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Belmont Club: the media and the battlefield
It would be interesting if someone could write a theoretical guide to counterinsurgency which took into account the effect of the media on operations. One interesting possibility is that the reason small footprints preferred by Boot are more efficient than big footprints is that they prevent a war from being politicized by a media circus. Sometimes the word circus is literally apt. Recently in East Timor, competition between two rival TV networks captured how the ringmasters works. Channel 7 got a film clip of the Channel 9 correspondent setting up an interview and subsequently aired the bombshell. The film clipshows host Jessica Rowe interviewing East Timor taskforce commanding officer Brigadier Michael Slater. "I'm wondering how you feel about your safety given that you've got armed guards there standing behind you, armed soldiers," Rowe says. The Jessca Rowe-Slater incident was enlightening because it suggests that since the media is part of the battlefield, the coverage of the media must be a vital part of the entire picture. The curious over-reaction by the MSM to embedded bloggers -- questioning their legitimacy, their "objectivity", their professionalism, etc -- recollects nothing so much as the effect of garlic or a Cross on a vampire. Reflecting on it, I think the reason is that bloggers often do what the Channel 7 did to Channel 9 in the incident above. One unnoticed fact -- you can check it out -- is that blogger Stephen Vincent was the only Western media person killed in Iraq in 2005. The statistical unlikeliness of that fact has always bothered me. But from the viewpoint of the Ba'athist insurgency it would make sense to target the anyone who could cover the media. After all, the regular media works through stringers and must maintain "access"; it's got to sell stories, etc. As Eason Jordan reminded us, the regular media has long had relationships with the Ba'ath. If the media is a weapon then it makes sense to eliminate threats to that weapon. Just hypothetically. Posted by: Mike 2006-06-03 |
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