Page 227 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

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 coverage was among the most restricted
of all post-Second World War conflicts. Journalists were confronted
with censorship, disinformation, misinformation, 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 avail-
ability 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 influenced 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
aforementioned technical constraints. In terms of content, the
policy amounted to restricting images of British military failures
while allowing positive images of success.

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