The Constraints Placed on War Correspondents - Assignment Example

Critically evaluate the constraints placed on war correspondents, using example. Introduction Marie Colvin, veteran war correspondent killed while covering the Syrian hostilities had said that war coverage for the journalists had to be with a mission to report horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice. The last few decades have seen hundreds of cases of conflicts involving militarised violence in countries like Angola, Myanmar, Sudan, Iraq, Russia, Afghanistan, Srilanka, Turkey, Bosnia and India. The latest spurt of hostilities involved Arab Spring protests in North Africa and the Middle East resulting in heavy casualties in Libya and Syria and attracting media attention (Sreedharan, 2013). War correspondents who are engaged by the news organisations investing heavy resources for the coverage visit the conflict areas in an attempt to report as objectively as possible the incidents at the battle fields. However, it is argued that war journalism never turns out to be objective as it is not an easy task to record the truth amidst claims and counterclaims in places devastated by chaos, destruction and death and to report it without prejudice and with accuracy (Colvin, 2012). Factors like patriotism, national interest, censorship and propaganda greatly prevent a war correspondent to remain neutral and give an even handed reporting in keeping with journalistic conventions. It is because war correspondents often have to serve the interests of the dominant parties to the conflict by reproducing their (dominant parties) views as skewed news. This can escalate the conflict by portraying the other party as the wrongdoer as mounting violence on the innocent dominant party (Wolfsfeld, 2004). This paper will examine in detail the constraints of this nature placed on the war correspondents citing examples of real-life situations. This conventional war reporting putting patriotism first before other interests should change towards more creative and conflict-sensitive reporting. Crimean War (1853-56) onwards History of war journalism can be traced to Crimean War. War correspondence emerged as a profession during Crimean the war when dominant European powers fought among themselves to gain control over the sinking Ottoman Empire. The action by the Black Sea by the British-French coalition against Russia was reported by two Irishmen William Howard Russell of The Times from London. The author comments that while both Russell and Godkin can be considered as partisan, the former tries to describe the effortless manner in which Russians were defeated and latter displays his sympathy for boy soldier who is dead and his hatred for war. Both display the sense of “us” and “them”. Their choice of language demonstrates the “ ’we-ness’ influencing journalistic output from the “ primary stage of selection, encoding and transmission” (Sonwalkar, 2005). Partisanship Much of the war reporting is characterised by partisanship since the days of Russell and Godkin. Carruthers (2000) writes that war coverage is often unrealistic “as the journalists are wont to claim”, but “a map of the broad preoccupations, interests and values of their particular society (or at least of its dominant groups)” War journalists face a variety of hurdles such as “patriotism, national interest, anger, censorship, propaganda” which militate against “objective, factual and even-handed reporting” (Maslog, 1990). War Corresponded Kate Adie writes that principles of war reporting are undermined by the journalist when his nation is at war. Kalb (1999) describes the U.S. attitude by saying that when America goes to war, so too the press. Thus, the war news turns out to be blatantly ethnocentric during war. Wolfsfeld (2004) states. “T]he news media are easily mobilized for the vilification of the enemy. News stories provide graphic descriptions of the other side’s brutality and our people’s sufferings … Claims about our own acts of aggression and the other’s suffering are either ignored, underplayed, or discounted. We are always the victims, they are always the aggressors.” (Wolfsfeld 2004:23). The jingoistic press of the U.S. in a way contributed to the outbreak of Spanish-American War of 1898. Seventy years later, the U.S. war correspondents at the Vietnam War were partly responsible for the U.S. Government losing public support for the Vietnam War as the correspondents exposed the false claims of the government. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in its 1993-94 edition alleged that the press itself gave bad news in the Yugoslav conflict. In Bosnia also, the news media wantonly tried to influence policy with the war correspondents becoming combatant and nonpartisan. In Bosnia, Muslims, Serbs and Croats had competing agendas. The conflict between the UN mission and Bosnian government in Sarajevo is an example of constraints in reporting from war zone in 1990s. The visiting correspondents were informed by a Canadian battalion commander that the Serb’s capture of Jace was not surprising as according to him it was predominantly occupied by Serbs. This was against facts since Serbs comprised only nineteen percent of the city’s population as pointed out by the UN officers. To this, the Commander replied that he was only conveying the report of a local Serb army commander (Gjeltem, 1998). War reporters or for that matter all journalists are advised by the institutions they belong to as to how they should write certain words as part of critical discourse analysis (CDA) which also looks at policies on unclear spellings or transliteration. For example, BBC and Al-Jazeera English (AJE) have their own internal guidelines which would show how they use their organisational power for imparting their own organisational culture and policy regarding the Middle-East. Thus, the voices of war correspondents in their news are not fully represented with their voices tamed. For example, BBC urges its correspondents that they should avoid using terminology favoured by either side since its credibility is likely to be undermined by the reckless usage of words that would influence emotional and value judgements. Because, the Israeli government preferred to use the word “disputed territories” instead of “West Bank of Gaza Strip”. There are several terms advised to be used in a particular manner. AJE will not prefer the term Martyr. “Militant” should not be used unless agreed to by the person concerned. “Disputed territories” preferred by Israel will not be used by AJE. BBC compels its reporters to use certain vocabulary meant for them (Barkho, 2011). Compare the following actual words by the reporters and the retextualisation in the footnote below (Richardson & Barkho, 2009). In the post-Cold War era, it has been the experience of the U.S. military that victory is defined in political terms rather than military for the force of arms in its struggle from Somalia and Haiti through Kosovo and Afghanistan. Military can control the media now better than ever before by shaping their output. War correspondents are entitled to be treated as civilians as per the International humanitarian law. In the case of US war against Iraq, the US military feared the possibility of adverse press when it employed widespread embedding. Media are less deferential to the authority now than during World War II. With the advent of television, damaging media reports are not preventable. For example, Washington Post quoted a General as saying “the enemy being fought was “different from the one we war-gamed against””. In a subsequent period of Iraq war, battle for Fallujah in April-May 2004 was commented by a correspondent as a victory ensured by media power. This statement shows that neutral status of the press in times of conflicts is in fact far removed from neutrality. However, the US military has developed a range of techniques to prevent adverse of portrayal of conflicts by the media by questioning what media representatives or organisations are posted in the area of conflict, whether they are radio, television, or print, whether they are state-run or independent, what their political stance is, whether they are pro or anti-coalition and whether they are receptive to coalition’s information through media of various kinds such as print, television or electronic products. Lying to the media is justified to maximise military and political advantage to the US forces. A commander in his attempt to thwart enemy’s plans, can float lies in the media as a part of military deception operation which is a military art. Such a deception has been reported in the case of Egyptian crossing of the Suez in 1973 in order to conditioning an adversary. One such deception was the message that officers were being permitted to go on leave for their annual hajj pilgrimage. Embedding war correspondents is used for two advantages to the military. One, embedding allows the reporter only a restricted view of the battle field. This is a mixed blessing for the military as it can have a high degree of control of the intended media coverage. Two, the embedding ensures the correspondent to be with the soldiers and be pre-disposed to one side than the other (Payne, 2005). Knightly (2000) has well documented the state’s efforts to make war correspondents as outright propagandists for the state and military. If they become highly critical, they can as well be evicted from the battle field without being able to report any further. Media also uses the military to get high ratings and make money also by favouring the state and the military. In wars like US-Iraq war of 1991, 2001 Afghanistan incursion, US-Iraq war 2003, mutuality of interests between the military and media prevailed (Kellner, 2008). A conservative blog states “ Most of the American correspondents in Iraq who report for the major news organizations believe in the journalistic principle, most infamously expressed by Mike Wallace of 60 minutes, that you do not take sides in reporting on the war. You are the ‘citizen of the world’ as CNN’s Bob Franken put it just before the invasion of Iraq, and you check your patriotism when you put on your reporter’s hat.” (Kellner, 2008, p. 299). It is the opinion of the conservatives in the U.S. that the war correspondents must be patriotic and they condemn those who believe in objectivity and neutrality. Pressures are strong on the war correspondents to be with the state if the war is justified. They are urged not to be critical during war time. History has it that war correspondents had been complicit with outright propaganda and lies. Knightley blew the myth of War Journalist Hero through proper documentation on shoddy reporting, collusion with the State and military and many compromises of the war correspondents from the days of Crimean War, U.S. Civil War, and Boer War through World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and Kosovo. The film War and Truth (2005 ) of Michael and Samstag and Debbie Etchison depicts war correspondents of World Wars and Vietnam war as having reported with objectivity and neutrality but portrays those of Iraq war time in which U.S. Corporate media devolved from a truth telling to propaganda apparatus as compromised.. The book and the film Weapons of Mass Destruction exposes the U.S. corporate media as having failed to observe its democratic responsibilities and allowed themselves to be used as tools of manipulation and propaganda by the Bush-Cheney administration. The film opines that embedding of war correspondents would not produce critical reporting. Gone are the days of decisive war correspondents of Vietnam who created anti-war consensus forcing Lyndon Johnson not to run for office again and pressurising Richard Nixon to withdraw troops. This is one of the reasons of embedding in 1991 and 2002 U.S.-Iraq Wars in order to control images and reports that could potentially turn against the Bush Administration’s Iraq invasion (Kellner, 2008). In 2003 more journalists ( 42 of them) were killed around the world than at any point of time since 1995 majority of them in the recent Iraq war in which 14 reporters lost their lives and the number turned to be higher than the casualties among their armed forces. Two reporters went missing and fifteen reporters were wounded. One is reminded of the fact that reporters were the target of attacks in the occupied territories in the Middle East, the NATO bombardment of Radio Television Serbia (RTS) in Belgrade in 1999 and American army bombing in Kabul and attack on AJE television in Baghdad. War coverage has become more risky for the journalists than ever before as there are now threats like unpredictable hazards of bomb attacks, use of more sophisticated weapons in addition to traditional dangers of war. They serve the public interest as they bring to the attention of the international community the reality of grim situations (Balguy-Gallois, 2004). The extraordinary gathering of American and Arab journalists in Wisconsin in 2005 decided how they should cover the war hostilities in order to mitigate the provocation by the media. The recommendations of the conference were that they should 1) keep a careful watch on their use of adjectives as they are subjective and imprecise, 2) include both details and context which will help avoid stereotyping and sensationalism, 3) educate themselves about culture and religion and how it affects their societies, 4) include range of opinions on polarized issues such as suicide bombings and religion as not all Palestinians support suicide bombings, not all American soldiers in Iraq support the war and not all Islamic scholars preach jihad and practice fatwas, 5) make religious leaders accountable for what state as opinions, and 6) avoid biases in their own coverage (Schnellinger & Khatib, 2006). Conclusion The brief critical evaluation of constraints faced by or rather placed on war correspondents puts them in a poor light. Contrary to what Mary Colvin advocacy of reporting with objectivity and neutrality, war correspondents’ partisan outweighed all other considerations putting one own nations’ interest first before all others during the times up to the two World Wars. Vietnam was an exception when war journalists turned against the military and state. Ironically, one can say it was also in the interest of the nation. Then came the embedding in the subsequent wars when the war correspondents were deliberately disempowered against their will though their respective organizations held a hidden agenda with the State and military. War correspondents are only a limb of a larger organisation and therefore have limitations. Not to be forgotten is the fact that thousands of them have laid down their lives championing the cause of their nation. That they should remain a citizen of the world instead of a nation cannot be distant dream if only their media organizations have the will of objectivity and neutrality. 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