Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND DEMOCRACY
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succession to the Labour leadership in 1994 and his election victories in 1997,
2001 and 2005 are in accord with Mrs Thatcher in one critical way: image control
was always a priority (Rawnsley, 2000).
Another dimension of information management is intimidation especially, but
not only, of television organisations. During the 1980s there was a good deal of
this, from a general antipathy towards the BBC because of its state funding and
the conviction of some Tories that it was not ‘one of us’, to direct attacks on
coverage of many issues, especially concerning Northern Ireland (Bolton, 1990).
Intimidation is often supplemented by censorship, and over the last several
decades there has been primary evidence of this. The banning in 1988 of Sinn
Fein from British television, the clumsy, ultimately ludicrous attempt to prevent
the publication of former MI5 employee Peter Wright’s memoirs, and the revelation
that all news and current affairs staff appointments were vetted by a secret
service staff member located in the BBC’s Broadcasting House are major indices
of such processes (Leigh and Lashmar, 1985).
All three features of information management – information packaging, intimidation
and censorship – together with government secrecy that is the reverse
side of the same coin, are especially evident in conditions of crisis. Here nothing
is more compelling than circumstances of war and terrorist activity, things that
Britain has experienced in Northern Ireland since the early 1970s, in the Falklands
in 1982, in Iraq in 1991 as well as in 2003, and in Kosovo in 1999. Each of these
has demonstrated that information has become an integral part of the military
campaign, not least that which is for domestic consumption, since public opinion
can bear decisively on the outcome of a war effort.
In situations where the ‘enemy’ has limited access to media outlets (for
pressing organisational, moral and political reasons), and where the military goal
is pursuit of victory (rather than truth-seeking), opportunities for distortion and
dissembling are plentiful and motivations to deceive are easy to understand. As
such the media are readily regarded by politicians and the military alike as a
means of fighting the enemy, hence as instruments of propaganda. In addition,
ever since the American defeat in Vietnam and the emergence of the argument
that it was lost owing to an uncontrolled press and television corps (Elegant,
1981; Hallin, 1986), there has developed much more self-consciousness about
‘planning for war’ on the part of the authorities. Thus during the Falklands War
restrictions were placed on journalists’ access to the theatre of battle, and each
was allocated a military ‘minder’ to ensure proper behaviour; more recently this
system has been extended to militarily ‘accredited’ journalists in time of war (i.e.
to get reporters to agree to censorship).
The drawn-out conflict in Northern Ireland revealed routine manipulation of
information (Curtis, 1984; Schlesinger, 1987), but it was after the Falklands War
that information management became markedly more organised (Ministry of
Defence, 1983, 1985). A result was a highly effective PR machine in operation
during the 1991 Gulf conflict, media coverage of which was unprecedented in
scale yet antiseptic in content. The framework was built around the Allies’ point
of view and their terminology, hence we heard much of ‘surgical’ air strikes and
‘pinpoint accuracy’ of bombing, but little if anything of human destruction, a
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