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The War Correspondent The War Correspondent Fully updated second edition Greg McLaughlin First published 2002 Fully updated second edition first published 2016 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Greg McLaughlin 2002, 2016 The right of Greg McLaughlin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 3319 9 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3318 2 Paperback ISBN 978 1 7837 1758 3 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 7837 1760 6 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 7837 1759 0 EPUB eBook This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Simultaneously printed in the European Union and United States of America To Sue with love Contents Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations x 1 Introduction 1 PART I: THE WAR CORRESPONDENT IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 2 The War Correspondent: Risk, Motivation and Tradition 9 3 Journalism, Objectivity and War 33 4 From Luckless Tribe to Wireless Tribe: The Impact of Media Technologies on War Reporting 63 PART II: THE WAR CORRESPONDENT AND THE MILITARY 5 Getting to Know Each Other: From Crimea to Vietnam 93 6 Learning and Forgetting: From the Falklands to the Gulf 118 7 Goodbye Vietnam Syndrome: The Embed System in Afghanistan and Iraq 141 PART III: THE WAR CORRESPONDENT AND IDEOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS 8 Reporting the Cold War and the New World Order 161 9 Reporting the ‘War on Terror’ and the Return of the Evil Empire 190 10 Conclusions: ‘Telling Truth To Power’ – the Ultimate Role of the War Correspondent? 214 the war correspondent APPENDICES Appendix 1 International Press Institute: Recommendations to News Organisations for Improving Journalists’ Safety 221 Appendix 2 The ‘Surviving Hostile Regions’ Course for War Correspondents 222 Appendix 3 British Ministry of Defence (MoD) Green Book Guidelines for the British Media Reporting the Gulf War, 1991 224 Appendix 4 US Military Ground Rules for Media Reporting of the Gulf War, 1991 225 Appendix 5 US Department of Defense (DoD) Public Affairs Guidance (2003) for Embedded Reporters 226 Appendix 6 British Ministry of Defence (MoD) Green Book, 2013: Working Arrangements with the Media for Use Through the Full Spectrum of Conflict 229 Appendix 7 British Newspaper Descriptions of President Putin During the Crimea Crisis, 21 February–20 March 2014 231 Appendix 8 British Newspaper Descriptions of President Putin’s Policies and Actions During the Crimea Crisis, 21 February–20 March 2014 234 Notes 236 Bibliography 245 Index 259 viii Acknowledgements Warm thanks and appreciation to the people who helped me see this book through to completion and into production: At Pluto Press, commissioning editor, David Castle, for his priceless patience and wise counsel; managing editor, Robert Webb, for his expert supervision of the book’s production; copy editor Nuala Ernest for her guidance and advice; and Melanie Patrick and her colleagues, Emily Orford, Kieran O’Connor and Chris Browne, for their superb cover design and promotional work. At the University of Ulster, my good friends and colleagues Martin McLoone, for his constructive comments on early drafts, and Stephen Baker for his valuable review of the final manuscript; Head of School, Colm Murphy, for giving me time and space when most needed; and Carol, Sally and Lisa for their amazing admin support and for keeping me grounded. Thanks once again to the journalists who provided such great interview material for the first edition: Christiane Amanpour, Martin Bell, Victoria Brittain, Robert Fisk, Nik Gowing, Lindsey Hilsum, Mark Laity, Jacques Leslie, Jake Lynch, Mike Nicholson, Maggie O’Kane, John Pilger, John Simpson, Alex Thomson and Mark Urban; and to NATO press secretary, Jamie Shea. Their insights and arguments have stood the test of time so many years later. Special thanks also to Mary Dejevsky and Alex Thomson for giving me such rich interview material for this new edition. On the home front, the love and faith of my mum, brothers and sisters was as crucial as always. But I don’t think I would have made it to the end without Sue and her endless love, belief and support. Míle buíochas do gach duine. ix Abbreviations ABC American Broadcasting Company AP Associated Press APTN Associated Press Television News BBC British Broadcasting Corporation BEF British Expeditionary Force CBS Columbia Broadcasting System CINCLANT Commander-in-Chief of the US Atlantic Fleet CNN Cable News Network CPJ Committee to Protect Journalists DoD Department of Defense (US) FEC Far Eastern Command IDF Israel Defence Forces IED Improvised Explosive Device INSS Institute for National Security Studies IPI International Press Institute ITN Independent Television News MoD Ministry of Defence (UK) NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NBC National Broadcasting Company PAG Public Affairs Guidance PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder RTLM Radio-Television Libre des Milles Collines SAS Special Air Service SORH Syrian Observatory for Human Rights UN United Nations x 1 Introduction William Howard Russell is widely regarded as one of the first war cor- respondents to write for a commercial daily newspaper. He became famous for his dispatches from the Crimean War, 1854–56, for The Times and he seemed to appreciate that he was blazing a trail for a new breed of journalist, calling himself the ‘miserable parent of a luckless tribe’. Charles Page, an American contemporary of Russell, also seemed to see the miserable and luckless side of the job. In an article entitled An Invalid’s Whims...The Miseries of Correspondents, he compared himself and his colleagues to invalids, ‘proverbially querulous and unreasonable. They may fret and scold, abuse their toast and their friends, scatter their maledictions and their furniture’ (1898, p. 143). The war correspon- dent, he warned, ‘will inevitably write things that will offend somebody. Somebody will say harsh things of you, and perhaps seek you out to destroy you. Never mind. Such is a part of the misery of correspondents’ (ibid., p. 146). During the Anglo Zulu war of 1879, a ‘Special Correspon- dent’ for the Natal Witness (19 June) complained that ‘[To] enthusiastic persons, the position of War Correspondent may be a very pretty one... but a little practical experience of such work will rub off a great deal of its gloss’ (Laband and Knight, 1996, p. v). More recent and contemporary accounts suggest these impressions have changed little since the nineteenth century. In Dispatches, Michael Herr recalls some of the things political commentators and newspaper columnists called him and his colleagues during the course of the Vietnam War. They were called ‘thrill freaks, death-wishers, wound-seekers, war-lovers, hero-worshippers, closet queens, dope addicts, low-grade alcoholics, ghouls, communists [and] seditionists [...]’ (1978, p. 183). With the growth of media journalism in the 1990s, the media reporting the media, war reporting has become a story itself. Coverage of war is bound to feature articles and TV programmes looking at various issues that reporters face in the war zone. As the first bombs fell on Afghanistan 1 the war correspondent in October, 2001, the Independent carried a special feature item on 13 October, highlighting the conditions experienced by journalists who were not even in the country a week but were already missing their home comforts: ‘Reporters live on bread, onions and water from gutter’; ‘Foreign correspondents are down to one lavatory per 45 people’. The capture by the Taliban of the Sunday Express reporter Yvonne Ridley seemed to put these discomforts into perspective, if we were to believe ‘a world exclusive’ in the Daily Express, published just after her eventual release on 8 October 2001. The front-page splash highlighted Ridley’s ‘Taliban Hell’, in which she lay captive in a ‘filthy, rat-infested prison cell’, ‘went on hunger strike’ and ‘fought with vicious guards’. She even ‘risked death to keep secret diary for Express readers’ (9 October 2001). According to Ridley, the true story was rather less dramatic. She told the media that the prison conditions were bearable and that the Taliban treated her well.1 In coincidence with Ridley’s release, the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC’s) chief news correspondent, Kate Adie, was being pilloried by the British popular press for allegedly revealing embargoed information about Prime Minister Tony Blair’s itinerary in the Middle East, where he was undertaking a tour to drum up Arab support for the war in Afghanistan. In fact, she inadvertently confirmed a leading question from her news anchor about Blair’s next stop. Amid furious complaints from 10 Downing Street, the BBC failed to protect her from the flak even in the wake of a full front page headline from The Sun: ‘Sack Kate Adie!’(10 October 2001). Adie threatened libel action against The Sun and suggested that the original breach of security, such that it was, lay with 10 Downing Street for the way in which they briefed the media. Some critics suspected sinister government spin because it seemed all too convenient that the row helped deflect public attention away from difficult domestic stories.2 There are other impressions and depictions of the war reporter in the wider culture. The movies usually depict journalists as hard-boiled, cynical or dissolute scoundrels; but in films such as Salvador (dir. Oliver Stone, 1983) or The Killing Fields (dir. Roland Joffé, 1984), the war correspondent is depicted as a hero, risking life and limb to report the story and ‘telling truth to power’ (McNair, 2010; pp.