Page 240 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

while journalists were prevented or dissuaded from presenting
alternative accounts of the ‘truth’.
Perhaps the most disturbing feature of the Gulf war as political
communication was its demonstration of how readily such
messages as the incubator story were accepted and passed on by
journalists eager for material to confirm their image of Saddam as a
tyrannical violator of human rights. When ‘Gulf War II’ threatened
to break out in 1998, lurid and frightening images of the biological
and nerve gas weapons which Saddam Hussein was allegedly
building, and which could wipe out a Western European city, were
reported by the media as uncontestable truths, rather than what
they were – unsubstantiated speculations which were being used to
whip up public opinion behind another military campaign against
Iraq. Few observers doubt that Saddam Hussein was in 1991, and
remained afterwards, a murderous individual, heading a genocidal,
fascist regime. This does not excuse journalists from the responsi-
bility of reporting his government’s activities, and those of the
Western powers ranged against him, with a degree of emotional
distance and objectivity, especially if this could mean the difference
between peace and war.
This responsibility arose again in the aftermath of September 11,
when the generalised slogan of ‘war against terror’ was invoked to
legitimise military action against Saddam Hussein. In the months
after September 11 both the British and US governments pursued
a campaign to persuade their own publics, and the international
community, that Saddam was indeed a threat sufficient to justify his
regime’s destruction. The British government dossier on Iraq’s
Weapons of Mass Destruction, published after much anticipation
on 24 September 2002, was accompanied by argument and counter-
argument, from politicians and media, as to the true significance of
its contents. Which was as it should have been. As in previous
episodes of the decade-long conflict between the west and Iraq,
recognition of the fascistic nature of Saddam’s regime did not
absolve the media from their democratic duty to ensure that major
war in the Middle East was not being entered into lightly, and that
military force was indeed a last resort rather than a hasty knee-jerk
reaction to the September 11 attacks.
In future conflicts the issues may not be so clear cut as they
have been in relation to Iraq, the moral and military choices
more ambiguous. As media management techniques advance and
grow ever more all-encompassing, how are we as citizens of the
twenty-first century to give ‘informed consent’ to our governments’

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