The media's war reporting tactics can be just as insidious as blatant regime propaganda, writes Eddie Holt
The invasion of Iraq has been accompanied by an invasion by 24-hour TV news channels. During the 1991 Gulf War, there was only one such channel based in Britain. Sky News was then only two years old and America's CNN dominated the 24-hour news market. Now there are three British channels - Sky News, BBC News 24 and the ITV News Channel- transmitting "rolling" news .
They have penetrated not only Iraq but Irish living-rooms and public places such as bars, banks and hotels. Their push is unprecedented in the history of media warfare. Flickering away as a constant backdrop to the US and British attack, these news channels offer "war" as wallpaper. Nonetheless, we remain unable to discern what is really taking place in Iraq because, as ever, the media are a hugely significant weapon of war.
They report lies willingly and inadvertently, but more often they report half-truths, limited truths and truth out of context because they can get nothing better.
Consider a few of the military-inspired falsehoods reported already: Saddam Hussein is dead or seriously injured; Tariq Aziz is dead or has fled; "coalition forces" have taken Umm Qasr (actually, they hadn't and admitted it two days later.) Burning oilfields, spectacular to see but very few in number, gave a distorted and disproportionate impression of Iraqi tactics. The "uprising" in Basra was on, off, on again. Footage of the invading soldiers being greeted as "liberators" was, like the burning oil wells, distorting. The Iraqi government had "lost control of the country and is falling asunder" when it plainly hadn't and wasn't.
Whether these yarns are examples of deliberate lies or deluded wishful thinking, is impossible to say. Most likely, they are amalgams of both. Sometimes the military tells deliberate lies and other times, it probably does not know what's going on.
In the latter situations, it naturally reports what it calculates is likely to be to its advantage. The "embeds" then dutifully broadcast such reports as "news".
It's always dangerous, of course - hubristic, really - for anybody to assume they can see through the propaganda other people can't. Yet few among us can avoid building arguments on such flimsy foundations as are offered by the news channels.
Knowing that, in all but the broadest outline, you don't or can't know what's happening in Iraq, is perhaps the most sensible position to adopt. But that's practically impossible when the senses are under assault. Bombarded by images and words selected to convince, rather than inform, it's natural to seize upon material that buttresses your own primary views. There are staples, other than Ken and Barbie combos, captions, logos, clocks, text updates snaking across the base of the screen, endless sand and plumes of thick smoke, common to the 24-hour news channels.
The White House, the Pentagon and Downing Street feature prominently. Likewise, reporters in Kuwait and retired military characters commentating on strategy in the "theatre of war". There's mostly uneventful footage from fixed cameras in Baghdad and we regularly see pictures of B-52s on the runway at Fairford (always called "RAF Fairford"). Above all, there are interviews with sand-blasted "embeds" in army uniforms and sometimes even gas masks. At night the "embeds" glow an ominous and sickly Incredible Hulk green.
Truth is, many reporters, the brave and the blustering alike, are "embedded" so deep into this war that they cannot but march in step with the military. In that sense, embedding has been a PR victory for the Pentagon. Watch reporters use "we" and "us" to identify themselves with the military. Then again, that's hardly surprising, given the pressures of developing camaraderie and the very personal stakes reporters have in the soldiers' success.
Nonetheless, history and commonsense tell us that whenever reports appear suspiciously neat, we should be sceptical. In so far as coverage accords questionably well with the aims of the side sourcing or controlling it, it has got to be suspect.
It's not, of course, as if all the propaganda is coming from the US/British side. The media are a hugely significant weapon of war for the Iraqis too. Iraqi state TV shows "uplifting" and "morale-boosting" tributes to Saddam Hussein. Riveting, no doubt.
The inescapable truth is that we are being lied to from every side. Even though flecks of truth speckle the overall picture like individual pieces of a vast jigsaw, we cannot possibly see the total picture. We can, however, discern certain outlines.
The marketing of this outrageous attack on Iraq has had elements typical of a Hollywood thriller, sci-fi or war movie. The threatened (or promised) "shock and awe" obscenity is reminiscent of the overblown language you'd expect on a poster for a Hollywood blockbuster. Was it possible not to look at the fireworks display? Already, we've had movie-like suspense - is Saddam Hussein dead? We've had the "master of disguise" moment - is that Hussein or a double? We've even had the Dow Jones index - the meaning of life itself - pogoing up and down to the rhythm of propaganda. We've also, of course, had pinpricks of reality TV, but these frequently distort rather than clarify the overall truth.
Even Tony Blair, the ultimate televisual political salesman of our age, has been unable to sell this attack. Characteristically, Blair oozes such theatrical sincerity, personal conviction and "moral" concern that he's been a wonderfully successful politician. He looks now, however, as though he suspects, perhaps even knows, he backed the wrong side - not just politically but morally - over Iraq.
George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and the rest of the American hawks do not agonise as Blair does. Their conviction seems as robust as that of any fundamentalist religious leader. Given that they have a fundamentalist conviction about the rightness of their actions, that's hardly surprising. It's alarming however, seeing as the American public is such a pivotal constituency in this crisis.
The US 24-hour news channels are more hawkish than the British ones. American flags, patriotic sentiment and emotional support on the parts of the toothy "anchors" and breathless reporters characterise Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.
In contrast, Arabs watching Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel, see horrific images of burned corpses, the injured in hospital and general devastation. Same war, different story.
So, views formed in Britain (and Ireland), the United States, Iraq and the wider Arab world are at odds with each other. No doubt the political and cultural filters through which television broadcasts in other parts of the world - Russia, China, "old" Europe, Africa, South America, south-east Asia and so forth - emphasise and suppress coverage according to perceived "needs".
Radio, the press and the Internet, too, are "covering" this war. But it is the 24-hour news channels that are making the big push.
Of them all, the most crucial are the American outfits. Looking at them, you can understand how more than half of all Americans have been persuaded of a direct link between Iraq and the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.
You can understand too why Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper, commenting on media coverage of Iraq, said the following: "All the major western news organisations, the ones that hector us relentlessly about the divine mission of journalism, have thrown all principles out the window by allowing their coverage to be 'embedded'. The US media are owned by the same corporate family that includes arms manufacturers and big oil firms with a direct financial stake in fuelling the war. So they are quite happy to lie to the world and to themselves."
In the long run, you're left appreciating RTÉ (especially Richard Downes) and the regular BBC and Channel 4 news bulletins. These cannot be propaganda-free - the virus is pervasive - but they are usually better than the 24-hour efforts.
Marketed like a movie and filtered through television, this attack on Iraq may yet have a sequel. You suspect that if journalism could really cover the horror of it all, a sequel would be impossible. But it's not.
"Full spectrum dominance" aims to include control of the pictures and ideas in your head and 24-hour TV news is the commando outfit for that purpose.
Eddie Holt is a lecturer in the School of Communications at DCU. His Connect column returns next week