Spring 2004 - University of Kent

The media: part of the
MARK LAITY
Mark Laity is Special Adviser to the Supreme Allied Commander
Europe, Commander of all NATO operations, and Senior Fellow at the
Centre for Defence Studies at King’s College London. This article was
adapted from an Open Lecture he gave at the University in December.
He is pictured (centre) above with (L) US Chairman of Committee of the Chiefs of the Military Medical Services in
NATO (COMEDS) and (R) Surgeon General of Belgian Armed Forces, General Roger Van Hoof, during their joint press
conference on the health effects of depleted uranium.
Photos: PA Photos
It’s not new that the media matter. It was
Napoleon Bonaparte who said, ‘four hostile
newspapers are more to be feared than
10,000 bayonets’. However it matters more
nowadays: in conventional war, a battle won is
still won, even if it is not publicised, but for
terrorism, publicity is essential to success.
If I asked most people what happened on
9/11, they would say two planes crashed into
the World Trade Centre. Because it wasn’t
filmed and broadcast, the fact that another
two planes were also hijacked, one crashing
into the Pentagon, has become a subtext.
That’s picture power.
The vital role of the media in modern conflict
is because modern conflict is not about our
survival. Nothing the British Armed Forces
have done in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia,
Sierra Leone, East Timor, Iraq – was essential
to our survival. However moral or correct,
these were wars of choice for Britain. This lack
of existential threats means what NATO and
our armed forces do is a matter of choice and
therefore debate.
The media has also changed. In the fifties a BBC
reporter went to Prime Minister Clement Atlee
and said ‘Have you anything to say?’ and when
he said ‘No’, the reporter said ‘Thank you’ and
that was the end of it. That deference is now
gone, which is good. But in its place is a huge
distrust of government, what Onora O’Neill
called ‘a culture of suspicion’. And the media is
the arbiter, because it is the medium of debate.
Michael Ignatieff, one of the more interesting
thinkers on this, has pointed out that when war
becomes a spectator sport through media
coverage, journalists are transformed from
observers to participants and even protagonists.
There is no nation on this planet that could
8
beat NATO or the US in conventional warfare
with tanks, warships or airplanes. Any warfare
therefore is asymmetrical. Opponents of the
West can fight back only by using different
methods, or ignoring our rules, for instance
shooting – not from a nice olive-green vehicle
(so that the US can send in an Apache attack
helicopter) – but from a Red Crescent
ambulance, preferably behind women and
children. And they need to find other areas of
possible weakness in the ‘enemy’, which, in the
US or NATO, is mostly public opinion.
While our opponents use extreme methods –
terrorism and weapons of mass destruction –
western public opinion is for our forces going
in the opposite direction. There are ever-more
restrictions on the weapons we can use, and
the terrorists know this and exploit it. How?
Through the media.
Israel lost the conflict against Hezbollah in
southern Lebanon because they were forced
out by Israeli public opinion. In a very rare
interview, one of the Hezbollah commanders
said, ‘The use of the media as a weapon had
an effect parallel to a battle’. Hezbollah always
made sure they videoed roadside bombs, and
then gave the videos to the Israeli media. ‘By
the use of these films we were able to control
the morale of a lot of Israelis.’
In Kosovo, Milosevic used the western media
to film the bombs that missed, while not
allowing them to see the bombs that hit. So
every bombing shown seemed to be of
collateral damage, and the Serbs would lay on
a bus for the media to see it. Terrorists or
authoritarians have certain advantages – they
can control their own media, exploit
democratic debate in opponent nations and
manipulate western media. And they use the
‘The use of
the media as
a weapon
had an effect
parallel to a
battle’
One World Trade Center
collapses following the
terrorist attack on 11
September, 2001. The New
York Times staff won 08
April, 2002, both Pulitzer
Prizes in photography, for
breaking news for coverage
of the attacks. ...and for
feature photography for its
photographs of the people
enduring protracted conflict
in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This photo is part of the
breaking news package. The
newspaper won a record
seven Pulitzer prizes.
habits of the western media against itself.
The modern media likes bad news, and the
aim of terrorism is to create bad news, so
there is a natural synergy. The media do not
want to help terrorists, but to quote an
American journalist, ‘We don’t cover the plane
that doesn’t crash’.
It’s a complicated world. The media have a lot
to say and not much time to say it. They also
have to win audiences, so they sensationalise
and simplify. Stalin said that every death is a
tragedy; the death of a million, a mere statistic.