Mind-Munitions

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The New World Information Disorder
the Gulf War through the creation of a ‘media management’ system.
This system was based upon some dubious assumptions other than
the Vietnam Syndrome. One was a belief in the power of television
to alter public opinion, that its role was more than a simple
observer of events but was rather a catalyst capable of altering the
course of those events. During the build-up to war known as
Operation Desert Shield, this received some credibility through the
‘loudspeaker diplomacy’ conducted by Presidents Bush and Saddam
Hussein via CNN. It was also to receive further reinforcement by
events at the end of the war when shocking images of the coalition’s
destructive power on the Iraqi army were a factor in ending the
war when it did. Because Saddam continued to be a thorn in the
side of the West, many people in the years that followed queried
why the coalition failed to ‘finish him off’ when they had a chance
to do so in 1991. ‘Regime change’ was not, however, on the official
agenda at that time. But avoiding further casualties certainly was.
It may just be, therefore, that more often than not democratic
politicians are influenced more by a fear of television to influence
public opinion – the so-called ‘CNN Effect’ – than the actual
ability of the medium to wield this influence. They share this
assumption with dictators who fear the power of television so
much that they try to rigorously control it. In the climate of 1989-
91, this was perhaps understandable.
These assumptions nonetheless prompted the creation of a
media management system which saw a minority of journalists
allocated to media ‘pools’ attached to military units in the field
while the rest – the vast majority – were holed up in hotel rooms in
Riyadh and Dharhan. These ‘hotel warriors’ could attend daily
briefings by the leading military participants where they received
the official line from the American, British, French, Saudi and
Kuwaiti spokesmen. The Joint Information Bureau (JIB) was created
to cater for their journalistic needs, and they could also use
material from the pool despatches coming back from the front –
once, that is, it had been subjected to ‘security review’. Because the
first month of the war consisted mainly of air strikes, the pool
reports mainly consisted of stories about life amongst the troops
on the ground waiting for combat – pretty unexciting stuff from a
media point of view. Some journalists – dubbed the ‘unilaterals’ –
decided to break free from their official minders and tried to find
out if anything else other than the official version was actually