WEB NOTES
Same
Arena, Different Reporting?
Laurence
Meehan, Saferworld
At
the end of February, Saferworld, BASIC and ISIS jointly
organised with ‘Reporting the world’, a seminar for
journalists to discuss and share views on the reporting
of the conflict in Iraq and issues that will come into
play if the conflict escalates to war. The event drew
together a panel of Adrian van Klaveren, head of
newsgathering at the BBC, Kim Sengupta, defence
correspondent at the Independent, Faleh Abdel Jabar,
Iraqi author and sociologist and Air Marshall Sir Tim
Garden.
Journalists
jumping ahead of the game?
Panelist
Air Marshall Sir Tim Garden said,
“we are always so far ahead of the game. I mean
tonight we are talking about the war-what war?” A former Newsweek journalist and now working with the UN,
Mark Dennis, said parts of the media “are really
wanting war” on a commercial level. These points link
in to not only the type of journalism we have witnessed
over the last few months but the rationale for such
stories. It is common knowledge that war sells papers
and makes people tune into the television, but does the
financial benefits of perpetuating the slow march to war
prevent unbiased reporting? Speaking in the Independent
Jeremy Thompson, who will anchor Sky’s rolling news
shows, that certain parts of the media are seeing the
war as an opportunity to expand their audience,
“there’s going to be a great deal of rivalry, It
will be the first war that people will watch 24 hours a
day”.
ITN
is considering moving its evening broadcasts during any
war to prevent broadcasts clashing with the BBC, a move
that has more to do with market forces of supply and
demand than honest newsgathering.
Objective
media
In
a project discussion paper, Jake Lynch has talked about
the BBC producer guidelines that state, “in times of
war or national emergency all views should be reflected
in proportion to the views held by all people in the
United Kingdom”. Lynch called for these guidelines to
be used to breakdown oversimplified arguments held by
the public, he cites ‘its just about oil’ as an
example where the public use a throw away reason against
the war but the media are not attempting to fill the
large gaps in their knowledge of the situation. The
media’s responsibility to expand arguments rather than
simplify them, Lynch said the media should be
“pointing out what we don’t know and I think that
might be something that is difficult but its an area of
honesty that might be very necessary”.
Adrian van Klaveren, head of BBC newsgathering,
has said in the Times on March 7 that the BBC “will
reflect all shades of opinion in what may be a divided
nation. Our duty is to be objective”.
Polarised
opinion
Much
of the reporting since the anti war movement gained
momentum has tended to polarise opinion in the media,
you are either for the war or against it. This viewpoint
has damped any other debate for the long-term future of
Iraq and its people. Faleh Jabar picked up this point at
the meeting, “we are either war or anti war, War
mongering is as short sighted as pacifism”. The media,
in facilitating this polarised view can in fact lead us
to the view that war is inevitable, when the wider view
shows us different.
Jonathan Freedland’s article in the Guardian
(19/02/03) tries to reverse this trend by recognising
that the international community does actually have a
responsibility to do something in Iraq but not
necessarily go to war. Bill Hayton, an editor from the
BBC World Service, said that too much of the current
media coverage was “trying to second guess what will
happen if the French do this and the Russians do that
and the Chinese do this. But no one is asking the basic
question “is there a threat?” We need to go back to
basics”.
Already
the papers have begun talking of ‘our boys’, taking
the position that anyone against the war is against the
British army and therefore unpatriotic. Again it is this
polarisation that will continue to stifle debate. The
danger of the media ‘horizon gazing’ rather than
actually reporting on day to day issues is that the
public at large feel confused and the government is not
properly scrutinized. Jon Swain, writing in the
Observer, argues that the advent of 24 hour rolling news
has led to a dearth of in depth reporting. Instead of
actually seeking out new stories journalists are stuck
in one place, constantly having to give “live spots”
to studios back home.
How
the war will be reported
If
there is to be a war in the Gulf it will put the media
in a unique position. It is hard to remember a war that
has taken place in the same country with the same actors
twice. This, twinned with the large amount of advance
warning the media has had over the start of a war has
allowed for planning never seen before. Mistakes made in
1991 can now be seen to be resolved. The technology of
the last 12 years has led news teams to be more mobile
and more able to get around the media management by the
military. Adrian
van Klaveren, said that the lightness of equipment and
the speed information can be transmitted from the battle
field has led military censorship “(that) might have
applied in the past…be done with a lighter
touch.”
It
would be hoped that the media would be given more
freedom on the battlefield to report than the last war.
In 1991 the US would punish journalists attempting to
leave ‘press pools’ and act independently by sending
them hundreds of miles to the rear of operations or in
several cases attempt to get Saudi authorities to expel
them. Robert Fisk, writing on March 16 in the
Independent, is not optimistic that the new advances in
technology or the lessons from the last war will lead to
less ‘misinformation’. He argues that the fact that
so many of the journalist will be ‘embedded’ with
military units and allocated media minders the stories
that we read and watch will not be a fair representation
of the war on the ground.
For
text of the meeting go to:
http://www.reportingtheworld.org/clients/rtwhome.nsf/h/3pbx
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