The Media and the Falklands Campaign PDF
Preview The Media and the Falklands Campaign
THE MEDIA AND THE FALKLANDS CAMPAIGN The Media and the Falklands Campaign Valerie Adams Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-0-333-42774-3 ISBN 978-1-349-18367-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18367-8 ©Valerie Adams, 1986 Foreword© The Macmillan Press Ltd 1986 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1986 978-0-333-40904-6 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly & Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1986 ISBN 978-0-312-52554-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Adams, Valerie, 1950 The media and the Falklands campaign. Bibliography: p. Includes index. I. Falkland Islands War, 1982-Journalists. 2. Press-Great Britain-History-20th century. I. Title. F3031.5.A33 1986 302.2'3'0941 85-27912 ISBN 978-0-312-52554-5 Contents Author's Note VI Foreword by PROFESSOR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN VB PART I THE CONTEXT 1 A Freak of History 3 2 Reporting the Wars 22 3 Correspondents and Commentators 44 PART II THE COMMENTARY 4 The Fleet Sets Sail: 2-25 April 1982 65 5 The Early Successes and Losses: 25 April-7 May 79 6 Building up to the Invasion: 8-21 May 98 7 Consolidation and Advance: 22-29 May III 8 Reinforcement and Reoccupation: 29 May-14 June 126 PART III ASSESSMENT AND CONCLUSIONS 9 How Did the Media Perform? 143 10 The Commentators - Disclosure and Discretion 157 11 Into the Future: the Falklands Factor 174 Annex A: Sources 198 Annex B: List of Main Commentators on Military Aspects of the Falklands Campaign 200 Annex C: The Falklands Campaign (Operation Corporate): A Chronology 205 Select Bibliography 214 Index 218 v Author's Note I should like to thank the Ministry of Defence for making the study possible, and the many people who have helped me. I am particularly grateful to Professor Lawrie Freedman for his invaluable advice and guidance, to Dr Mike Dockrill for access to his research material on the British participation in the Korean War, and to Eileen Bell, Joanna Connell, Jean Murphy and Margaret Long for their typing and secretarial assistance. Thanks are also due to the staff of the libraries of King's College and the Ministry of Defence, to those at the BBC and ITN who helped me find relevant material, to David Jones of the Ministry of Defence Naval Historical Branch for his assistance with the chronology, and to the many people listed in Annex A who gave freely of their time and knowledge on the subject. Finally, special thanks to Derek Adams, who listened to (and criticised) my arguments, found material for me and gave me both practical and moral encouragement. V.A. VI Foreword Professor Lawrence Freedman For a military commander, information is a weapon of war. He seeks to gather as much information as possible about the capabilities, dispositions and plans of his adversary. The more he knows about the enemy's strengths and weaknesses, the more effectively he is able to plan his operations. For the same reasons the more the enemy can find out about the commander's own capabilities, dispositions and plans, the more difficult and dangerous his task. Unless, of course, the enemy can be persuaded to accept inaccurate information. Deception plays an important role in military strategy. For this reason a military commander has an interest in accurate information being withheld and, on occasion, inaccurate information being disseminated. The media have another interest. They live off information, and scavenge for it wherever it might be found. Their reputation depends, in part, on the accuracy of the information they can obtain. This inevitably leads to a degree of tension between the commanders and the media, especially at times of armed conflict. In practice both recognise that a line has to be drawn somewhere. It would do little for the reputation of a television programme or a newspaper if it could be accused of losing a war, or the lives of servicemen. Equally military commanders recognise that their operations, at least in a democracy, have to be justified to a sceptical Parliament and public and that in war, no news is often taken to mean bad news. More seriously, many limited conflicts in the modern world take place against the backdrop of intense diplomatic activity in which the impressions made on allies or influential neutrals might be crucial. Assessments of relative military capabilities and performance in battle help shape the policies of other nations. In this sense information is an important instrument in Vll vin Foreword the campaign for international support. The United States has now identified a branch of the diplomatic art described as 'public diplomacy', which some might think of as just a nicer word for propaganda. Part of the challenge of public diplomacy stems from the difficulty of controlling information. Strict censorship might be imposed on the media at home. But not on other nations. Military commanders and their political masters have to cope with a world in which communications are becoming easier and the expectations of a steady flow of high-quality information higher. The Falklands Campaign of 1982 was unusual in that it was fought in one of the least accessible parts of the world. Enterprising newsmen could not just move in and out of the combat zone and then send back an instant report. News from the combat zone could be, and was, subjected to close control by the military authorities. Many of the journalists who travelled to the South Atlantic with the British task force bridled against the resulting constraints. Yet they were also in a better position to understand the risks that they too would face if the wrong information let slip. The control exercised by the Ministry of Defence over the dissemination of information from the South Atlantic led to immense frustration in London. The supply coming through was not sufficient to satisfy the appetite of the media, which grew with the size of the 'story'. As the media became desperate for more information to fill the new slots being created in recognition of the importance of the crisis, the military wanted to talk even less. As a result, the slots became filled with speculative material, as a variety of experts sought to make sense of the information that was available. One might add that even if much more information had been available, the media would still have looked to their own and outside specialists to interpret it for their audience. The appearance of a variety of retired military gentlemen as media experts infuriated many of their colleagues still in service and busy fighting the war. All an Argentine agent had to do was to tune in and there in front of him was an exhibition of the workings of the British military mind, carefully analysing all the options actually facing the task force commanders. This was all probably of far greater irritation to the commanders than it was of use to the Argentine. Nevertheless many military officers Foreword IX consider the behaviour of those who indulged themselves as commentators to be scandalous and something of a myth has developed to the effect that the speculation seriously jeopardised the British campaign. Nevertheless, the controversy itself raised a very important issue concerning the manner in which the public can be kept informed of the course of a hazardous military campaign being conducted in its name, without making that campaign even more hazardous. In July 1982, just a month after the conclusion of the Falkland Islands conflict, the Ministry of Defence invited a number of universities to submit proposals for studies on 'the relationship in time of armed conflict between newspapers and other media and the Ministry of Defence, including the armed forces'. The Department of War Studies at King's College, London, submitted a proposal based on its areas of competence. Rather than attempt to compete with the specialist students of the media and look at the collection and dissemination of hard news during the Falklands Campaign, we proposed to examine the speculation over the course of the conflict and the future options open to the task force commanders. We were especially interested in the role played by academic specialists and retired military officers in giving substance to this speculation. At the end of the year the Ministry of Defence announced two contracts based on the bids that they had received: one to the School of Journalism at the University of Cardiff and the other to the Department of War Studies at King's College. In designing the study, two questions connected with the media speculation were of interest. First, how well informed was it possible to be about military operations without reliance on 'leaks' from official sources? Many of those concerned about the release of sensitive information of great value to the enemy appeared unaware of just how much was available in specialist journals and works of reference. The second question concerned the accuracy of this commentary. Was it sufficient to provide a reasonable grasp of the course of the campaign for the 'interested and intelligent layman' that specialists claim to have in mind when they address the public? The answers to both of these questions would enable us to offer judgements on how commentary might be conducted in the media in future conflicts and whether there was much that the Ministry of x Foreword Defence could do about those aspects of this commentary that were considered prejudicial to national security. Valerie Adams was the natural person to undertake this research. She had worked in the Ministry of Defence and understood how it operated, as well as having a wide-ranging knowledge of defence issues. In addition she had done some work for the House of Commons Select Committee on Defence during the course of its inquiry on the Falklands and the media and was thus familiar with the particular questions central to this study. What perhaps we had not appreciated is that she also has a capacity to achieve part-time what most people would be happy to achieve working flat out full-time. As the following pages fully illustrate, this is combined with a capacity for rigorous argument and independent judgement. The result of her work is a book that will give many of those who have been involved in the controversy over the Falklands and the media cause for thought. As Valerie Adams makes clear in her conclusion, there are no simple answers to the tensions generated by the different requirements of military commanders, political leaders, programme or newspaper editors and independent specialists. At least at the end of this lucid and balanced book they might begin to appreciate each others' problems!
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