War Journalism and Propaganda ― The Embedded Deceit of Oedipus

R3 Files Podcast ― The Success of Failure

War zones since the early 2000’s have challenged the core principles of modern journalism and prompted a re-examination of the role of war journalism during violent conflict. In recent years, the esteemed values within journalism such as objectivity and detachment which aimed to create a balanced coverage of victims and aggressors alike, have been downgraded by many media commentators. To what extent then, has war journalism changed since the end of the cold war period? After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was grand talk of a new world order offering the promise of international justice and peace. However, the Balkan wars of the 1990s gave rise to a new concept of “global wars” which in the wake of the 9/11 events have acquired an unparalleled level of significance in world affairs. American military interventions, since the early 1990’s have been given in depth media coverage and widely portrayed as a form of ethical response by Western governments towards to the issue of humanitarian suffering.

For the mass media, war by its very nature has always been highly newsworthy. Depictions of a war’s outcome, its victories and defeats, are very dramatic and affect the fate of people across the globe. War news attracts large audiences and often engages people at a deeply emotional and intellectual level. Moreover, public opinion is mobilized on an unparalleled scale by playing non-stop, dramatic and shocking images over media channels, thus prompting policymakers to launch various forms of military response. Furthermore, warfare has a long history of requiring the backing of public support, and great effort is involved to shape public opinion and convince domestic populations to accept the actions of their governments in a given conflict. As such, the visual media’s unique power of influence also makes them more likely to deploy propaganda techniques during military conflicts. War propaganda appeals to established narratives about the simplified struggle between good and evil and domestic audiences are often persuaded to take a stand in the conflict. The outcome of the struggle for our sympathies depends on which particular form of propaganda strategy and emotional engagement grabs our attention. In other words, how we, as an audience identify with the different parties in the conflict.

In this installment, I focus on two key aspects of conflict coverage by the news media. First, the use of propaganda in war journalism and second, a more recent concept called “Embedded Journalism.” Embedded journalism refers to news reporters being attached to military units, involved in armed conflicts and first came to be used in the media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I begin by asking; How does propaganda fit into the overall picture? alongside war journalism. I examine the effective use of propaganda techniques from recent history such as the myth of “Clinical Warfare.”

Such patterns of deception as evidenced by the “Clinical War” myth are well known tactics employed by the media and were first proposed by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their ‘Propaganda Model. Having explored the concept of propaganda and its relationship to the news media, I then introduce the second area of analysis on war journalism, known as “Embedded Journalism” which has attracted much controversy on issues such as military propaganda, event objectivity, and conflicted war correspondence. To offer a better understanding of embedded journalism, I briefly explore a few examples from recent decades ranging from World War 2 (1939-45) to the Iraq War (2003-2011).