Contesting War by Klaus Dodds

In his chapter ‘Contesting War’, writer Klaus Dodds examines the British media reporting and coverage of the 1982 South Atlantic War (Falklands). He defines the management of the British media during the conflict as ‘a classic example in the history of journalism of how to manage the media in wartime’. Looking back on the event so of the war and how they were reported in the British media, he discusses how the delay in transmission of news copy affected the relaying of news and how the government had control over what was being told to the public.

Dodds cleverly uses the contrasting images of the Vietnam war to portray the differences in media coverage of both events. Where the Vietnam war was significant in terms of the reality provided to the US public through graphic and intense media coverage, the Falklands War was not a ’television war’, in that there were relatively few actual images being brought from the battlefield. Instead, the UK public had to make do with radio reports and what they read in their newspapers. An newspaper article can be easily edited, a picture cannot.

Critics have labelled the Falklands conflict as ‘the worst reported since the Crimea’, making reference to the delay in copy and images being received from the frontlines and to the general desire to censor from the British government. War reporting is a sensitive issue in any event, with mass debate being over just how aware the public should be made of the brutal horrors of war or whether the government should attempt to relay a positive message to improve moral. Bad news stories leads to an unhappy nation and that is the last thing any government would want in an already fractious time.

In the passage, Phillip Knightley concludes: ‘The Ministry of Defence were brilliant - censoring, suppressing and delaying dangerous news, releasing bad news in dribs and drabs so as to nullify it’s impact, and projecting their own image as the only real source of accurate information about what was happening.’ Knightley’s attitude paints the picture of an approval towards the media-political management system employed by the Thatcher government.

Dodds then examines the reasons for the conflict and the initial events that took place at the beginning of the war. His detailed insight into the various causes from both sides is both interesting and though provoking. He then discusses the media-political relations and the initial reticence of the military to allows reporters to accompany them. As Phillip Taylor points out in the passage, ‘Real war is about sounds, sight, smell, touch and taste of the nasty, brutal business of killing people… Media war, however, is literally a mediated event which draws on that reality but which, in and of itself, is confined to merely an audio-visual - and therefore inherently desensitizing - representation of it.’

Media war is an alternatively different prospect to actual war, in the sense that media war can be adapted or edited to suit a function. To protect the public from the harsh truth perhaps or to raise moral. It may be a desensitizing process but often it can be an effective one. Dodds makes reference to the reluctance from the government and military towards the media and uses a recollection from Bernhard Ingham, then press officer for the Prime Minister, in which it is stated that there was considerable hostility, even, from the Royal Navy towards journalists to accompany the task force being sent to the South Atlantic.

The Ministry of Defence eventually thrashed out an agreement with the media allowing 29 all British journalists to be sent to the Falklands. Task force commanders, perhaps alarmed at the potential of the media to interfere, were reluctant to fully accommodate the working needs of the reporters, which inevitably led to complaints. Throughout the conflict, the media accused the military of using technical excuses in order to prevent the transmission of material.

Another key issue with media reporting the war was the delay in transmission. The geographical location of the Falkland Islands meant that transferring film and images back the UK was a lengthy task. With zero means of direct transmission, film was transferred to Ascension Island and then flown back to Britain, providing a frustrating delay for journalists eager to dispatch their copy to their editors. As Dodds notes, the average gap between filming and transmission was 17 days, an unwelcome time lapse in the modern world of media news.

Dodds then provides extremely interesting examples of actual MOD censorship. He cites the example of the MOD beginning to withdraw accredited contact with journalists with the effect of denying access to additional task force information. As BBC journalist Peter Snow recalled in the passage, ‘And there was a sort of barrier building up between the press and the MOD that was really hurting both sides‘. The decision was reversed eventually but evidence continued to mount that the MOD was engaged in a deliberate policy of misinformation, especially when it came to releasing details of British casualties.

Many view the media coverage of the Falklands as the perfect example of how to utilise the media during a conflict situation. While other wars may have been more directly reported (Gulf War, Vietnam, etc), the geographical distance between the conflict (the South Atlantic) and the media audience (Britain), in this case, was a useful tool for the censorship and manipulation of news information. Dodds’ informative account of the situation and the problems that arose though the Ministry of Defence’s determination to release news as they wanted it to be released is a remarkable insight into the inner workings of a media system and of a government desperate to be seen in the correct light.