Page 211 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 190

COMMUNICATING POLITICS
The military option was not the only one available for dealing with the
Argentinians. Economic and diplomatic sanctions could have been used
more aggressively by the British government, as they have been used against
many other countries in recent history. Once the military option had been
decided upon, however, the Falklands conflict became a war of news and
opinion management, as much as one of armed force. Throughout, the British
government, like the Americans in Vietnam, had to counter domestic and
international opposition to its preferred means of resolving the conflict. That
Margaret Thatcher and her ministers succeeded where the Americans failed
was due not least to the degree of control which they exercised over public
images of the war. Few observers would dispute the view that media cover-
age was among the most restricted of all post-Second World War conflicts.
Journalists were confronted with censorship, disinformation, misinforma-
tion, and political intimidation in the course of the government’s efforts to
ensure a favourable (from its perspective) portrayal of the conflict. Despite
the limited character of the war, government information policy was to treat
it as a matter of national survival, and to manipulate and constrain coverage
accordingly.
Its ability to do this was greatly facilitated by the fact that the Falklands
conflict was fought 8,000 miles away from Britain (and from most of the
rest of the world) on territory and in conditions relatively inaccessible to
media organisations. Although the availability of electronic newsgathering
technology could have permitted live coverage of the conflict (of the type
which later that year accompanied the Israeli invasion of Lebanon) the
geographical isolation of the Falkland Islands was an obvious obstacle for
media organisations. Electronic newsgathering, if it is to be truly ‘live’,
requires the use of communication satellites. Access to these was not easy in
the Falklands. Robert Harris’s study of media–government relations during
the conflict notes that ‘the special circumstances of the Falklands campaign
ensured that the government had unique control over how the war appeared
on television. Because there were no satellite facilities, the MOD could
regulate the flow of pictures and deodorise the war in a way that few other
democratic governments – especially recent administrations in the US – have
been able to get away with’ (1983, p. 61).
Technical constraints would always have influenced coverage of the
conflict, then, even if the political environment had been more favourable to
the media.
As it was, however, technical problems in the communication of news
about the conflict were only the least of the journalists’ difficulties. From the
outset, the British government pursued an information policy heavily influ-
enced by the US experience in Vietnam, and the perception that excessive
openness on the part of the authorities had contributed to a loss of morale
on the ‘home front’. Thus, the British authorities opted for a policy of tight
control of information and imagery, often justified in terms of the afore-

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