Page 237 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

There was, in short, an exceptionally high degree of consensus
around the legitimacy of Allied war aims, shared even by those who
criticised the sanitisation and voluntary censorship of coverage
exhibited by the main media. To an extent not seen since the Second
World War, operation Desert Storm was viewed as a ‘just’ war.
The Allies’ carefully controlled account of the conflict was not
entirely unchallenged, however. Earlier we noted that throughout
the conflict there were Western journalists present in the Iraqi
capital, Baghdad. CNN’s Peter Arnett, in particular, provided
information which, if not hostile to the allies’ cause, frequently
contradicted the public relations emanating from Riyadh. When,
for example, US bombs destroyed an air-raid shelter in Baghdad,
killing hundreds of civilians and shattering the concept of a ‘clean’
war, CNN and other Western television organisations were present
to film the aftermath, disseminating images of death and destruc-
tion to the global audience. Saddam’s administration of course
welcomed such coverage, and tolerated the presence of Western
journalists in Baghdad in the belief that they could, by their focus
on civilian casualties, cause greater damage to the Allies’ military
effort than to Iraq’s. Fortunately for the Iraqis (if not for Saddam)
civilian casualties were low, given the ferocity of the Allies’
bombing, and the effort to have Iraq portrayed as the wronged
party was unsuccessful. Eventually, most of the Western journalists
were expelled from the country, with the exception of CNN and a
handful of other organisations.
Saddam also used Western media to pursue a more ‘pro-active’
public relations campaign. Before hostilities began Saddam was
filmed greeting the foreigners who had been trapped in Kuwait by
his invasion. More notoriously, he attempted to use British children
to portray himself as a kindly ‘Uncle Saddam’ figure, but succeeded
only in sickening international public opinion with his implied
threat of what might happen to the hostages should his invasion of
Kuwait be resisted.
After operation Desert Storm had commenced, images of
captured Allied airmen, visibly brutalised, were shown on Iraqi
television and then through Western television organisations to the
rest of the world. As Philip Taylor notes, these and other efforts to
influence international public opinion through the use of media
were ‘ill conceived and badly researched’ (1992, p. 90), alienating
rather than attracting support for the Iraqi cause. ‘If Saddam
had been attempting to exploit the Vietnam Syndrome to create
public dissatisfaction with the [Allied] war effort, the apparently

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