Page 220 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

we as citizens are to ‘take seriously the concept of informed consent
in a democracy’ (1992, p.150) do we not have the right to expect a
fuller, more complete picture of an event of such importance as the
Gulf conflict?
Those who argue that we do have such a right criticised the
Western media—and those of Britain and the United States in
particular —for so meekly embracing the pool system, the sanitised
information and disinformation coming out of Dhahran and Riyadh,
and the frequent censorship of journalistic material which occurred,
as in the Falklands, for reasons of ‘taste and tone’ rather than
military security. The media, it is argued, should have applied its
Fourth Estate, watchdog role to the event with more vigour, giving
citizens a genuine opportunity to judge the rights and wrongs of
allied policy, and the appropriateness of the military response to
the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Thankfully, the argument continues,
allied casualties were not on the scale of Vietnam, but if they had
been, or if the conflict had sucked in Israel, Syria and the other
Arab states, would we have been able to give or withhold our
‘informed consent’?
The media’s general acceptance of the military’s close management
and control of their newsgathering was a product, firstly, of
straightforward commercial criteria. The experience of the early
1980s conflicts discussed above had shown the capacity of the military
to exclude journalists from the field of operations, and their readiness
to use this power. Media organisations accepted the pool system in
the Gulf, and the restrictions which it entailed, in the knowledge
that the alternative was exclusion. None of the US networks, or the
major US newspapers, was prepared to pay this price and see its
rivals gain access and commercial advantage. In Britain, too,
organisations like the BBC and ITN willingly co-operated with the
military and its demands, on the grounds that, if they did not, someone
else would.
In addition to commercial considerations, media organisations
were undoubtedly influenced in their editorial policies by the nature
of the conflict, and the relatively unambiguous distinction between
right and wrong which it presented. Many have noted correctly the
hypocrisy inherent in the allies’ position: it was they who armed
and supported Saddam Hussein as he engaged in a murderous war
with Iran, and gassed his civilians at Halabja and elsewhere. Despite
the cries of moral outrage against Hussein’s behaviour during the
invasion and occupation of Kuwait, he was behaving more or less
as he had always done. This time, unfortunately for him, he had

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