Page 217 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 196

COMMUNICATING POLITICS
pursued with confidence. As John Macarthur puts it in his study of US
media management during the conflict, ‘on August 2, when Hussein
grabbed Kuwait, he stepped beyond the imaginings of the practitioners of
real-politik. Suddenly more was required than manipulation by leak.
Convincing Americans to fight a war to liberate a tiny Arab sheikdom
ruled by a family oligarchy would require the demonisation of Hussein in
ways never contemplated by human rights groups. It called for a frontal
assault on public opinion such as had not been seen since the Spanish–
American war. The war had to be sold’ (ibid., p. 42).
Pursuing these objectives in the Gulf was never going to be as easy as had
been the case in the Falklands, Grenada or Panama. The geographical
location of the conflict, and its international dimension, inevitably increased
its media accessibility and newsworthiness. Media organisations, particu-
larly the television crews of CNN, the BBC and others, had access to more
sophisticated communications technology, such as portable satellite trans-
mission equipment, than had been the case even a few years before.
Furthermore, many Western journalists located themselves in Iraq, beyond
the reach of allied military censors, before hostilities proper began.
Despite these environmental factors, the allies could still have prevented
journalists reporting the conflict, had they been inclined to do so. As
Macarthur points out, however, the war had to be ‘sold’ as well as fought
and won. Indeed, as noted earlier the two procedures were, by the end of the
twentieth century, closely related. It was not therefore in the interests of the
anti-Hussein coalition to block all coverage, and so to antagonise inter-
national public opinion by denying it information. Better by far to ensure
that the information about, and images of, the conflict which made it into
the public domain were compatible, as far as possible, with the allies’
military and political objectives. This resulted in the Gulf War and its build-
up being conducted against the backdrop of a sophisticated information
management and public relations campaign.
From the onset of the crisis journalistic access to the crucial areas was
restricted, with the US and its allies co-operating in the establishment of a
‘pool’ system. As the New York Times put it, ‘the Gulf war marked this
century’s first major conflict where the policy was to confine reporters to
escorted pools that sharply curtailed when and how they could talk to the
troops’ (quoted in Macarthur, 1992, p. 7). One hundred and fifty US military
‘public affairs’ officers were assigned to shepherd the journalists of the
‘National Media Pool’ around the desired locations, and to keep them away
from sensitive areas. The British army deployed its apparatus of public
relations officers to perform the same function.
At the front, journalists were formed into ‘Media Reporting Teams’,
closely watched over by the military PROs who accompanied the troops
during their training and, when the time came, into battle. With the
exception of a few ‘unilaterals’ (Taylor, 1992) such as Robert Fisk of the

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