempts
to cover the military operations which, however, improved considerably during the Second
World War. The outbreak of WWII started a new stage in the American media history. It
was the time of great names appearing in the U.S. journalism. The best known ones are:
Robert Capa, Edward R. Murrow, Ernie Pyle and Walter Cronkite who later reported the
Vietnam war (Reporting From the Front Lines. 2007-03-23). Besides, a few years before
the Second World War began, the radio and television had been developing rapidly. In
1937, there were already sewenteen experimental TV stations working which were
broadcasting sport programs mainly. Although, the number of TV sets was much below ten
thousand in those days, the technology needed for their mass production was already
available. However, the events of the ongoing war restrained the development of the new
medium for the next few years (Golka 2004: 56). What seems interesting is that in 1942
the U.S. government brought another document into being whose major goal was to define
what kind of information should not be published in wartime. It was known as the Code of
Wartime Practices for the American Press. Besides, the U.S. Office of Censorship was
created which was supposed to control all the means of communication between the United
10
States and the rest of the world. So, the spectre of censorship came back one more time
(Golka 2004: 58). Even though, the American media were in their infancy during the First
and the Second World War, this period is still worthy of an in-depth discussion. The reader
will be provided with some more information about this fascinating topic in the following
chapter. We will also try to find out if the American media of that time were objective and
instead of creating the reality, they were only informing the public honestly.
1.1 The First World War seen through the American media
Today, when we are asked what kind of images we associate with the First World War, we
answer that these are black and white photographs. However, it was WWI when a
photographic documentation of military operations was replaced with the motion pictures
for the first time. In the beginning, the short black and white documentary films of the
worldwide conflict were very poorly set up, but they presented a live action:
Meanwhile, the scientific, engineering, and organizational progress that had
produced the modern machine gun, long-range artillery, poison gas, and fleets
of submarines and warplanes has also created a new image-making technology
that broke through the limits of still photography. Just as the Civil War was the
first to be extensively photographed, World War I was the first to be extensively
imaged in motion pictures (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 29).
1.1.1 The American media in the face of censorship and propaganda
Fi g . 1 Am e ric a’ s A n swe r – t he U ni te d St ate s of f ic i al war pi c t ur e.
( Pr o p a g a n d a P os te r s (U ni t e d S t at e s of Ame r ic a) . 2 0 0 7- 0 3 - 2 6)
11
The image of World War I contributed also to the changes in a way the American society
started to think. It was the first war in which filmmakers who were interested in recording
actual combat were seriously limited by the governments and military authorities.
Although the society had access to the images from the front lines, the truth was that they
were able to watch mostly fantasy rather than reality. It was the effect of a historic
discovery made by governments and military forces. They found out that movies as well as
photographs had a tremendous potential for propaganda and for profits (Jeffords Rabinovitz 1994: 29). So, as we can see, the process of news generation started very early.
It could have started even earlier, but it was the World War I and the appearance of the
motion picture when the creation of information bagan to be very visible and popular:
In the United States the most important photographic images were movies
designed to inflame the nation, first to enter the war and then to support it.
Probably the most influential was The Battle Cry of Peace, a 1915 smash hit
movie that played a crucial role in rousing the public to war against Germany by
showing realistic scenes of the invasion and devastation of the United States by
a rapacious Germanic army (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 29-30).
Fi g. 2 T h e B at tl e C ry o f P e ace f r o m 1 9 1 5.
( Cl eve l a n d P u b l i c Li b r a ry ( Uni q u e C ol le c ti o n s) . 2 0 0 7- 0 3- 2 6)
And now let us take a look at the situation of those days’ press. In the beginning, almost
every newspaper in the USA was neutral in relation to the eventful war-time reality.
However, as time was going by, the situation changed dramatically. After the Germans had
sunk the British ship Lusitania with American passengers on board, hardly any newspaper
stayed in its neutral position. Some newspapers, including The New York Times, were for
American participation in the First World War, and other were sympathizing with the
Germans. And to the last group belonged William Randolph Hearst’s papers such as The
12
Evening Mail, Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post. During WWI American press
was used especially to shape social consciousness and a public feeling (Golka 2004: 3940). It was possible due to numerous American correspondents, who were reporting the
progress of military operations in Europe and who aditionally were controlled by the U.S.
Navy. The strict censorship put on those days’ journalists was the effect of President
Woodrow Wilson’s executive order which allowed the U.S. Navy to censor international
radio and telegraph messages. When the United States entered the war in 1917, the military
had control over almost all amateur and commercial radio communications. Moreover, due
to millions of immigrants from the European countries such as Germany, Italy, and Ireland
flooding the United States, the American government being frightened of their relationship
with the enemy forces in Europe, passed the Espionage Act in 1917 (Reporting From the
Front Lines (Government Censorship). 2007-03-23). It was established to help the
government in “the prosecution of anyone who publishes opinions considered disloyal or
harmful to the war effort” (Reporting From the Front Lines (Government Censorship).
2007-03-23). One year later, about 75 newspapers lost their right to mail particular texts
which were considered dangerous for the American society, or had to change their editorial
stances. In the next year, there was the additional document set up. It was the amendment
to the previous one - the Espionage Act, and was known as the Sedition Act. It was created
for the purpose of defining all the possible situations in which the press could have been
accused of betrayal. These were, for instance: showing disrespect for the U.S. government,
the Constitution, the flag, or the uniforms of the army. President Wilson brought also the
Committee on Public Information (CPI) into being in 1917. It was created as a government
agency, the aim of which was to promote war in the U.S. and abroad by means of
propaganda (Reporting From the Front Lines (Government Censorship). 2007-03-23).
Besides, the CPI established a “voluntary censorship code” whose major goal was to
persuade the reporters “to stay in the information loop and distribute more than 6,000 press
releases to newspapers across the country” (Reporting From the Front Lines (Government
Censorship). 2007-03-23). This institution was also responsible for censoring and
approving of all the war-related photographs. It was the military that took the photos at first
on the battlefield. Civilian journalists were allowed to take photographs of the military
operations only on condition that they would not be harmful to morale of the American
troops and society, or helpful to the enemy forces. Otherwise, they were subject to strict
censorship (Reporting From the Front Lines (Government Censorship). 2007-03-23). The
American military press played a very important propaganda role too. The most crucial
13
paper of this kind was Stars and Stripes, which had been published in Paris since 1918
(Golka 2004: 39-40).
Fi g. 3 T h e S t a rs a n d S tr i pe s n ew s pa p er .
( A C l o se r L o ok a t T h e S ta r s a n d S t ri pe s. 2 0 0 7- 0 3- 2 6)
1.1.2 The American journalis ts and their everyday work
Covering the war is particularly dangerous for newsreel crews because
newfangled camera tripods are mistaken for weapons. One Frenchman is shot
while trying to film the Battle of Verdun in France. The battle is recorded, in
spite of the camera operator's death (Reporting From the Front Lines (Dangers
to Media). 2007-03-23).
During the First World War the American correspondents travelled with the army, they
used their system of communication, and became addicted to the army. Usually they were
dressed as soldiers, and instead of weapons they had a typewriter slung over their
shoulders.
Fi g. 4 A me ri c a n f i e l d ar t ill er y r e s ti n g af t e r ma r c h.
( V i nt a g e P h o t o gr a p h s ( B a tt le g r o um d s) . 2 0 0 7- 0 3- 2 6)
14
Those days’ journalists were not only vulnerable to the attack of one of the fighting sides,
but also to being arrested by the military forces. English, French, and German forces were
instructed to arrest any reporter they would find at the front. Moreover, if editors wanted
their journalists to have access to the battlefield, they were obliged to pay a $10,000 bond
to the military. However, when a correspondent broke one of the rules defined in the
Espionage Act or the Sedition Act, his or her editor lost the bond money and the story then.
What is more, the journalist was sent back home. There is one more thing worthy of
mentioning – the Army Signal Corps.
Fi g. 5 Lif e i n t he U. S. A r m y - S i gn a l C or p s.
(Li fe i n t h e U . S. A rmy . 2 0 0 7- 0 3- 2 6)
These were specially created groups of soldiers who were supposed to film silent motion
pictures of the war, which afterwards were sent to the United States and presented to the
public. They were set up with the intention of providing the American society with
information about the course of the war and persuading them that the U.S. involvement was
a right decision (Reporting From the Front Lines (Dangers to Media, Technology Used by
Media). 2007-03-23). As you can see, it was not easy to be a journalist in that difficult
time. When it comes to the equipment used by the reporters in those days, one should know
that it was not very sophisticated. Although, the telegraph was widely used then, there was
a problem of the government which censored the transatlantic cable and wireless telegraph.
So, one more time the media were limited on the content of their coverage of war
(Reporting From the Front Lines (Technology Used by Media). 2007-03-23). Besides, a
poorly developed system of communication and a huge distance between America and
15
Europe made an immediate transmission of news from the front impossible. It was the
reason why the correspondence was coming with a huge delay, or sometimes was not
coming at all.
Fi g. 6 A Fre n c h of f i ce r a n d h is Br i ti s h a l l y a t t he f r on t r e a d t h e Ne w Y or k Ti me s.
( T he Li b r a ry o f C o n g re s s ( A me ri c a n Me m o ry) . 2 0 0 7- 0 3- 2 6)
A turning point took place in the twenties, when radio became more popular among
journalists. A relevant development in the field of radiophony contributed to the faster
exchange of information between countries, and changed its quality. A brand new means of
communication, which was the radio, allowed journalists to take changes of the
contemporary situation into consideration. The invention of the radio and its later
progressive popularisation around the world altered the previous role of the press, which
became a more commentating than informing medium.
1.2 World War II covered by the American media
The outbreak of the Second World War brought the next changes. It was the time of next
stages in the development of press, radio, and television, which popularisation, however,
was stopped for some time by military operations across Europe. The journalists’ output
from the World War II battlefield was “the most important achievement in the whole
history of American press”(Golka 2004: 57). It is a common truth that American
journalists, who represented different media, played a key role in informing the American
society about the course of war. During the whole conflict there were at least 1600
American journalists working abroad, and a large group of women among them. Only in
Great Britain, during the German invasion on Europe in 1944, there were 21 women
journalists covering everyday events from the battlefields (Golka 2004: 57).
16
1.2.1 The great names of the American journalism
Even though, a list of worthy American reporters who covered WWII is long, there is only
space to demonstrate the three of them. They are: Ernie Pyle, Robert Capa, and Edward R.
Murrow. The second of them, Robert Capa is considered to be one of the best
photojurnalists of those days.
Fig.7 Robert Capa.
(Reporting America at War (The Reporters). 2007-03-26)
He was born in Budapest, Hungary as Andre Friedman in 1913. The first military conflict
he participated in was the civil war in Spain, where he was sent to cover the events and take
some photographs in 1936. During the Second World War he took part in all the relevant
military actions. For example, Capa was a witness of the D-Day invasion where he
captured the most vivid images of warfare ever. His hard work and enormous risk he took
everyday earned him the Medal of Freedom Citation from General Eisenhower.
Fig.8 American soldiers searching for mines near a destroyed German tank, Normandy, June 1944.
One of Capa’s pictures.
17
(Reporting America at War (The Reporters). 2007-03-26)
The second journalist is known as “America’s most widely read correspondent”. His name
is Ernie Pyle – a witness of all important events from around the world, and one of the most
popular journalists in the United States.
Fig.9 Ernie Pyle (in the center).
(Reporting America at War (The Reporters). 2007-03-26)
Pyle was born in America in 1900 and forty years later he went to Europe to cover one of
the most brutal wars ever. His first footage of WWII was brought into being during the
Battle of Britain, and Pyle immediately turned out to be a very gifted war correspondent.
He was also known for his immense interest in the American troops’ involvement in the
war. Ernie Pyle provided the American public with regular coverage from the frontlines in
North Africa, Sicily, Italy and France. Although, his texts concerned the military at all
levels, Pyle was fascinated with the infantryman mainly. When he was once asked about
this special kind of military forces, he said that they were “the guys that wars can’t be won
without” (Reporting America at War (The Reporters). 2007-03-25). After a few years spent
on the European battlefield, he was sent to the Pacific islands, where he was killed by a
Japaneese sniper in 1945. One year before his death he had won a Pulitzer Prize for
excellence in covering the European theater of war (Reporting America at War (The
Reporters). 2007-03-25). And finally, Edward R. Murrow and his contribution to the
wartime broadcast journalism will be presented. When Murrow was sent to London with a
group of CBS’ journalists to prepare some special events for the radio network, he became
an eyewitness of the outbreak of the Second World War then (Reporting America at War
(The Reporters). 2007-03-25):
His graphic, compelling coverage from London during the blitz is considered a
major milestone in the evolution of American journalism and is often credited
18
with generating American support for the British cause (Reporting America at
War (The Reporters). 2007-03-25).
When Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japaneese aircrafts, Murrow and the team of
journalists he assembled shortly before the air raid, covered the whole event for CBS.
Fig.10 Edward R. Murrow.
(Reporting America at War (The Reporters). 2007-03-26)
The Murrow’s team consisted of those days’ most celebrated reporters, namely William L.
Shirer, Eric Sevareid, Richard C. Hottelet and Charles Collingwood. This group of devoted
correspondents known also as the Murrow’s Boys worked with him covering the Second
World War for the CBS Radio Network (Murrow’s Boys. 2007-05-09) and contributed to
the substantial development in the field of broadcast journalism (Reporting America at War
(The Reporters). 2007-03-25). “The "Boys" were his [Murrow’s] closest professional and
personal associates. They also shared Murrow’s preference for incisive, thought-provoking
coverage of public affairs, abroad and at home” (Murrow’s Boys. 2007-05-09). So, Murrow
as the first American journalist managed to create a team of war correspondents well
educated and prepared to practice their profession.
1.2.2 The major obstacles – censorship and journalistic equipment
During the Second World War there were some institutuions and documents censoring the
war coverage established. Probably, the best known one is the Office of Censorship set up
in 1941 by the contemporary U.S. President - Franklin Delano Roosvelt. It was created to
control all the pieces of information leaving the United States, and coming from foreign
countries. Moreover, the Office of Censorship was supposed to prevent the American news
organizations from publishing the information the enemy forces could benefit from. The
office eployed 14,462 civilians then. Their job consisted in monitoring cable, mail, and
19
radio communications between the United States and other nations. The office was closed
in 1945 (Reporting From the Front Lines (Government Censorship). 2007-03-23). In 1941
the American government brought the Code of Wartime Practices for the American Press
into being. It defined what sort of information should not be published. The authors of this
document banked on the voluntary cooperation between the media and the government. On
the one hand they secured their object because the American press did not become a
relevant source of information for the enemy. However, on the other hand the journalists
complained that their work was controlled too strictly and they did not want to submit to
such severe censorship (Golka 2004: 58). A year later, the government established the
second office. This one was known as the Office of War Information (OWI) and was
responsible for supervising the flow of information between government agencies and
controlling the release of war news. Before the OWI was closed in 1945, it had created the
overseas branches which allowed it to transmit news and propaganda over the radio.
Generally speaking, journalists working during the Second World War were permitted to
travel with troops and gather all the crucial pieces of information. However, before they
could publish anything, their work had to be censored by the military.
Fig.11 Alan Wood – the American journalist in a trench.
(Reporting America at War. 2007-03-26)
The situation altered a little bit in 1942, when correspondents voluntarily accepted the
Code of Wartime Practices (Reporting From the Front Lines (Government Censorship).
2007-03-23). Their relations with the government and the military became very close then.
Daniel Schorr, the last of Edward R. Murrow’s legendary team said about journalists
reporting WWII that “they submitted voluntarily to censorship. They were part of the war
20
effort”(Hess - Kalb 2003: 18). In those days there was some kind of mutual trust between
journalists, and the government. During WWII correspondents knew which side they were
on. They usually asked soldiers for permission before they covered anything. They used to
ask: “Would it be harmful if I reported this? Would it be harmful if I reported that?” (Hess
- Kalb 2003: 20). We should also be aware of the fact that for the first two years of war, the
reporters were forbidden to make public any photographs of American dead soldiers. In
1943 the ban was suppressed to some extent in order to augment public support for the war.
However, pictures showing faces of dead were still severely censored (Reporting From the
Front Lines (Government Censorship). 2007-03-23).
Fig.12 A burial of the American seamen. November 1943.
(Pictures of World War II. 2007-03-26)
Some interesting facts about those days’ technology used by the American journalists will
be demonstrated below. Just like during WWI, reporters during this war were wearing the
army uniform, and instead of working on their own they were adjoined to military units.
Although they were provided with the efficient military systems of communication, their
journalistic equipment was not still very sophisticated:
On D-Day Charles Collingwood was taken to Omaha Beach to report live on
CBS the invasion of Normandy. In those days to do that he had to carry a sixtypound battery pack on his back that would transmit a signal for him to one of
the ships at sea, which would then boost it to London. The BBC circuit would
then take it to New York, and it would go on the air live. But he couldn’t have a
return feed, because there wasn’t enough energy to do that (Hess - Kalb 2003:
19).
21
Nevertheless, it was the Second World War and its technological inventions that allowed
the American society to follow the flow of information for the first time. The radio sounds
entered the American homes bringing the information from the front lines. Thanks to the
radio Americans had a chance to learn about such relevant events as the bombing of Pearl
Harbor, the bombing of London, D-Day, or the liberation of the concentration camps.
Moreover, it was a source of crucial information for the “home front” (Jeffords –
Rabinovitz 1994: 155), i.e. mothers and wives of the soldiers participating in the war. The
next step forwards in technological development was the addition of sound to the motion
picture. Newsreels played in the movie theaters allowed the American audience to
approach the ongoing war events. For the first time people could not only watch, but also
hear the accounts from the American foreign battlefields, or invasions. One of the events
filmed in that time was the liberation of the German concentration camps in Dachau and
Buchenwald (Reporting From the Front Lines (Technology Used by Media). 2007-03-23).
Fig.13 Army troops wade ashore on "Omaha" Beach during the "D-Day" landings.
(Photographs of D-Day. 2007-03-26)
Twenty three years after the end of the Second World War, the United States were in the
middle of the next militery conflict – the Vietnam War. It was the time when the unusual
situation of understanding between the media and the army, characteristic for WWII,
disappeared. The war in Vietnam turned out to be too long and too bloody for the American
society. Though this conflict will be presented in the next chapter more precisely the
following citation shall give you an idea of the occuring changes:
22
One might have wondered in 1945 how the camera could possibly play a more
important role in war. The answer came in Vietnam, the first war to be televised
into tens of millions of American homes. The glimpses of the war’s reality were
so horrendous and so influential that these images have been scapegoated as one
of the main causes of the U.S. defeat (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 32-33).
23
Chapter Two
The American media coverage of the Vietnam War and the
Persian Gulf War
When a media crisis is a war, the media’s coverage of events as they unfold
may also be one of the key resources, if not often the only resource, for citizens
to learn about their country’s military engagements. In particular, nonmilitary
citizens have little access to military actions that are taking place at a distance.
Reports from journalists who are on the scene provide information as well as
interpretation of military events. At the same time, given the proliferation of
media outlets in technologized societies, the media not only can provide
information about military engagements, but they can shape and influence those
events themselves (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 9).
As the above quotation demonstrates the society’s most popular source of information
about a war or a conflict is the media. A problem appears when the media and the
journalists are not objective and instead of providing information about a true event they
create a false story which is shown to many people then. Usually the public believe in the
content which is presented in a TV or in a newspaper. It means that people see the world in
a distorting mirror. Apart from the media there are two other sources of information about
military activities that are available in contemporary U.S. society. The first one is the
government. It is the institution which announces, for example: declarations of war, troops
movements, casualties, and battles. The government, however, wants to control the
distribution of essential information concerning military activities, in order, to prevent the
enemy troops from reaching such details (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 9). So, a piece of
information which comes from the government is usually very superficial. The other
reason for keeping some information secret by the government is the fear of those groups
of the population who may oppose a particular military operation, and persuade the rest of
the society to take their side. “During the Vietnam War, opponents of a U.S. presence in
Vietnam often relied on government information that they gained surreptitiously or
covertly rather than on information freely supplied by the government” (Jeffords Rabinovitz 1994: 10). The third avenue for public access to information is the military
which is composed of the Pentagon, individual military commanders and soldiers. But, like
the government, the military has its own reasons in not providing anything that could affect
its own public image and activities in a negative way (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 10).
During wartime, when protection of the soldiers’ lives is a fundamental goal, there are
24
some pieces of information that may never be revealed. These are, for example detailed
plans of military actions, pictures of places where the army is stationing, or exact dates and
venues of the government officials and military commanders’ meetings. One more time, it
appears that it is impossible for the society to have full access to the whole truth. There are
always some institutions which are personally interested in hiding a particular piece of
information, or as it is in the case of the media, they prefer some news of little importance
which, however, look like the Hollywood super production to the piece of information
which presents a real problem, but is boring. It is also important to remember that the mass
media do not function separately from the government and the military in their coverage of
wars:
In fact, they [the mass media] often reproduce or interpret the government’s and
military’s war reports as well as generate their own first- and secondhand
accounts. Conversely, the military and the government may censor media
reports and repress or reshape what is said. During the Persian Gulf War, the
government prevented journalists from traveling alone in the war zone and
denied journalists access to certain areas, thereby ensuring a different kind of
censorship by restricting visibility of military events transpiring and their
consequences. In addition, all mass media reports of the war had to be approved
by a military public relations officer before they could be printed or broadcast
(Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 11).
The media can also influence the ways in which wars are waged. The best known and
infamous instance of this phenomenon in American history is the publisher William
Randolph Hearst’s incident. He used his New York Examiner to propagate the SpanishAmerican War in 1898, where he wrote some extravagant editorials on the U.S.
government. His aim was to force the government to confirm that it was not weak in the
face of Spanish operations in Cuba.
Fi g . 1 4 Wil li a m R a n d ol p h Hea r s t s pea k s t o hi s r e p or t er s.
( Lam b ie k . net . 2 0 0 7- 0 3- 1 3)
25
Fi g. 1 5 The i nf a m ou s ye l l ow j ou r na li sm of W il li a m R a n d ol p h Hea rs t ' s Ne w Y or k
J our na l.
(The Paradox of William Randolph Hearst and the Bolsheviks. 2007-03-13)
Moreover, Hearst sent a journalist whose task was to generate a media event that would
encourage public support for the war. He created a story about a rescue of Evangelina de
Cisneros who, according to Hearst’s newspaper, had been kidnapped and tortured by the
Spanish government in Cuba (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 11). Nowadays, everyone knows
that it was a fabricated tale. At this point, one of the most controversial military conflicts
with U.S. participation, which was lost, as many people believe, due to American media
coverage will be presented:
...the media shape public opinion as well as government and military activities
in a variety of subtle ways. .... For example, CBS news anchor Walter
Cronkite’s 1967 statement that the Vietnam War was “unwinnable” is now
regarded by historians as a political shift taken by a trusted figure that
encouraged people to turn away from the government’s position on the war
(Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 12).
Fi g . 1 6 V iet n a m.
Wa lt er Cr on ki te of CB S in te r vi e wi n g P r of e ss or Mai of t he U n i ve r si t y o f Hue .
( A b o u t: 2 0 t h Ce n t u ry Hi st o ry . 2 0 0 7- 0 3- 1 2)
26
2.1 The Vietnam War footage
The war in Vietnam was the first conflict to be televised day after day, and actually the
first color television war. Although Vietnam was called a great television war or ‘livingroom’ war one should be aware of the fact that the images from the conflict usually took
days or a few hours to reach the American audience (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 21). So,
in spite of technological evolution of those days, it was still not the real-time news which
was coming from the battlefield. “...Vietnam was not a ‘live’ war. Journalists filmed the
war using 16-millimeter cameras and then shipped the film to New York by way of Tokyo
or Hong Kong. That took days...” (Hess - Kalb 2003:18). Vietnam is also known as an
open war. It means that there were no restrictions put on the media. Correspondents who
were covering the conflict were free. They could go where they wanted, write what they
wanted, and broadcast what they wanted without any limits. In Vietnam, if journalists
wanted to go on a military operation they went to the black market in the street and they
could buy there all the necessary equipment useful during the wartime. Usually, they
purchased some second hand uniforms, boots, and helmets which were to protect them
from the bullets of the fighting sides. If they wanted to feel safer, they could even buy
guns, although it was illegal in those days. And then, they could join the army and become
witnesses of every eventful military operation. Nobody was censoring what they wrote,
and what pictures they took. They were more like historians in those days (Hess - Kalb
2003: 21-22). Having access to all the relevant events, they could provide the American
society with the whole truth. In the case of the Vietnam War, television’s image of the
conflict was closely related to the predominant state of political opinion. In the early stages
of war, when public support for the government’s policy was still huge, television
presented war as a glorious and rational action. Later, the situation changed significantly.
When the balance of opinion had changed, television’s image of war became progressively
less positive. The earlier period of the ‘living-room’ war in Vietnam lasted from July 1965
to the Tet offensive in 1968, and the later one started after the Tet offensive (Jeffords Rabinovitz 1994: 45).
2.1.1 The image of the Vietnam War in the pre-Tet period
The first three years of the Vietnam War were presented by the American mainstream
media in a very special way. All the TV stations, broadcasting stations and newspapers
were talking about “...the need to stand firm against ‘Communist aggression’ and to
prevent the falling dominoes of Southeast Asia from threatening the security of the Free
27
World”(Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 46). Apart from the political context, the American
“television presented war ... as an arena of human actions, of individual and national selfexpression”( Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 46). This image of war was demonstrated in most
of television’s Vietnam War reporting in the early days of the conflict. For instance:
...in the pre-Tet period ... 62 percent [of military actions] were presented as
victories for the United States and South Vietnamese, 28 percent as successes
for the other side, and only 2 percent as inconclusive. The United States and its
allies were also generally reported as holding the military initiative; this was the
case in 58 percent of television reports on military engagements. The “enemy”
was described as holding the initiative in 30 percent (Jeffords - Rabinovitz
1994: 49).
Besides, journalists used to talk about the Vietnam War in the first-person plural: “our
forces, our bombers”( Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 46). Their intention was to manifest that
the operation was supported by the whole nation. Moreover, the U.S. media showed the
war in Vietnam as an American tradition, and a continuation of World War II. The effect
was that Vietnam was taken out of historical context, and showed to the society as “...a part
of a timeless U.S. tradition of war, understood in terms of its most powerful and positive
symbols”( Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 46).
2.1.2 A new image of the Vietnam War
After 1968 a very different image began to develop. Although correspondents were still
using first-person plural reporting from the field, the media in general started to talk simply
about “the” war. After Tet the media stopped mentioning World War II in the news
reports, separating it from the American tradition of war:
The percentage of engagements described in television reports as victories
declined from 62 percent before Tet to 44 percent after, and those described as
inconclusive or ‘stalemated’ rose from 2 percent to 24 percent. The typical story
on ground combat in the post-Tet period was a matter-of-fact report on the day’s
activities, without any direct statement one way or the other about their larger
significance...( Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 52).
In spite of those diametrical changes it was still unusual for TV journalists to criticize the
American troops. Most of the time, war coverage which emerged in the American media
corresponded to the situation of U.S. policy of that time. A story had a ‘happy ending’
when U.S. policy succeeded, and a ‘sad ending’ when it did not. The Americans were still
presented as the ‘good guys’, though they were now less macho than the ‘good guys’ of
pre-Tet period (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 49). When the Tet offensive started in 1968,
brutal images from the war operation appeared in millions of American houses for the first
28
time. It was the television which allowed people to see things they have never seen before.
Shocking pictures had a stronger influence than any words. The American society could
watch images of dead guerillas in front of the U.S. embassy or fights in Saigon and Hue,
and much more (Przejdź do historii (Portal Magazynu Historycznego „Mówią Wieki”).
2007-03-22). However, there are only two pictures from this period which influenced the
consciousness of millions of Americans. The first one presents a shocking scene of the
execution of a manacled North Vietnam’s prisoner, who is killed with a shot in the head by
General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, leader of South Vietnam’s police and intelligence (Jeffords Rabinovitz 1994: 33).
Fi g. 1 7 Ge n e r a l N gu ye n Ng o c L oa n , he a d of S o ut h Vi et n a m’ s
p ol ic e a n d i nt el l i ge n ce , ex e c u ti n g a pr i son e r i n 1 9 6 8.
( La b o r at o ri u m f o t o R e p o rt a żu. 2 0 0 7- 0 2 - 1 4 )
The second one shows a naked running girl who was scalded with napalm.
Fi g. 1 8 R u n n i n g c i vi l i a n s d ur i n g t h e Wa r i n V ie t n a m, 1 9 6 5.
( La b o r at o ri u m f o t o R e p o rt a żu. 2 0 0 7- 0 2 - 1 4 )
29
Both the pictures are probably the most influential and enduring images from the Vietnam
War. All those negative features of coverage from Vietnam contributed to the appearance
of an undying myth that “news coverage was a major reason that the United States lost the
Vietnam war” (Seib 2004: 44). However, one should remember that the U.S. army’s defeat
is not only rooted in the media mistakes, but also in flawed policy of the American
government. The following citation provides the reader with the most probable explanation
of the phenomenon of the Vietnam War:
... a major reason for the negative tone of the Tet reporting and other coverage
of Vietnam was not that journalists were determined to undermine the war
effort, but rather that they – and the public – had begun to realize that they had
been too accepting of the U.S. government’s inflated appraisals of progress
(Seib 2004: 44-45).
War coverage has always been the reason of arguments and considerable tension between
the media and the military. Because of a still living notion that news coverage was a key
factor in the loss of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon decided to impose some restrictive
coverage rules on the American media in the future conflicts. The first of them was the
Persian Gulf War of 1991.
2.2 The Persian Gulf War coverage
The outbreak of war in the Persian Gulf started “the Age of Instant TV War ...” (Hess Kalb 2003: 8). It was a time of popularization of two technological innovations – cable TV
with its twenty-four-hour news channels and sophisticated military weaponry. This mixture
contributed to a brand new image of war. First of all, the complicated military equipment
was uppermost, and live soldiers receded into the background in the war coverage. It
triggered that war itself was perceived as a “... ’clean’ techno-war, almost devoid of human
suffering and death, conducted with surgical precision by wondrous mechanisms”(Jeffords
- Rabinovitz 1994: 42).
Fi g. 1 9 Wa r p la ne s f l yi n g o ve r b ur ni n g oi l we ll s d ur i n g D e ser t S t or m, 1 9 9 1.
( Wi k i pe d i a ( G ul f Wa r) . 2 0 0 7- 0 3- 1 2 )
30
Secondly, as the speed of coverage is considered, the 1991 Gulf war was really the first
conflict which was covered live. For the first time people around the world could spend
every evening glued to their TV screens and watch “hot” news right from the battlefield.
The around-the-clock television news service became crucial not only for the common
people, but also for politicians and the military in the United States and in Iraq. “The
Persian Gulf War was a media event. Everyone tuned in, including Saddam Hussein and
George Bush. The political and military authorities on both sides needed and used the
media to help their causes and to sustain their war efforts” (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994:
107). This extensive and fascinating subject will be presented more broadly later in this
chapter. Before the whole image of the Gulf war, which was presented by the American
media, will be demonstrated, the reader should understand that it is impossible to think of
this war without thinking of Ted Turner and his innovative Cable News Network (CNN).
Ted Turner was a pioneer on the American media market, who founded CNN and at the
same time “introduced the idea of international global images” (Hess - Kalb 2003: 8) in the
early 1980s. Ted Turner is the person we owe satellite coverage of the whole world and all
the relevant events to. In the following chapter the reader will have a chance to learn about
CNN’s strategy of war coverage, strong and weak points of this coverage, and a
phenomenon of so-called “CNN effect”. But first, it is relevant to explain what were the
relations among the media, the government, and the military during the war in the Persian
Gulf.
2.2.1 The American media and the Pentagon
As it was mentioned before, the Pentagon, remembering “bad influence” the American
media had had on the course of the Vietnam war, made a decision that photographic and
televised images of war must be controlled more strictly. The effect was that the U.S.
government established special groups (the pools) of reporters and photographers (Jeffords
- Rabinovitz 1994: 40). “In the pool system, the military first sets a limit on the number of
journalists accommodated, including limits for the different types of journalists (TV, photo,
pencil)” (Lewis et al. 2006: 9). However, these reporters were allowed to cover the conflict
only on condition that they accept certain restrictions. These were: locations they could
report from indicated by the military officials, military escorts when gathering news, strict
guidelines what could be reported or photographed, and finally stringent censorship of all
written materials, photographs, and videotapes (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 40). When
military escorts are considered the fact that they had a right to keep reporters under
constant supervision is worthy of a closer look. They had the power to provide information
31
or withhold it. They could escort journalists to the places where the action was, or to give
them access to locations where nothing was happening (Lewis et al. 2006: 8-9). Besides,
the Pentagon introduced a single sheet with twelve limitations on reporting:
For US or coalition units, specific numerical information on troop strength,
aircraft, weapons systems, on-hand equipment or supplies...
Any information that reveals details of future plans, operations or strikes...
Information, photography or imagery that would reveal the specific location
of military forces...
Rules of engagement details.
Information on intelligence collection activities...
During an operation, specific information on friendly troop movements,
tactical deployments, and dispositions that would jeopardise operational
security or lives...
Identification of mission aircraft points of origin...
Information on the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of enemy camouflage,
cover, deception, targeting, direct and indirect fire, intelligence collection or
security measure.
Specific information on missing or downed aircraft or ships while search and
rescue operations are planned or underway.
Special operations forces’ methods, unique equipment or tactics.
Specific operating methods and tactics...
Information on operational or support vulnerabilities that could be used
against US forces (Williams 1992: 5-6, as quoted in Lewis et al. 2006: 7).
Moreover, the Gulf War introduced restrictions on reporting casualties. There was a risk
that soldiers’ families might learn of the death of a relative through news reports rather than
through official information delivered by a uniformed representative of the military (Lewis
et al. 2006: 7). Most journalists who became a part of those pools “represented the very
newspapers and TV networks that were simultaneously mounting a major campaign to
build support for the war” (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 40). The government established
about two hundred positions that were reserved for members of the elite news organizations
from the countries that participated in the coalition – The United States, Britain, and France
(Lewis et al. 2006: 11). It was a very difficult situation for those days’ journalists. On the
one hand they were able to use all these sophisticated technological inventions during the
war reporting, but on the other hand they were limited by the government’s decisions to
such a degree that they were forced to depend on military briefings in most cases. It was a
vicious circle. Regardless of the manner of news gathering, its source was almost always
the army or the government. Reporters could choose between being admitted to the pools,
which was related to trust in the information coming from the military escorts, and working
as an independent journalist which, however, was not very safe and popular in those days.
32
“In the Gulf War, [independent] journalists were threatened with detention by coalition
forces, deportation by the Saudi authorities, or, on one occasion, being shot by U.S.
soldiers” (Taylor 1992: 60, as quoted in Lewis et al. 2006: 11). So, the war coverage from
the Persian Gulf was somewhat not objective, and presented only one point of view – the
American government’s one. This is the reason why many people believe that the coverage
of the Persian Gulf War was nothing else but propaganda.
2.2.2 The phenomenon of a “clean” techno-war
“The Persian Gulf War was a one-sided war mainly fought by air power and artillery, in
which journalists had little access to the battlefield, little access to the places where people
were dying” (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 55). The above quotation brings us to the next
area of discussion, which is the new image of war – a techno-war. The major characters of
the first living-room war (the Vietnam War) were the soldiers. The situation underwent
some profound changes in 1991 when the main characters – and heroes – of the war were
the experts and the weapons themselves. It was the first conflict projected from the point of
view of the weapons. For the first time the Americans created and utilized the so-called
“smart” bombs and the laser-guidance systems of missiles, which were equipped with
cameras to take the photographs.
Fi g. 2 0 The p ic t ur e ta ke n b y S ma rt B om b d u r i n g t he P e rs ia n Gu lf Wa r .
(Smart Bombs and Super Highways: Shifting Rhetorics of Technologies and Issues of Pedagogical Authority.
2007-03-12)
The main goal of these innovative weapons was to take as many pictures as possible before
reaching a target. Usually the images the public was provided with presented a missile’s
33
trajectory. People could watch the target getting closer and larger, and then they could see
only a huge explosion. Usually, after such an effective demonstration of the American
military equipment the vision had been lost for a moment, and then an anchorman appeared
on a TV screen (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 42). These images were completely different
from those from the Vietnam War, which presented “the agony of the burned and
wounded” (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 42). These from the Gulf War created the
impression of cleanliness:
Overwhelmingly the dominant images of Persian Gulf coverage were the
images of triumphant technology: the Patriot streaking up to hit a Scud in the
night sky; the cruise missiles arching gracefully toward their targets; the jet
fighters landing at sunrise or sunset (a favorite TV visual) with soldiers
watching and giving the thumbs-up sign; and most characteristically, the smartbomb video (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 56).
Fi g. 2 1 U. S. mi l it ar y a irc r af t. T ue sd a y 1 5 J a nu ar y 1 9 91 .
(A n Ir a q i Li e u t e n a nt ’ s W ar D ia ry . 20 07 -0 3 - 12 )
Fi g. 22 M- 3 B ra d le y c a valr y f i gh t i n g ve h ic le
f r om t he 2 d Sq ua dr on , 4t h Ca va lr y ( 2 4 t h I nf a n t r y Di vi si on ) . 1 9 De ce mb e r
1 9 9 0.
( Wi k i pe d i a ( G ul f Wa r) . 2 0 0 7- 0 3- 1 2)
34
Although the military production teams declared that they would provide the journalists
with the range of shots that would constitute screen reality, what they actually provided
was the fantastic picture resembling the movies from Hollywood. As it was already said,
journalists reporting the Gulf War were trying to avoid the visual representation of
wounded American soldiers. Acting in this way, they wanted to convince the society that
the Persian Gulf War would not be the next Vietnam War. Even if there were casualties in
the Gulf War coverage, they usually were not U.S. soldiers but natives from the Persian
Gulf. When it was impossible to avoid talking about the allied dead, they were
metonymically represented by a broken helmet, a blood-stained boot, or a piece of burning
machinery (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 66-67). Even if we watch the videos from the Gulf
War today, they give the impression that it was a really “clean” war. “In neither video is
there battlefield blood, bodily fragmentation of soldiers, or even any concrete physical
evidence of their pain and suffering – except in the archival footage of the Vietnam War”
(Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 67). It was the first instance in the history when the public
attention was shifted from the human beings affected by the war onto the technology.
2.2.3 CNN during the Persian Gulf War
A few weeks before the Persian Gulf War broke out, an NBC producer found
himself in a Baghdad government office. He was in the country overseeing
NBC’s Crisis coverage, and on that day he was waiting to make arrangements
for Tom Brokaw to visit the Iraqi capital. When he was finally received, he
walked into the minister’s office – to find the Iraqi official watching CNN’s
Larry King Live (Jeffords - Rabinovitz 1994: 107).
Fi g. 2 3 D oc u m e nt a r y of t he G u lf Wa r.
(T r ave l V i de o S t ore . 2 0 0 7- 0 3- 1 2)
35
The story of CNN shows that the twenty-four-hour international television news service is
substantial for everyone who wants to know what is going on around the world. Ted
Turner’s TV station was the one which played the most crucial role in covering the Gulf
war. Moreover, it was the first TV station which began the so-called “CNN effect” – “... the
effect of live and continuous television coverage of foreign affairs on the conduct of
diplomacy and the waging of war” (Hess – Kalb 2003: 63). It was CNN that reported the
events from the Persian Gulf day after day. It deserves the credit for providing the foreign
and defense ministries all over the world with the most recent news from the battlefield.
Many politicians of those days claimed that they were more often in a position to believe in
relevant information coming from CNN than in briefings they received from U.S.
diplomats. During and some time after the Gulf war in 1991, “CNN effect” was only
connected with CNN. However, the situation changed when more TV stations started their
instantaneous coverage. It resulted in world wiring, and opening it to everyone, including
world leaders. A good example of “CNN effect” comes from coverage of domestic crisis in
Somalia. It was in 1992, when President George Bush saw pictures of Somali starving
children on television and immediately decided to send American soldiers there. Their
main task was to supply these dying people with some food and improve security in this
area. However, this peaceful operation led by American forces transformed into an open
war between U.S. troops and Somali guerillas. A year later, President Bill Clinton was a
witness of another scene which appeared on his TV screen (Hess – Kalb 2003: 63). It was
only a short footage of “Somali fighters dragging the desecrated body of an American
soldier through the streets of Mogadishu” (Hess – Kalb 2003: 63). However, it was enough
for the President to take a decision about withdrawing the troops from this country. Some
people wonder if it was policy, or enormous power of television which influenced
policymakers. Probably, it was a very suggestive example of “CNN effect” at work (Hess –
Kalb 2003: 63):
The ongoing hours of Cable News Network (CNN) telephone reports by
Bernard Shaw, Peter Arnett, and John Holliman from their room in Baghdad’s
Al-Rashid Hotel, when all communications between Baghdad and the outside
world were apparently cut off, became a much ballyhooed moment of drama in
the Persian Gulf War. Although it offered little news about the progress or
nature of the war itself, it was a drama of journalists getting the story (Jeffords –
Rabinovitz 1994: 2).
36
The above quotation demonstrates a problem of the absence of direct war coverage from
the Persian Gulf. The war started on January 16, 1991 with the American forces’ air attacks
on Baghdad. Just a few minutes after the first U.S. bombs reached the Iraqi capital, the
whole world was provided with the “hot” footage of the conflict. It was the innovative
experience for most of the people, who were able to watch the war as close as if they
participated in it (Jeffords – Rabinovitz 1994: 121-123). As it was already said, the war had
just started and due to this fact there were only a few events that could be reported in those
days. However, the reporters were obliged to provide a continuous news coverage in order
to fill time on television. In this way, their reportages from the conflict were usually very
indeterminate and superficial. There is a good example of CNN’s reporters, which supports
the statement presented above. CNN as the only American TV station had its journalists
during the first night of bombing of Baghdad. These were: Peter Arnett, John Holliman,
and Bernard Shaw. They were located in the Al-Rashid Hotel – a place which was
recognizable among all the European and American reporters stationing in Iraq (Jeffords –
Rabinovitz 1994: 126-127). Although the three of them were in the center of the action, it
was not always possible to cover the events live. Usually, they could not see very much,
and had very little access to information from the battlefield. The CNN’s journalists could
only depend on what they saw and heard from the windows of their hotel rooms. To enrich
the footage and bring additional “information” they put into practice a few useful tricks.
First of all, during the American attacks “... they periodically announce that they are
sticking the telephone out the window in order to let the audience “hear” and experience
the attack for itself...” (Jeffords – Rabinovitz 1994: 128). Secondly, though they did not
participate in any military operations personally, they behaved like they did. For example,
they used a special kind of language the aim of which was to provide the audience with
vocabulary confirming their participation in the war. One of those three reporters said that
“it’s a remarkable experience to be here, ladies and gentlemen; and the night sky again lit
up with beautiful red and orange tracers” (Jeffords – Rabinovitz 1994: 132).
37
Fi g. 2 4 P et er Ar n et t a n d CN N c r e w ta p i n g i n Ba g h da d , 1 9 9 1.
( Re p or ti n g A m er ic a a t Wa r . 2 0 0 7- 0 3- 2 2)
“In the absence of direct images of the war, the voices and images of reporters in the act of
reporting come to stand as icons of liveness and historicity, at the intersection of the
telecommunications technologies carrying their voices/images and the technologies of war”
(Jeffords – Rabinovitz 1994: 123). As the above citation shows, the real coverage of war
was replaced by images of reporters playing the role of “military experts”. Most often,
journalists were presented against a background of different maps showing the entire
Middle East region and they “...paraded across television-studio “war rooms” offering all
manner of speculation about events in the Gulf” (Jeffords – Rabinovitz 1994: 99).
Fig.25 Peter Jennings “steps on” the Middle East in A Line in the Sand, ABC News, 1991.
(More Movies Direct. 2007-03-12)
38
As it was demonstrated in this chapter, covering war is not a simple thing to perform. On
the one hand contemporary journalists are constantly supervised and limited by the military
in their news gathering, and on the other hand there is the government which puts on
reporters a lot of different restrictions and censors their war footage. So, how may a
journalist stay objective in this case? It turned out almost impossible during the Vietnam
War and the Persian Gulf War, where the image presented by the American mainstream
media was far from the reality of war. A few examples of other two wars, in which
American forces participated and which were covered by the American reporters, will be
presented in the next chapter. We will try to find out if the footage of the war in
Afghanistan and the war in Iraq in 2003 was different from that one produced during two
previous conflicts.
39
Chapter Three
The American media coverage of the 2003 Iraq war
When two airplanes hijacked by Osama bin Laden’s people hit the World Trade Center
twin towers in New York City on September 11, the world has changed forever. This is a
common opinion prevailing among people that the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon have marked a new era of human history – the era of worldwide
terrorism. However, it is not the whole truth because the idea of terrorism is as old as
human beings’ existence. For instance, it was in the 19th century when terrorism as a
method of political fight started to flourish and became more popular than ever before
(Terroryzm, zagrożeniem XXI wieku. 2007-04-20). On September 11, the words said by
one of the best known terrorism specialist Walter Laqueur finally found their confirmation.
He said that “Terroryzm jest niczym, przekaz jest wszystkim [The act of terrorism is
nothing, the medium is everything” (Mroziewicz 2004: 202). The above citation
contributed to change of some people’s outlook on the problem of terrorism. Nowadays,
they are aware of the fact that media, especially the American ones are some kind of
feeding tray for terrorist organizations, the main goal of which is to demonstrate their
bloody actions to the broadest audience possible and to become recognizable around the
world. Probably the truth is that the terrorists would never reach such a power if the media
were not interested in the terrorist activity. However, what can not be denied is the fact that
this particular date and tragic events connected with it had an immense impact on the
United States’ decision to start military operations in Afghanistan in 2001 and then in Iraq
in 2003. When the U.S. government sent the American troops to Afghanistan, its official
aim then was to recover Osama bin Laden’s hiding-place and drive out the Taliban of
power in this country. Two years later when first American soldiers came to Iraq the
government’s goal stayed almost unchanged. The only difference was that the U.S. Army
commanders were ordered to capture the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and liberate the
nation from his regime, and finally introduce democracy. Due to the media coverage the
war on terrorism became recognizable to the public opinion around the world. The
American journalists were witnesses of all the crucial events that took place in those days.
The purpose of their presence in the Middle East was to observe the whole situation
happening in the front lines, prepare objective and reliable footage and demonstrate it to
40
the international public. Did they manage to cope with this challenge? The reader will have
a chance to convince themselves reading the following chapter.
3.1 Embedded Journalists, Unilaterals and Combat Camera Teams
According to one highly experienced Washington bureau chief, the Pentagon
and the press are “two great institutions… that have totally contradictory
objectives and purposes.” The Pentagon must protect the safety of the troops
and the security of the operation, says Tom DeFrank, of the New York Daily
News, and “basically doesn’t want us around.” But the press has the
responsibility of covering the conflict, so it must be “around” (Hess – Kalb
2003: 85).
During the war in Iraq in 2003 three major sources of information about the military
operations existed. These were: embedded journalists, independent journalists known also
as unilaterals and Combat Camera Teams (COMCAM). The first group consisted of war
correspondents who lived, worked and traveled with military units during the whole
conflict. Moreover, they were protected by the soldiers and were given the access to all the
relevant information they could use in their footage later on. However, to become an
embedded journalist they had to accept some restrictions concerning the military
operational security set up by the American government. On the contrary, unilaterals
worked independently from the military and the government. “Because the Pentagon’s
ground rules were seen by some journalists as constraining the independence of embedded
reporters, news organizations devised a two-tier coverage plan. While some correspondents
would be embedded, others would be “unilaterals” who would operate on their own” (Seib
2004: 53). Their work, however, was much more dangerous than this of the embedded
reporters. They were vulnerable to such a degree that they could have been shot by the
coalition forces by accident. The fact was that they had no protection from the U.S. Army.
And finally, when Combat Camera Teams are discussed, the reader should know that they
were composed of journalists and photographers with military training, whose job was to
take the pictures of all the ongoing military operations and collect the documentation of
military actions in wartime. The precise images of a conflict supported planning during the
next worldwide crises, exercises and wartime operations (Combat Camera. 2007-04-19).
3.1.1 Embedded journalism in practice
After bad experience the U.S. government remembered from the Vietnam war where the
independent correspondents could have covered whatever they wanted without any
limitations imposed on them, it decided to set up new regulations which would organize
cooperation between the military and the press during the wartime. The government
41
officials brought into being a new idea of embedded reporting. It meant that journalists had
“minimally restrictive access to U.S. air, ground, and naval forces ...” (Seib 2004: 51).
During the war in Iraq in 2003 the government established approximately 700 slots which
were available for embedded journalists. Some of them were meant for reporters from nonU.S. news organizations (Seib 2004: 51). The guidelines for the embedded journalists were
created to demonstrate them the rules for news gathering, some limitations on transmitting
particular information, and their rights and duties as a part of military unit. The general
principle was that correspondents were allowed to use their communication equipment
almost in every situation. However, a combat or hostile environment was the exception to
the rule. It was the only time when journalists’ transmission of information could have been
restricted by a unit commander. There were also some pieces of information that could not
be revealed under any circumstances. These were for example: specific numbers of troops,
location of troops, plans for upcoming operations, names of individual casualties and
photographs depicting the above information. Almost all the journalists – but not all –
managed to meet these standards during the war. However, there were a few cases when a
correspondent made a big mistake while covering from the front lines. One of them was
Fox News reporter Geraldo Rivera who stationed with the U.S. Army in Iraq. While doing
a live footage from Iraq he mindlessly drew a map in the sand which presented the position
of the U.S. units he was joined in. This incident ended up with Rivera booted out of Iraq
(Seib 2004: 52). What seems to be relevant when embedded journalism is considered is the
fact that being embedded usually had a huge influence on the reporter’s perspective in
those days. When time was going by the journalist’s point of view was becoming similar to
the troops’ one:
... when my marines laughed about how 50-caliber machine gun bullets had torn
apart an Iraqi soldier’s body, I wrote about it, but in the context of sweet-faced,
all-American boys hardened by a war that wasn’t of their making. And so on.
The point wasn’t that I wasn’t reporting the truth; the point was that I was
reporting the marine grunt truth – which had also become my truth (Dillow,
Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 2003: 33, as quoted in Seib 2004: 56).
On the one hand, the embedded journalism was innovative and allowed the correspondents
who accepted it to have a constant access to the sources of information, however, on the
other hand being embedded in the military unit for 24 hours a day meant that the American
journalists’ coverage of war became less objective and neutral and more pro-American. It
was inevitable in a situation when an American correspondent lived and worked with the
American soldiers in one team. Moreover, the correspondents who were accompanying the
42
U.S. military units were very often told one thing, and then they usually saw it in a
completely new light when facing the reality. For instance, there was a case of Mary Beth
Sheridan, The Washington Post’s correspondent who was embedded with an American
helicopter brigade. She lived with a group of soldiers in hermetic military bases, where
little news was available and few outsiders were allowed. Besides The Post’s journalist was
frequently told by the pilots that they did not shoot civilians. She believed them because
she had never had a chance to see a real war. Sheridan wrote an article in which she
presented the American soldiers as saviors who came to Iraq to help people and not to kill
them. She changed her opinion only two weeks after the war had began, when she finally
met her first Iraqi civilians. It was a family that had been in a taxi when an American tank
shot it down. Four people were wounded, including two adults and two children, and one
person was dead. Then Sheridan understood that it was this messy reality she was isolated
from (Seib 2004: 56). So, the embedded journalists not always had an access to the center
of the action, and that was one of the reasons why their footage was often flawed and
devoid of context. To give the reader an image and characteristic features of coverage
coming from the embedded reporters during the first week of the war in Iraq, the findings
of the study conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism shall be presented here
(Seib 2004: 55):
•
94 percent of the stories were primarily factual rather than interpretive.
•
60 percent of reports were live and unedited.
•
In 80 percent of the stories, viewers heard only from the reporters, not from
soldiers or other sources.
•
47 percent of the coverage described battles or their results.
•
The reports avoided graphic material; not one of the stories in the study
showed pictures of people being hit by weapons fire (Seib 2004: 55).
They found out that the materials prepared by the embedded journalists had all the features
of the war reality itself. They were “… confusing, incomplete, sometimes numbing,
sometimes intense, and not given to simple story lines” (Embedded Reporters: What Are
Americans Getting?. 2003-04-03, as quoted in Seib 2004: 55). When the independent
journalists were asked about the embedding system they used to say that they did not
believe that their embedded colleagues’ closeness to sources helped them to create better
43
stories. Newsday’s journalist Edward Gargan gave a perfect commentary to the
phenomenon of embedded journalism (Seib 2004: 57): “It’s like being in a cocoon. You
really have an umbilical cord to your unit. That’s not the kind of reporting I want to do”
(Ricchiardi, American Journalism Review, May 2003: 32, as quoted in Seib 2004: 57-58).
When Baghdad was seized by the U.S. forces, many embedded journalists began to leave
the military units company and work on their own. By the end of April 2003 there were
fewer than 200 journalists embedded with the U.S. Army. By September 2003, the number
dropped to about two dozen (Seib 2004: 59, after Skiba, Journalists Embodied Realities of
Iraq War: J3).
3.1.2 Unilaterals
When the war in Iraq started in 2003 the worldwide news organizations sent there
approximately 1800 of their unilaterals. They were also known as the independent
journalists, who instead of having been embedded with a military unit, worked on their
own (Seib 2004: 53). However, it was a very dangerous job because these reporters were
devoid of any protection from the U.S. Army. Usually, they had to organize everything by
themselves – transportation, protection and the most important, the access to the sources of
information. The independent journalists often relied on the Iraqi civilians’ help, who
provided them with transport and served as guides and sometimes as bodyguards. The
Pentagon attitude towards unilaterals was clear from the very beginning of war. The
military representatives stated firmly that the embedded journalists would be treated better
than the unilaterals. When Kuwait prevented some independent correspondents from
entering Iraq, Bryan Whitman the Pentagon spokesperson said (Seib 2004: 53): “We are
going to control the battle space. Reporters that are not embedded are going to be treated
like any other civilian, approached with a certain amount of caution. For many journalists,
proving their identity can sometimes be problematic” (Kurtz, Washington Post, April 3,
2003: C1, as quoted in Seib 2004: 53). The way the independent journalists were treated by
the military personnel varied when different military units are concerned. Usually, the
troops on the battlefield treated unilaterals with courtesy and respect. However, military
officials were rather hostile in relation to the independently working correspondents:
They [military officials] were not happy at all about having journalists on the
battlefield that they did not control, and they made that very clear. And they had
their embedded journalists, and this immediately, in my view, raises an issue….
I think that the army has to rethink and reconsider the way they treat unilateral
journalists, who have, for reasons of the way they operate, to be in the
battlefield or in the war zone and were deliberately hindered. They were not at
all set up to deal with us and not only made our job a lot more difficult, it also
44
made our job a lot more dangerous (Mark Austin, as quoted in Lewis at al.
2006: 92).
In the 2003 Iraq war, foreign independent journalists were also in danger of being thrown
into Iraqi jails. Usually, they were accused of acting as spies. Moreover, Iraqi officials did
not like what they were reporting, so they simply got rid of them (Science in War (New
Media in Modern War). 2007-04-21). And finally, the last issue to be discussed in this
section is personal safety of unilaterals. When the most severe fighting was taking place in
the period between March 22 and late April, about 14 journalists were killed in the war
zone. What seems interesting, it was a greater casualty rate than that of the American forces
in that time. Six of these correspondents were killed by Iraqi fire, the next four by friendly
fire, and three in accidents. The last one died due to a bad medical condition. When the
unilaterals realized that their life is in serious danger, some of them decided to hook up
with military units, where they could have felt safer than they used to before (Seib 2004:
58).
3.1.3 Combat Camera Teams
Fig.26 U.S. Army photo by Spc. Gul A. Alians.
(Defend America (Photo Essays). 2007-05-11)
“Most Americans have seen real-life war footage, from the War on Terrorism air strikes in
Kandahar, to WWII Japenese kamikaze aircraft crashing into Allied Ships at sea. Virtually
all of this dramatic and historic footage was captured by military combat camera units or
their predecessors” (Combat Camera. 2007-04-22). Nowadays, each branch of the military
has Combat Camera units which are trained to work in a joint environment. Usually, a
Combat Camera Team which participate in a particular military operation consists of
photographers from several service, namely the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air
45
Force, which contributes to creation of the entire image of the operation (Capturing the
action. 2007-04-23). The U.S. Navy Combat Camera (COMCAM) unit will be discussed
more in depth in the following section. The major task of the COMCAM is to provide the
various official institutions such as the National Command Authority (NCA), the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Navy, and the Unified Combatant Commands with a
photographic documentation of worldwide crises, wars or military exercises where the U.S.
military personnel are involved, and which will be used for planning during the next
possible conflicts.
Fig.27 U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Jose E Guillen.
(Defend America (Photo Essays). 2007-05-11)
The American Navy is composed of two COMCAM units. The first one, which is known as
Fleet Combat Camera Atlantic (FCCA), is based in Norfolk, VA, and its area of
responsibility ranges from the Mississippi River east to the Persian Gulf. However, the
second COMCAM unit is situated in San Diego, CA, and its name is Fleet Combat Camera
Group Pacific. This team is responsible for the other half of the world. The Combat Camera
Teams are made up of roughly thirty specialists including photographer’s mates,
journalists, and intercommunications mates whose job is to support and repair the broadcast
equipment mainly. Journalists and photographer’s mates are the team members responsible
for documentation of an event. Each COMCAM unit is trained and employed to create and
transmit then a documentation of all the crucial events that took place during the air, sea
and ground military actions. A well trained and equipped Combat Camera Team is
supposed to provide commanders and decision makers with the following (Combat Camera
(COMCAM). 2007-04-23):
46
•
Digital and conventional still photography
•
Digital and conventional video photography
•
Conventional photography & film processing
•
Digital Image Transmission
•
Video editing
•
Night Vision Imagery Acquisition capability (Combat Camera (COMCAM). 200704-23)
Apart from being prepared to take photographs, each member of the COMCAM unit is
trained to go into the battle with their own weapons such as pistols, shotguns, and M16
rifles. It gives them the opportunity to document the most dangerous and inaccessible for
the common journalists frontline operations. For instance, the COMCAM unit’s crew may
even participate in raids, an activity where the civilian press photographers are not allowed
under any circumstances (Combat Camera. 2007-04-23). And finally, the photographs
taken by a Combat Camera Team are usually of a very high quality due to the sophisticated
equipment they are provided with. “With this specification in mind, the FCCA uses a
variety of camcorders, including the Sony DSR-130, DSR-570, PC-120, VX-2000, as well
as the Canon XL 1S. Sony DSR-10, DSR-20, and DSR-40 decks are also used in the field,
and each cameraperson deploys with a Sony VIAO laptop with Avid Xpress DV nonlinear
editing software” (Combat Camera. 2007-04-23). Generally, devices they use must be very
durable and resistant to the harsh weather conditions such as sustained heat, sandstorms or
downpours, and extreme environments they operate in, namely hot and dry deserts or
humid jungles. All these factors have a relevant influence on “be or not to be” of the
COMCAM’s photographic equipment.
3.2 An image of the 2003 Iraq war presented by the American media
The manner the war was covered by the American journalists varies when different media
are taken into consideration. Generally speaking, the U.S. mainstream news TV networks
demonstrated a more ‘pro-war’ point of view in their coverage coming from Iraq. On the
contrary, the U.S. newspapers were characterized by a more hesitant attitude toward the
American participation in war. The most appropriate instance of a news channel propping
up the war in Iraq is Fox News. The first characteristic feature of Fox News footage was a
waving flag animation in the upper left corner of a screen, which appeared every time the
news from Iraq was broadcasted. Another example was a meaningful headline ‘Operation
47
Iraqi Freedom’ emerging along the bottom (2003 invasion of Iraq media coverage. 200704-23).
Fi g. 2 8 Fox Ne w s he a d li ne a n d a n i ma ti on i n t he c ove r a ge f r om Ir a q.
( 2 0 0 3 i nv a si o n of I ra q me di a c ove r a g e. 2 0 0 7 - 0 4- 2 3)
Moreover, some Fox News’ commentators and anchors demonstrated their support for the
war publicly making pro-war comments on the one hand, and discriminating against the
war opponents calling them ‘the Great Unwashed’ on the other hand. Fox News employed
not only the pro-war commentators, but the anti-war ones too. These were people who
demonstrated in their programs anti-war protests and rallies in the United States, anti-U.S.
protests in Iraq and interviews with well known people from the world of politics and
culture who were against war. Such a coverage, however, was transmitted less often than
the pro-war one. Another news channel which introduced a symbol of the American flag on
screen was MSNBC (2003 invasion of Iraq media coverage. 2007-04-23).
Fi g. 2 9 MSNB C Br ea ki n g Ne ws.
( 2 0 0 3 i nv a si o n of I r a q me di a c ove r a g e. 2 0 0 7 - 0 4- 2 3)
48
Besides, to show MSNBC’s pro-war attitude, two more instances shall be demonstrated
here. First of all, MSNBC ran a regular tribute known as “America’s Bravest” the aim of
which was to present photographs sent by family members of soldiers deployed in Iraq.
Secondly, a month before the invasion began this particular news corporation fired Phil
Donahue, a journalist who was too liberal and too critical of Bush’s Iraq policy (2003
invasion of Iraq media coverage. 2007-04-23). As the above examples indicate the
American television did not stay as objective as the American press, which usually
presented two sides of a problem. The main goal of the following chapter is to provide the
reader with the crucial instances of the most characteristic features of the American media
coverage of the 2003 Iraq war.
3.2.1 Sanitized footage of war
This issue [showing graphic photographs of soldiers and civilians killed in the
fighting] also arose on ABC, when Good Morning America host Charles Gibson
said, “Anytime you show dead bodies, it is simply disrespectful, in my
opinion.” Nightline’s Ted Koppel (who was with U.S. forces in Iraq) disagreed,
saying, “I feel we do have an obligation to remind people in the most graphic
way that war is a dreadful thing.” (Kennicott, Washington Post, March 25,
2003: C1, as quoted in Seib 2004: 40).
As the above citation indicates there were two different points of view on the same
problem. Some people believed that showing pictures of dead soldiers or civilians was
useless and unfair to family members of a killed person. The opposite side claimed that
death was an inseparable part of a real picture of war, which should be shown to the
international public opinion. Whatever the opinions were, the fact is that during the 2003
Iraq war there was a tendency to sanitize images coming from the front lines. This kind of
endeavor contributed to distortion of the reality of combat. The scientist working for the
Project for Excellence in Journalism found out that “twenty-one percent of the embedded
television journalists’ stories showed combat action – weapons being fired – and in half of
those stories, viewers saw the firing hit buildings or vehicles” (Seib 2004: 64).
49
Fi g. 3 0 The A me r ic a n f o r ce s i n Kar b ala , Ira q.
( T h e A u t h or : Da vi d Le e s on , T he D al l a s M o rn i n g N e w s / Th e S ou r ce: T o ma sz K as ia k)
However, all of these stories were deprived of images presenting Americans or Iraqis being
killed or injured during the military operations. The study conducted by the same scientists
proved also that still pictures which appeared in the American newspapers were more
graphic and realistic than those which were demonstrated in the American television.
Fi g. 3 1 A n Ir a qi ci vi l i a n w ou n d e d i n a n a er i al b o m b i n g i n B a gh d a d i n f r o nt of U .S.
sol d i er s.
( T h e A u t h or : Da vi d Le e s on , T he D al l a s M o rn i n g N e w s / Th e S ou r ce: T o ma sz K as ia k)
Another factor which had to be considered in finding an answer to the question about how
much to show was real-time technology. The sophisticated technological equipment
available during the war in Iraq allowed the journalists to cover some military actions live,
which was connected with a possibility to show killed or wounded on the air – “live death”.
In such situation news executives had to consider whether publishing of this kind of
pictures would be proper or not (Seib 2004: 64). CBS’s senior vice president of news
coverage, Marcy McGinnis summed it up in such a way – “you could be filming a firefight
live and somebody falls in front of us. You’d have to make the decision if you’d show that
50
again on tape or not. We would not want to be inappropriate or tasteless. That being said,
we’re covering war, so we’re not going to never show the dead or never show the
wounded” (Johnson, Chicago Tribune, March 26, 2003: C3, as quoted in Seib 2004: 64). A
similar problem affected the American print media in those days. There was an incident
when Secretary of the Army Thomas White criticized one of the American privately owned
newspapers, Army Times for publishing a picture presenting a seriously wounded American
soldier and his colleagues carried him away from the area of the severe fighting. The
soldier died the next day, and Thomas White and four other officials disapproved the Army
Time’s “callous disregard for basic standards of decency and the emotions of the family
and loved ones of this brave soldier in their time of grief…” (Seib 2004: 64). The answer
from the newspaper was short and clear. The editor of the paper wrote that running the
picture was a really tough decision to take, but it was the only way to show the public the
real image of war (Seib 2004: 64). The truth is that footage of the 2003 Iraq war was very
similar to that one which was created during the Persian Gulf war – pictures showing the
American technological superiority over the Iraqi fighters and precise and clean actions
without blood and death. In the American mainstream media the second war in Iraq was
demonstrated as another “clean war”.
Fi g. 3 2 E x pl o si on s on t h e ou t sk ir t s of Ka r b a la, I r a q .
( T h e A u t h or : Da vi d Le e s on , T he D al l a s M o rn i n g N e w s / Th e S ou r ce: T o ma sz K as ia k)
51
3.2.2 Technological advancement and its consequences
One of the most striking improvements in real-time technology was the ability
to report live while on the move. CNN used a videophone connected to an
enclosed antenna with a gyroscope-controlled platform that kept the antenna
pointed toward the satellite regardless of the movement of the journalist’s land
vehicle or ship at sea. NBC’s David Bloom reported live while traveling in a
convoy at up to 50 miles per hour by sending his signal to an uplink truck two
miles behind. The truck carried a gyroscope-aided satellite dish encased in a
dome (Seib 2004: 49, after Murrie, Communicator, May 2003: 8).
Moreover, by 2003 pictures taken with employment of satellite photography were “more
precise and more widely available” (Seib 2004: 49) than they used to be only a few years
earlier. In the past conflicts access to particular images from the front lines had been really
limited. Almost all the photographs showing wartime operations had been in the national
security elite possession in that time. During the 2003 Iraq war the situation changed and
everyone with access to the Internet and a credit card could order the pictures. However,
the widespread availability of sophisticated journalistic equipment had some negative
consequences too. First of all, correspondents who worked in Iraq and were creating a realtime coverage day after day were addicted to their equipment. In a situation, when reporters
were supposed to provide live footage throughout the day, they could not indulge in staying
far from their transmission gear. Besides, cleaning out sand from the equipment and
recharging batteries took them so much time that the time they were left with was too little
to do something more useful like gathering news from the both sides of the conflict (Seib
2004: 49). Another problem which was connected with the high quality devices available
during the war in Iraq was technological deception. Digital technology made photography
manipulation easier, which was used by some dishonest journalists. When on March 31,
2003 a picture taken by Los Angeles Times photographer Brian Walski appeared on the
front page of the paper mentioned above and the Hartford Courant something was wrong
about it (Seib 2004: 51). The photograph presented “A British soldier … warning a crowd
of Iraqi civilians to take cover during the fighting near Basra. One of the Iraqi men in the
foreground was holding a small child wrapped in a blanket” (Seib 2004: 51, after Johnston,
American Journalism Review, May 2003: 10). The picture was almost perfect, however, it
had one small flaw, namely one person (Iraqi civilian) appeared twice in it. Later on, it
turned out that the photograph was not real. Brian Walski made it from two different shots.
The first one presented the gesturing soldier, and the second one the Iraqi man carrying a
child. Los Angeles Times journalist used his laptop computer to join the best features of
52
those two photographs and created almost an ideal but unreal picture (Seib 2004: 51, after
Johnston, American Journalism Review, May 2003: 10). In one word, Brian Walski
performed the image presenting an improved version of the war reality which, however,
had nothing in common with real journalism.
Fi g. 3 3 T he f ir st act u a l p h ot o gr a p h.
( C a me r a Wo r ks P h ot o E s say . 2 0 0 7- 0 4 - 2 4)
Fi g. 3 4 T he se c on d a ct ua l p h ot o gr a p h.
( C a me r a Wo r ks P h ot o E s say . 2 0 0 7- 0 4 - 2 4)
Fi g. 3 5 The al te re d p h ot o gr a p h a s p u bl i she d on Mar c h 3 1 .
( C a me r a Wo r ks P h ot o E s say . 2 0 0 7- 0 4 - 2 4)
53
3.2.3 The most symbolic coverage of the 2003 Iraq war
The American media covered two events which were broadcasted by almost every TV
station in the world and which became the most recognizable symbols connected with the
war in Iraq. The first one was the toppling of the big statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
It was a true media event because it received more coverage on television than any other
military operation in those days. It was supposed to symbolize and remind the public
opinion of the major goal of the invasion in Iraq, namely the end of the regime, the
liberation of Iraqi people and finally the end of the war. The character of footage from this
particular event reinforced the impression that the war was approaching to the end (Seib
2004: 61). It demonstrated “the air of celebration and the friendly interaction between
Baghdad residents and U.S. soldiers” (Seib 2004: 61). The television viewers could watch
the crowds of Iraqi civilians who were trying to damage the statue of their political leader
“with a little help from their American friends” (Lewis et al. 2006: 148). However, the
picture the audience was provided with on TV screen was quite far from reality. The
journalists who participated in this event and had a chance to see an every detail of the
action claimed that it was “a somewhat ‘staged’ event, in which the U.S. forces had played
a major role in pulling down the statue and the size of the Iraqi crowd was fairly small”
(Lewis et al. 2006: 149).
Fi g. 3 6 A n Amer ic a n s ol di er c o v e r i n g t he sta t ue’ s fa ce wi t h a n A mer ic a n f la g.
( BB C O n T h is D ay. 2 0 0 7- 0 5- 1 1)
They suggested too that the impression of a crowded square was obtained due to the
employment of closer shots which altered almost empty Paradise Square into “crowded,
overflowing with jubilant Iraqi celebrants” (Lewis et al. 2006: 150) place. Long shots
which, however, were not used in reports coming from Baghdad demonstrated a real image
of the event. As it turned out after analyzing the longer shots “the event took place in a
54
largely empty square, with a group of Iraqis in the middle, American troops to one side,
and a crowd of reporters at right angles to them” (Lewis et al. 2006: 150).
Fi g. 3 7 T he t op p l i n g of Sa d d a m H usse i n’ s sta t ue.
( BB C Ne w s. 2 0 0 7- 0 5- 1 1 )
In spite of the existing evidence that the event which took place in the middle of Paradise
Square was not as exciting as it was shown in television, some American news channels
were still covering it with a huge dose of exuberance. For instance, NBC started their
broadcast on April, 9 with such words: “Overjoyed Iraqis swarmed into the streets of
Baghdad, dancing, celebrating, ripping up images of Saddam Hussein, welcoming U.S.
Marines with flowers and kisses” (Lewis et al. 2006: 152). The second example of the most
symbolic event shown by the American media is the recapture of nineteen-year-old Army
Pfc.(Private First Class) Jessica Lynch. The whole event took place on March 23 in
Nasiriyah, in central Iraq. The unit Jessica Lynch was working with was ambushed there,
and she was captured by Iraqi forces. Lynch was a passenger in the humvee (High Mobility
Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle) which driver lost control of the vehicle when it was struck
by a rocket-propelled grenade, and crashed into a truck later on. Two soldiers who were
sitting in the back seat, and the driver were dead, however, Jessica Lynch survived and was
taken from the wreckage of the car to an Iraqi hospital. She was given medical treatment
there, which contributed to saving her life. On April 1, U.S. special operations forces
organized an action of Jessica Lynch recapturing. The above story is a real picture of the
events that happened that day which, however, is completely different from an image
demonstrated by the American media.
55
Fi g. 3 8 Jes si ca L yn c h r e c a pt ur i n g.
( The E d ge . 2 0 0 7- 0 5- 1 2)
For instance, The Washington Post created s story headlined “She Was Fighting to the
Death” (Seib 2004: 74). The Post’s version of events from March 23 was as follows:
… during the Nasiriyah ambush Lynch “fought fiercely and shoot several
enemy soldiers…firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition.” Lynch,
said the story, “continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple
gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around
her….’She was fighting to the death,’ the official said. ‘She did not want to be
take alive.’ Lynch was also stabbed when Iraqi forces closed in on her position,
the official said.” (Seib 2004: 74).
Only a few hours after The Post had published the incredible story, the evidence
confirming its falsity was founded. First of all, “the commander of the Army hospital in
Germany where Lynch was being treated said there was no evidence of gunshot wounds”
(Seib 2004: 75). Moreover, The Post after the interview with Lynch’s father quoted his
words confirming the above information. So, on the one hand the newspaper provided the
readers with the “Lynch-as-Rambo” (Seib 2004: 74) story, and on the other hand during the
next ten days it was publishing texts containing “contradictory information from unnamed
military and medical personnel concerning the nature of her [Lynch] injuries” (Seib 2004:
75). Generally speaking, the story about the rescue of Private Lynch resembled a
Hollywood-type performance much more (Lewis et al. 2006: 53), than an objective and
truthful coverage. Why did the American media act in this way? The answer is obvious,
namely to earn more money. The fact is that, although the story was far from reality it was
so fascinating and irresistible that the public was picking it up around the world.
56
The above chapter gave the reader a general idea what was the characteristic image
of the 2003 Iraq war in the American media. Besides, it demonstrated all the most relevant
advantages and disadvantages of those days’ coverage of war. As it turned out there were,
however, more disadvantages. One of them, the most visible one, was the quality of
journalism – “but how good was the journalism, in the sense of not just telling the audience
what was happening in a particular place at a particular moment, but also helping people
understand matters such as why the war was being fought and what its ramifications
were?” (Seib 2004: 60). Unfortunately, it was completely lost somewhere between the
image of the Americans striking Iraqi targets and the picture of Iraqi civilians welcoming
their liberators, namely American soldiers.
57
Conclusion
Mój kolega, reporter brytyjski Philip Knightley napisał książkę o
korespondentach wojennych pod tytułem The First Casualty – „Pierwsza
ofiara”. Co jest pierwszą ofiarą wojny? Prawda. Autor dokonał przeglądu
wydarzeń od wojny krymskiej, od połowy XIX wieku, do czasów wojny
wietnamskiej i porównał to z tym, co o tych wydarzeniach pisała prasa
angielska. Otrzymał dwa różne obrazy: ten prawdziwy, historyczny, i ten
zupełnie odmienny, nakreślony przez prasę [My friend and a British reporter –
Philip Knightley wrote a book about war correspondents under the title of The
First Casualty. What is the first casualty of war? Truth. The author carefully
looked through the events from the Crimean War in the middle of the 19th
century to the Vietnam War times, and then compared it with the British press
coverage of these events. He achieved two different images: the true one,
historical, and a totally different one, created by the press (Kapuściński 2006:
109).
However, what seems to be interesting in the light of numerous examples demonstrated in
the above paper is the fact that there is not only a one pattern of truth common for all the
people around the world. Every person according as the goals they want to achieve are has
their own version of what is generally known as ‘truth’. For instance, in the time of war the
public may feel confused due to huge anomalies emerging in the pieces of information
coming from the area of conflict. The reason behind this abnormal situation is, however,
quite obvious. The reports on the war course come from different sources. First of all, when
a government is considered, one should be aware of the fact, that it has its own purposes in
participating in war, which usually are kept in secret and never revealed to the public
knowledge. Moreover, to get support for war from the society, the government has ‘to
create the reality’ which will not be too harmful and overwhelming. So, the government
officials impose many restrictions on the war correspondents who for example are
forbidden to show the images of dead soldiers or civilians to the public, which in reality is
an inseparable element of the wartime. Secondly, there is an army which cooperates with
the government in a way, however, it has quite different aims when taking part in war. The
major goal of the army is to protect the soldiers’ lifes and secure as much operational
security as possible. However, such attitude toward war contributes to significant
limitations put on the revealed information. Simply, the army representatives cannot talk
about and show such things as the exact plans of military operations or locations of the
military bases due to the threat of the enemy possible attacks. It causes that the worldwide
public is provided with the abridged version of war reality. And finally, the media’s ‘truth’
58
shall be demonstrated. As it was already said, there are many restrictions imposed on the
journalists by the government and the army, which do not allow them to gather all the
relevant information from the front lines. Besides, even though the war correspondents do
their best and try to be objective delivering the news from both sides of the conflict, the
press agencies’ and the huge broadcasting companies’ managers see through the whole
material very carefully and select the most sensational one which attracts more viewers,
readers, and listeners and allows them to earn more money. So, there is still a huge gulf
between what a journalist wants to present to the public and what is really shown to them
by the media. The above description suits perfectly to the situation of the present-day
American media which have been developing from the time of the World War One untill
today. The fact is that no matter whether these media are objective and truthful or not, they
are most certainly the most influential, wealthy and expansive ones. Considering the
general state of the American mainstream media in the near future, only one more question
arises. Are they going to be associated with quality and objectivity or maybe with quantity
and superficiality?
59
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