Page 231 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

effort. It was very much a PR show – to show the Fleet leaving,
both for British opinion, to rally them behind the ships and as an
expression of power for world opinion and, of course, the enemy’
(ibid., p. 19).
For the reporting of good news, then, the media were most
welcome and were treated accordingly. Beyond this role as trans-
mitters of symbolic demonstrations of military power, the media
were also used to confuse and ‘disinform’ the enemy. When, for
example, landings on the Falklands were being prepared, misleading
information was leaked to the media, thence to the public and, of
course, the Argentinians.
Whether or not one agrees with the ‘justness’ of the Falklands
War and the government’s information policy during it, there is no
doubt, as Robert Harris concludes, ‘that in many respects the
British people were not given the facts during the Falklands war.
Information was leaked out slowly and often reluctantly by the
Ministry of Defence; rumours were allowed to circulate unchecked;
and the British authorities frequently used the media as an
instrument with which to confuse the enemy’ (1983, p. 92). Such
tactics may or may not have contributed to British military success
in the Falklands, but they certainly helped to revive the political
fortunes of the Thatcher government, which went on to win
landslide general election victories in 1983 and 1987. In this
sense, the conflict – and media reportage of it – had major political
ramifications.
Harris also notes that ‘the Falklands conflict may well prove the
last war in which the armed forces are completely able to control
the movements and communications of the journalists covering it.
Technology has already overtaken the traditional concepts of war
reporting’ (ibid., p. 150). This prediction has turned out to be
wrong. In the next section we consider a succession of conflicts,
culminating in the Gulf War of 1991, which demonstrate that the
control of media coverage of military conflict for political purposes
has increased, rather than decreased, since the Falklands War. The
success of the Thatcher government in controlling media images of
the Falklands War was not an anachronism but the beginning of a
trend.

The Gulf and other wars

For the US government of Ronald Reagan, still smarting from the
perceived mistakes of the Vietnam War, British media policy in

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