Page 213 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 192

COMMUNICATING POLITICS
in Harris, 1983, p. 149). The Falklands conflict saw this policy being applied
for the first time although, as noted, the intervention of Ingham secured the
availability of 28 as opposed to 12 places.
When the pool had been assembled and the task force departed on the
long journey to the Falklands, the military’s unease with the journalists was
further reflected in a general lack of co-operation with, even obstruction of,
journalists’ efforts to produce material for their organisations back in
Britain. While all the journalists accepted the legitimacy of censorship on
security criteria, it soon became clear that they were also under pressure not
to report things which could be construed as ‘damaging’ to the morale of the
troops and could show the forces in a negative light to the public as a whole
(such as brawls between soldiers on board ship).
When the task force reached the islands and the conflict proper began,
reports were censored on grounds of taste and tone (the deletion of exple-
tives, for example, or what were regarded by the military as potentially
morale-damaging accounts of British setbacks). Most notoriously, television
pictures were prevented from being shown – on the grounds that satellite
facilities were unavailable – for several weeks after being taken. Robert
Harris’s study of the media’s role in the conflict notes that ‘without satellite
facilities, film from the task force simply had to be put on the next ship
heading back to Ascension [the military base where facilities were available
for television transmission]. In an age of supposedly instant communication,
what were perhaps the most eagerly awaited television pictures in the world
travelled homewards at a steady 25 knots’ (1983, p. 59).
Back in London Ministry of Defence briefings, conducted by the depart-
ment’s deputy chief of public relations, Ian MacDonald, were minimalistic
in the extreme, often failing to clarify important information such as the
name of a sinking battleship, or details or casualties. Off the record briefings
were not provided, preventing journalists from producing reports which, if
they did not reveal very much of a specific nature, would at least have
enabled the country as a whole to know what was happening. One observer
suggests that the government’s ‘closed’ information policy on the Falklands
was counter-productive, in this respect:

the failure to brief the media off the record led to all sorts of diffi-
culties. Unable to check on a number of facts and lacking any form
of in-confidence briefing, the media reported all they saw and heard.
Worse still they speculated. The result was a mass of information
about ship movements, the composition of the task force, weapons
capabilities and continuous comment about the various options
open to the task force.
(Alan Hooper, quoted in Adams, 1986, p. 8)

Official reticence in this respect led to the famous observation by Peter
Snow on BBC’s Newsnight programme, ‘if the British are to be believed’. 4

192