Bagdad-Bob, menige Jessica Lynch och Cirkus Saddam

with caution and be aware of the
ongoing propaganda war.
Warnings always imply that responsibility
has been shifted. In this case, from
the producer to the consumer. The reader
has to observe and be aware of the
propaganda war that is taking place. For
the newspaper, it is now justified, more
than ever before and regardless of its
own previews, to convey what other
media have already said. Freedom of
speech becomes a paradox. While contributing
to the airing of all opinions in
a conflict, this also encourages the spreading
of rumours, which in turn stimulates
speculative and even false statements.
Two stagings that brought questions
to my mind, but no answers, appear in
Expressen on March 3, 03: First page:
Bush shows signs of SERIOUS MENTAL
STRAIN and the spread Alone with his
anguish. Information about the President’s
illness, according to Olof Lundh,
comes from USA Today where some of
Bush’s friends commented on his state
of health and religious faith. Apart
from these features, I have not seen any
other information about Bush’s state of
health. But even more interesting: Why
is this information presented And who
benefits from it during the short war
If the information were true, it would
be easy to hide. Or is it merely a lie
Lies or truth pervaded the Gulf War
in 1991, when the Saddam regime of
the time was accused of torturing, drugging
and using UN-allied war prisoners
as human shields. Either it happened or
it didn’t. I drew attention to this issue
in my report to the National Board of
Psychological Defence (SPF), “The
Outbreak of War and Pictures in Swedish
Mass Media”, because one year
after it was claimed to have happened,
the statements had still not been confirmed.
Neither have these injustices been
proved during the twelve years since the
end of the Gulf War, as far as I know.
In the Iraq war in 2003, history is
repeated. In Expressen on March 28
(staging 29 Executed I and 30 Executed
II), Magnus Alselind reports from London
on the two dead British soldiers,
Luke Allsopp and Simon Cullingworth,
who one day previously had been
shown on the Arabic language television
channel, Al-Jazeera. According to
Tony Blair, the executions were a violation
of the proper conventions of war:
“If anyone needed any further evidence
of the depravity of Saddam's regime,
this atrocity provides it”.
How the soldiers were killed, we do
not know. The pictures do not show
anything.
Partly true
propaganda
This category does not include lies, but
interpretations that in the worst case
can be exaggerated to the extent that
they become half-truths. Commercials,
for example, accentuate the most
favourable feature of a certain product,
but we would not accept a commercial
that lies and claims that a product has
qualities that it, in fact, lacks.
106 | irakkriget iscensatt i svenska medier