The War Correspondent

Greg McLaughlin

Description

What is the role of the war reporter today? Through interviews with prominent war and foreign correspondents such as John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Mary Dejevsky and Alex Thomson The War Correspondent delves into the most dangerous form of journalism.



From Crimea to Vietnam, the Falklands to the Gulf and Afghanistan, Iraq and the War on Terror, the books examines the attractions and risks of war reporting; the challenge of objectivity and impartiality in the war zone; the danger that journalistic independence is compromised by military control, censorship and public relations; as well as the commercial and technological pressures of an intensely concentrated, competitive news media environment.



As history and ideology return to the reporting of international conflict, Greg McLaughlin asks what will that mean for a new generation of war correspondents, attuned not to history or ideology but to the politics of the next conflict.
Acknowledgements Abbreviations

1. Introduction

Part I: The War Correspondent in Historical Perspective

2. The War Correspondent: Risk, Motivation and Tradition

3. Journalism, Objectivity and War

4. From Luckless Tribe to Wireless Tribe: The Impact of Media Technologies on War Reporting

Part II: The War Correspondent and the Military

5. Getting to Know Each Other: From Crimea to Vietnam

6. Learning and Forgetting: From the Falklands to the Gulf

7. Goodbye Vietnam Syndrome: The Embed System in Afghanistan and Iraq

Part III: The War Correspondent and Ideological Frameworks

8. Reporting the Cold War and the New World Order

9. Reporting the ‘War on Terror’ and the Return of the Evil Empire

10. Conclusions: ‘Telling Truth To Power’ – the Ultimate Role of the War Correspondent?

Appendices

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Style Manuals
• Disciplines
• Language Arts
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Lettres et linguistique
• Censorship
• Jeremy Bowen
• List of terrorist incidents in London
• Ministry of Defence
• War correspondent
• Peace
• New World Order
• 9
• 11
• Paix

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 février 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783717583
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

Te War CorrespondentTe War Correspondent
Fully updated second edition
Greg McLaughlinFirst published 2002
Fully updated second edition frst published 2016 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Greg McLaughlin 2002, 2016
Te right of Greg McLaughlin to be identifed as the author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3319 9 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3318 2 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7837 1758 3 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7837 1760 6 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7837 1759 0 EPUB eBook

Tis book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the
country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the European Union and United States of AmericaTo Sue with love Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviationsx
1 Introduction1
PART I: THE WAR CORRESPONDENT IN HISTORICAL
PERSPECTIVE
2 The War Correspondent: Risk, Motivation and Tradition9
3 Journalism, Objectivity and War 33
4 From Luckless Tribe to Wireless Tribe: The Impact of Media
Technologies on War Reporting 63
PART II: THE WAR CORRESPONDENT AND THE MILITARY
5 Getting to Know Each Other: From Crimea to Vietnam 93
6 Learning and Forgetting: From the Falklands to the Gu118lf
7 Goodbye Vietnam Syndrome: The Embed System in
Afghanistan and Iraq 141
PART III: THE W AR CORRESPONDENT AND IDEOLOGICAL
FRAMEWORKS
8 Reporting the Cold War and the New World Order 161
9 Reporting the ‘War on Terror’ and the Return of the Evil
Empire 190
10 Conclusions: ‘Telling Truth To Power’ – the Ultimate Role of
the War Correspondent? 214the war correspondent
APPENDICES
Appendix 1 International Press Institute: Recommendations
to News Organisations for Improving Journalists’
Safety 221
Appendix 2 The ‘Surviving Hostile Regions’ Course for War
Correspondents222
Appendix 3 British Ministry of Defence (MoD) Green Book
Guidelines for the British Media Reporting the
Gulf War, 1991 224
Appendix 4 US Military Ground Rules for Media Reporting
of the Gulf War, 1991 225
Appendix 5 US Department of Defense (DoD) Public Affairs
Guidance (2003) for Embedded Reporters 226
Appendix 6 British Ministry of Defence (MoD) Green Book,
2013: Working Arrangements with the Media for
Use Through the Full Spectrum of Conflict 229
Appendix 7 British Newspaper Descriptions of President Putin
During the Crimea Crisis, 21 February–20 March
2014 231
Appendix 8 British Newspaper Descriptions of President Putin’s
Policies and Actions During the Crimea Crisis,
21 February–20 March 2014 234
Notes236
Bibliography245
Index 259
viiiAcknowledgements
Warm thanks and appreciation to the people who helped me see this
book through to completion and into production:
At Pluto Press, commissioning editor, David Castle, for his priceless
patience and wise counsel; managing editor, Robert Webb, for his expert
supervision of the book’s production; copy editor Nuala Ernest for her
guidance and advice; and Melanie Patrick and her colleagues, Emily
Orford, Kieran O’Connor and Chris Browne, for their superb cover
design and promotional work.
At the University of Ulster, my good friends and colleagues Martin
McLoone, for his constructive comments on early drafts, and Stephen
Baker for his valuable review of the final manuscript; Head of School,
Colm Murphy, for giving me time and space when most needed; and
Carol, Sally and Lisa for their amazing admin support and for keeping
me grounded.
Thanks once again to the journalists who provided such great
interview material for the first edition: Christiane Amanpour, Martin
Bell, Victoria Brittain, Robert Fisk, Nik Gowing, Lindsey Hilsum, Mark
Laity, Jacques Leslie, Jake Lynch, Mike Nicholson, Maggie O’Kane, John
Pilger, John Simpson, Alex Thomson and Mark Urban; and to NATO
press secretary, Jamie Shea. Their insights and arguments have stood the
test of time so many years later. Special thanks also to Mary Dejevsky
and Alex Thomson for giving me such rich interview material for this
new edition.
On the home front, the love and faith of my mum, brothers and sisters
was as crucial as always. But I don’t think I would have made it to the end
without Sue and her endless love, belief and support.
Míle buíochas do gach duine.
ixAbbreviations
ABC American Broadcasting Company
AP Associated Press
APTN Associated Press Television News
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BEF British Expeditionary Force
CBS Columbia Broadcasting System
CINCLANT Commander-in-Chief of the US Atlantic Fleet
CNN Cable News Network
CPJ Committee to Protect Journalists
DoD Department of Defense (US)
FEC Far Eastern Command
IDF Israel Defence Forces
IED Improvised Explosive Device
INSS Institute for National Security Studies
IPI International Press Institute
ITN Independent Television News
MoD Ministry of Defence (UK)
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NBC National Broadcasting Company
PAG Public Affairs Guidance
PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder
RTLM Radio-Television Libre des Milles Collines
SAS Special Air Service
SORH Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
UN United Nations
x1
Introduction
William Howard Russell is widely regarded as one of the fir-st war cor
respondents to write for a commercial daily newspaper. He became
famous for his dispatches from the Crimean War, 1854–56, f or The
Times and he seemed to appreciate that he was blazing a trail for a new
breed of journalist, calling himself the ‘miserable parent of a luckless
tribe’. Charles Page, an American contemporary of Russell, also seemed
to see the miserable and luckless side of the job. In an article entitled An
Invalid’s Whims...The Miseries of Correspondents, he compared himself
and his colleagues to invalids, ‘proverbially querulous and unreasonable.
They may fret and scold, abuse their toast and their friends, scatter their
maledictions and their furniture’ (1898, p. 143). The war
correspondent, he warned, ‘will inevitably write things that will offend somebody.
Somebody will say harsh things of you, and perhaps seek you out to
destroy you. Never mind. Such is a part of the misery of correspondents’
(ibid., p. 146). During the Anglo Zulu war of 1879, a ‘Special
Correspondent’ for the Natal Witn (19 Jess une) complained that ‘[To] enthusiastic
persons, the position of War Correspondent may be a very pretty one...
but a little practical experience of such work will rub off a great deal of
its gloss’ (Laband and Knight, 1996, p. v).
More recent and contemporary accounts suggest these impressions
have changed little since the nineteenth century. In Dis, M picathchaeesl
Herr recalls some of the things political commentators and newspaper
columnists called him and his colleagues during the course of the Vietnam
War. They were called ‘thrill freaks, death-wishers, wound-seekers,
war-lovers, hero-worshippers, closet queens, dope addicts, low-grade
alcoholics, ghouls, communists [and] seditionists [...]’ (1978, p. 183).
With the growth of media journalism in the 1990s, the media reporting
the media, war reporting has become a story itself. Coverage of war is
bound to feature articles and TV programmes looking at various issues
that reporters face in the war zone. As the first bombs fell on Afghanistan
1the war correspondent
in October, 2001, the Independencta rried a special feature item on 13
October, highlighting the conditions experienced by journalists who
were not even in the country a week but were already missing their home
comforts: ‘Reporters live on bread, onions and water from gutter’; ‘Foreign
correspondents are down to one lavatory per 45 people’. The capture by
the Taliban of the Sunday Ex rpreepssorter Yvonne Ridley seemed to
put these discomforts into perspective, if we were to believe ‘a world
exclusive’ in the Daily Expr, pessublished just after her eventual release
on 8 October 2001. The front-page splash highlighted Ridley’s ‘Taliban
Hell’, in which she lay captive in a ‘filthy, rat-infested prison cell’, ‘went
on hunger strike’ and ‘fought with vicious guards’. She even ‘risked death
to keep secret diary for Expr ressaders’ (9 October 2001). According
to Ridley, the true story was rather less dramatic. She told the media
that the prison conditions were bearable and that the Taliban treated
1her well I .n coincidence with Ridley’s release, the British Broadcasting
Corporation’s (BBC’s) chief news correspondent, Kate Adie, was being
pilloried by the British popular press for allegedly revealing embargoed
information about Prime Minister Tony Blair’s itinerary in the Middle
East, where he was undertaking a tour to drum up Arab support for
the war in Afghanistan. In fact, she inadvertently confirmed a leading
question from her news anchor about Blair’s next stop. Amid furious
complaints from 10 Downing Street, the BBC failed to protect her from
the flak even in the wake of a full front page headlin e fSun r: ‘om Sac Thek
Kate Adie!’(10 October 2001). Adie threatened libel action aga inst The
Sun and suggested that the original breach of security, such that it was,
lay with 10 Downing Street for the way in which they briefed the media.
Some critics suspected sinister government spin because it seemed all
too convenient that the row helped deflect public attention away from
2difficult domestic stories.
There are other impressions and depictions of the war reporter in
the wider culture. The movies usually depict journalists as hard-boiled,
cynical or dissolute scoundrels; but in films such as (dirSalva. dor
Oliver Stone, 1983) or The Killing Fie (dirlds . Roland Joffé, 1984), the
war corr