Beware the press in times of war

Abstract

Language studies lecturer Bax criticises reporting from Iraq in the early days of the conflict, commenting: "Is truth really the first casualty of war, as Senator Hiram Johnson famously suggested? If in the Iraq conflict, the third anniversary of which we are now remembering, George Bush had had his way, then the first casualty would have been Saddam Hussein. The missile attack on Saddam in the early hours of Thursday morning, March 20 2003, failed, of course... But if we examine how the British press reported the war during its first days, we might feel that Hiram Johnson was right after all. For the British press was clearly guilty of a number of sins, which then had a serious effect on public morale in the days which followed and have important implications for the press today."