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Reporter Mervyn Jess at the media operations centre in Camp Bastion. Source: BBC News Website |
During the movie ‘War Spin’ described in the previous post, one of the PR tactics used by the military in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was to embed the journalists in with the Coalition forces. The aim was to provide the media with a detailed and interesting view of the war for their audience.
It was also the easiest way for military to control the information and show the public what they would like them to see. By putting them with coalition forces the media were under their control. Independent journalists tended to be more suspicious, attempting to find information the army did not want publicised and embedding them proved to be a useful technique. In the movie, BBC journalists who were travelling with the coalition forces through the Iraq war zone said that it was very hard to stay objective about the military action while you being protected and feed by the soldiers. Essentially the journalists lives depended on the soldiers. As a result, getting the journalists closer to the military work and allowing them to join the forces helped to control the messages spread by the media.
It was also the easiest way for military to control the information and show the public what they would like them to see. By putting them with coalition forces the media were under their control. Independent journalists tended to be more suspicious, attempting to find information the army did not want publicised and embedding them proved to be a useful technique. In the movie, BBC journalists who were travelling with the coalition forces through the Iraq war zone said that it was very hard to stay objective about the military action while you being protected and feed by the soldiers. Essentially the journalists lives depended on the soldiers. As a result, getting the journalists closer to the military work and allowing them to join the forces helped to control the messages spread by the media.
At the end of the documentary there is a very importance sentence that embedding the journalists allowed the military to maximize imagery, whilst providing minimal insight. The images from the field are powerful and very desirable by viewers but show a very subjective point of view. They do not have any great factual value and would be better compared to a Hollywood production, then the work of a journalist. The images from war aim to shock, provoke emotions and mainly take the audience’s attention from the negative side of war.
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