War watchdogs or lapdogs?

Abstract

Academics Moorcraft and Taylor argue that it does not matter if journalists rarely have the political impact some of them think they possess, especially in war zones: “Let them believe that if it helps it keeps them to keep going. They can still be witnesses, recording the first draft of history with all its flaws. Taking a long view, there will always be friction in wartime between the media and the military. It is in every democratic citizen’s interest that this is so.” The role of the war correspondent has changed radically over the years, but is still a vital one, they claim: “The BBC’s Alan Little was more pessimistic on the role of journalist as moral witness: ‘A lot of us, especially in Bosnia, thought that the effect of our being there and bearing witness would have a beneficial effect, would in fact change things. In fact, it didn’t change anything.’ But journalists were there to record what happened in some places some of the time. Some of the horrors were recorded. That is the prime directive of the craft. Until the very last days of the Second World War, no foreign journalist recorded Auschwitz for the outside world. At least the concentration camps in Bosnia were filmed early in the Balkan wars. No-one could say, “We didn’t know.”