Beyond Communications: 06/02/2011

The public perception of a war can become more important than a war in itself. In consequence the control of information is an imperative piece of military strategy critical to win the war. The questions here are how practitioners portrait the information; how much access to information practitioners have and how biased will it be. Lippmann reffer to military as “a group of men, who can prevent independent access to the event, arrange the news of it to suit their purpose” as Sauber and Rampton quote in their book Trust us, we’re experts!

The

Iraq

war was an interesting example of how media can be controlled by the military forces. The term embed journalist emerged from the Iraq war with many questions about the way the war was reported.

What kind of news can be produced from journalists placed in an extended basis with limited access to information? Even the most ethical journalist will have an option to uncover or cover up information?

Most interesting though is the fact that those reporters were fed and protected by military. Does it result in bias? Journalist Gordon Dillow describes his experience as follow:

“But the biggest problem I faced as an embed with the marine grunts was that I found myself doing what journalists are warned from J-school not to do: I found myself falling in love with my subject. I fell in love with "my" marines.

Maybe it's understandable. When you live with the same guys for weeks, sharing their dangers and miseries, learning about their wives and girlfriends, their hopes and dreams, admiring their physical courage and strength, you start to make friends - closer friends in some ways than you'll ever have outside of war. Isolated from everyone else, you start to see your small corner of the world the same way they do.”

I cannot stop myself relating this topic with the most amazing spin fiction I have ever seen: Wag the Dog. I want to share a piece of this war produced to uncover presidential sex scandals. After all nobody better than Dustin Hoffman to make us think about how far people can go to manipulate and control our perception of reality.