Last Wednesday, on our first class in Contemporary Theory and Issues in Public Relations, we watched a documentary by BBC called ‘War Spin’. If you haven’t heard of it before, ‘War Spin’, a BBC Correspondent documentary, is about how the US and British governments and military forces mislead and misinformed the public during the 2003 Iraq war. I have to say that I’ve never had an eye for politics, but anybody who watches this video can clearly see how propaganda and ‘spin’ are used in modern time public communication.
According to Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell (2006), spin or news management, (which implies propaganda) refers to “a coordinated strategy to minimise negative information and present in favourable light a story that could be damaging to self- interests” (p.3). Shawn J. Parry- Giles (2002) defined propaganda as “conceived of as strategically devised messages that are disseminated to masses of people by an institution for the purpose of generating action benefiting its source” (cited in Jowett and O’Donnell, 2006, p.5). This, as you will come to realise by reading the following story, is exactly the communication strategy the allies used during the Iraq war.
As the public’s opposition to the war grew stronger, something had to be done in order to regain their trust and support. So, the US Government, decided to appeal to people’s emotions by staging the rescue of a young Private, named, Jessica Lynch. The only true fact about this story was that Private Lynch had been taken to a hospital after being captured by Iraqis. What followed thereafter, was a ‘Hollywood film production’ by the US government that was broadcasted by every major news channel in the US, Britain and Australia.
Although the Pentagon was fully aware that the hospital, where Private Lynch was being kept, had been cleared from the Iraqi troops the previous day, US Army Rangers and Navy Seals forced their way in there to ‘rescue’ her, by breaking doors and restraining doctors and other patients. Later, the Pentagon ordered a press conference to present a five-minute video of the rescue. I note here that the certain video was the only source of information regarding the incident.
At the press meetings, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence would not offer any clear answers for the questions posed by journalists or give out any specific information about the incident. Conveniently enough, Private Lynch had suffered amnesia so she could not make any statements.
Every bit of information was ‘spun’ in order to be presented in a way that would favour the party; from lying about Lynch’s stab and shot wounds (which were non-existent), claiming that she had gone down fighting (she later stated that her gun got stuck), the (mis)treatment she had received at the hospital (she received the best treatment available).
This event coincided with a lot of spinning that was taking place at that time of the war. For instance, the US government had embedded with the military 600 journalists who were being fed only with information which the government wished to release. In the process, they lied about war progress; they broadcasted videos of friendly football matches between local children and soldiers and of Iraqis surrendering, to show that enemy troops were leaning. As if that wasn’t enough, when the US military fired missiles in a residential area which killed civilians, they blamed the Iraqi military.
The fact that reality can be so distorted and that people can be so ignorant about it amazes me. Unfortunately, at that point, their tactics were successful and they managed to lure the public on their side.
This is a part from the BBC Correspondent documentary which shed light on the true story:
Haha, glad to see I'm not the only one struggling to keep to the 200-word limit ;)
ReplyDeleteGood job, btw!