Abstract
News coverage has changed dramatically since World War I, and how the military handles it has changed too.
In 1914, news from the frontline took weeks, even months, to reach home. Or at least to reach those in power, who then decided what news was propagated to the general public and how. News was then disseminated across garden fences, in pubs and in churches. The death of a local lad was a bitter shock to those who knew him and his village and community grieved for him. Those names are still recorded on war memorials up and down the country.
During World War II, Alan Wicker and the teams from the Army Film and Photographic Unit (AFPU) were recruited from film studios and travelled with combat units capturing actions in North Africa to Italy, and from Normandy to Paris and Berlin. These news reels played in cinemas across the country, informing the population and motivating them to support the war effort.
Times were different by the early 1970s after the tide of US public opinion turned against the war in Vietnam which had been playing out on TVs and in the papers for several years. It was the returning veterans who felt despised by those who believed the war was wrong and betrayed by a government keen to wash its hands of a failed campaign in a far-away land.
By 1991, the world had changed and the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation during Operation Desert Storm was the first conflict to be broadcast live. BBC and CNN reporters witnessed Tomahawk cruise missiles, fired from US warships far out in the Arabian Gulf, passing their hotel windows. The media, gathered in Saudi Arabia, were pooled to ensure that all outlets were given the same stories to broadcast and the US commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf gave regular and frequent press conferences, during which videos of precision strikes were played. This was a new kind of warfare, played out on televisions and radios across the world.
After 1991, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) looked long and hard at how better to conduct media operations, wondering how, and if, a military force could ensure that the stories in the world’s media accurately reflected its operational business.
In current UK MoD publications, media operations are defined as: “That line of activity developed to ensure timely, accurate and effective provision [through the media] of public information and implementation of public relations (PR) policy within the operational environment whilst maintaining Operational Security (OPSEC).”
First, the MoD established the Defence Media Operations Centre (DMOC). DMOC has two key roles: to train press officers at all levels and to deploy, at short notice, media teams to cover events involving the UK military.
ABOVE: A BBC television crew reports from the front line of Ivory Coast’s main city Abidjan in April, 2011. Forces loyal to Ivory Coast incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo stepped up a counter-attack on presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara by firing on his hotel headquarters in Abidjan
Credit: Emmanuel Braun/Reuters
Furthermore, the tradition of Wicker’s AFPU continues through the use of combat camera teams, which are deployed with battlefield units to capture full-motion high-definition video and still images of combat in situations where it would be too dangerous to embed a civilian journalist. This footage is then distributed to news outlets around the world to be used for free. But what about accusations that the footage is censored? Naturally, the military will not distribute footage and imagery that make the armed forces look unprofessional, but nothing is fabricated or deleted and everything is saved as part of the operational record, eventually ending up at the Imperial War Museum for archiving and in time, eventual disclosure to the public.
ABOVE: Part of a collection of rare British World War II propaganda posters sold at auction in Sussex, UK in 2010
Credit: Nigel Bowles/Rex Features
The military will not distribute footage and imagery that make the armed forces look unprofessional, but nothing is fabricated or deleted
Secondly, the military recognised that by far the best way to get its message out is directly through trusted and respected media outlets. To facilitate this, the MoD Directorate of Media and Communications runs a programme which embeds reporters with combat units. Everyone from smaller regional outlets including local newspapers, to national and international broadcasters such as the BBC, ITN and Sky News are all given the opportunity to travel to the front line. They are escorted, protected, fed, transported and accommodated and given access to soldiers and commanders.
Each news organisation and reporter signs The Green Book. This formal agreement outlines what the embedded journalist can expect from the military (a bed, food, transport and the same level of protection afforded to soldiers, which includes a helmet and body armour if necessary), and in return the military reserves the right to review any copy or other output for breaches of operational security (OPSEC).
OPSEC is not about censorship and gagging. It is a constant process which aims to ensure that essential elements of friendly (ie UK or coalition) information are protected. This denies the adversary any details of troop dispositions, capabilities or intentions and in doing so saves lives (possibly including the life of the embedded journalist).
Trusted journalists are given access to military planning and are allowed to sit in as orders are given to subordinate units. This provides journalists with a richer understanding of the operation, helps them understand what the military commander is attempting to achieve and places the journalist’s report in a wider context.
Recent events in the Middle East and North Africa have highlighted the power of social media. As one Egyptian protester said, “We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.”
The UK MoD has engaged with this upsurge in social media and today most military units have a Facebook page. The MoD itself has thousands of followers on Twitter and all military personnel are issued guidelines for online behaviour, ensuring that the highest standards of behaviour are maintained.
Today, support for UK Armed Forces is as high as at any time in living memory. The general public have learned, unlike at the time of Vietnam, that it is possible to disagree with the war but still back the troops sent there to fight it on their behalf. Many of those soldiers, sailors and airmen are on active on social media sites and some have an astonishing number of followers.
Twenty-four hour news, mobile phones, citizen journalists, bloggers, Twitter and the internet are not going to go away and are now considered very much part of the modern battlespace, just as war is very much part of the news agenda. The enemy, the civilian population and numerous other actors have always been present in war, but they all now have a voice and a global audience.
The discipline of information operations is now at the very heart of UK military doctrine. From the presence and appearance of a soldier on patrol engaging with local communities to the perception of the armed forces in the national and international media, the information shared and what is kept safe will play a crucial role in determining the outcome of any contemporary conflict involving UK and Western forces.
Terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and al Shabab understand this and seek to dominate the information environment, with the latter tweeting live as the assault on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, was conducted. This is the enemy now faced by UK forces and as such they must be prepared to fight for information, be first with the truth and, above all, have a much better understanding of their target audiences at home and abroad.
Footnotes
