James Der Derian Principal Investigator, InfoTechWarPeace Project
Less than a week into the invasion of Iraq, the vaunted firewalls between media objectivity and military necessity proved to be about as formidable as an Iraqi border berm. After decapitation strikes by cruise missiles and F-117's, breathless reports by journalists traversing the desert with the troops, and Defense Department briefings of `awe and shock' over Baghdad, the fighting and the reporting of the second Gulf War blurred into a combined information operation. Surfing the channels and scanning the pages of the US media exposed the reader/viewer to high cross-spectral doses of hi-tech exhibitionism and media voyeurism. Infowar, deployed after 911 as the discontinuation of diplomacy by other means, has become a force-multiplier in Iraq, a weapon of destruction as well as persuasion and distraction.
The wild card in this new infowar are the embedded journalists. After the protests by the press of being excluded from the US invasions of Grenada, Panama, and the first Gulf War, the Defense Department came up with the idea of selectively placing journalists in the various armed services, aboard ships at sea as well as on the frontlines of the battlefield. It was, given the new technological capabilities of the media as well as the uncertainties of the outcome, a courageous decision by the Pentagon. Yet it might well be one that the military comes to regret should a war long-billed as virtuous and rapid fail to achieve victory before images of POWs, unexpected casualty rates, and the fog (and sandstorms) of war become a public issue.
Moreover, lost in the hoopla over the stories and images streaming in from the desert was the fact that the military had taken over the television studios. Retired general and flag officers exercised full spectrum dominance on cable and network TV as well as on commercial and public radio. The new public affairs officers of the military-industrial-media-entertainment network included Clark and Sheppard on CNN, Nash and Hawley on ABC, Kernan and Ralston on CBS, McCaffrey and Meigs on NBC, and Olstrom and Scales on NPR. Fox News alone had enough ex-military to stage their own Veteran's Day parade. A relationship that had always been intimate in times of crisis now appeared incestuous. Color commentary and shades of opinion were effectively reduced to the nightscope-green of videophone verité in the desert and red, white and blue in the studios.
In addition to the content bias created by a pre-selection of what can be said (or not said) by whom, a techno-aesthetic kicked in with visual vengeance. When the war premiered, the television studios introduced new sets that mimicked the command and control centers of the military (FOX News actually referred to its own, without a trace of Strangelovian irony, as the `War Room'). Computer-generated graphics of the Iraq battlespace were created by the same defense industries (like Evans and Sutherland and Analytical Graphics) and commercial satellite firms (like Space Imaging and Digital Globe) that supply the US military. The networks showcased a veritable Janes Defense Review of weapon-systems, providing `virtual views' of Iraq and military hardware that are practically indistinguishable from target acquisition displays.
Once again, the image won out over the word. When pictures proved hard to get, celebrity anchors were reduced to googling their reporters for substitutes: in one case Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel, both from ABC and in the course of one day, asked reporters in the field to 'give us a word-picture of that'. Supporting the troops became the method and mantra of avoiding any analysis or value judgments on whether force was justified, under what circumustances, and with what potential consequences, intended or not. By week's end, the only general criticism was that the campaign was not following the Pentagon's pre-script of `shock and awe'. War has a way of doing that.
http://www.watsoninstitute.org/infopeace/911/