Information at War. Philip Seib

challenged the purported wisdom of “the best and the brightest” policymakers.¹⁶ Such print reporters’ diligence, coupled with the dramatic force of television, reshaped the balance of power between news media and government in wartime. With increased amounts of vivid information available to them, more and more Americans had grounds for doubting, and then opposing, the war policies of their elected leaders.

      Television’s rise also contributed to greater emphasis on the optics of war. In itself, this was nothing new. From the armor of Achilles gleaming in front of the walls of Troy to the giant missiles in parades through Red Square (and, more recently, Pyongyang), the appearance of military might has affected fighters’ and publics’ attitudes about their prospects in conflict. When news media deliver consistently pessimistic appraisals supported by grim visual evidence, a government (at least in a democracy) must devote ever greater effort to sustain popular backing for a war. This may include attempts to counteract the effects of information that the government deems to be an obstacle to achieving its goals in the conflict. That might be done in a number of ways, such as by interfering with collection and dissemination of information perceived to be unhelpful, and by the government producing its own information to offset unsupportive content.

      Information has value only if it is credible. During wartime, government and news media may engage in a struggle for primacy in credibility, and the viability of the war effort may be shaped by the outcome. Newer information providers – including individuals – are now part of the mix. Sometimes their content offers valuable perspective on events, but sometimes their material may be politicized to the point of being fraudulent. This makes careful appraisal of information’s validity more important among information consumers who find such decisions complicated by the sheer volume of information flowing toward them.

As chapter 2, “Competing for Information Control,” illustrates, when governments recognize unhelpful political repercussions of news coverage of conflict, they might resort to simple obstruction, such as taking advantage of complex logistics to delay reports from the battleground. During the Falklands War between Great Britain and Argentina in 1982, the British Ministry of Defence controlled the transmission of news from the remote location of the fighting.¹⁷ During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the US Department of Defense kept war-zone journalists on a tight leash, impeding their reporting. This involved supervising reporters’ interviews and delaying communication of reports.¹⁸

      Some of these constraints were a matter of political convenience rather than military necessity, but journalists themselves were coming to recognize that technology-enabled advances in real-time reporting could prove problematic. In the 1991 Gulf War, television networks and even local television stations could use satellite transmission to report live to their audiences during the fighting. Enemy militaries could tap into these broadcasts and learn, for example, about the efficacy of their artillery and missile attacks. Military officials and news executives knew they had to address this, preferably in a joint effort. There would be some degree of censorship, and news organizations had to determine how much of it they would impose on themselves rather than leaving that decision solely to the military.¹⁹

      Such realization led, a decade later, to the cooperative venture of embedding about 700 American and international journalists with US military units during the early stages of the Iraq War that began in 2003. The embed process was designed cooperatively by the Defense Department and representatives from the news media, and technology was a factor in the Pentagon’s rulemaking. Military commanders knew that satellite broadcasting capability had expanded significantly since the 1991 Gulf War, with gear that was more portable and affordable, and so journalists would have greater ability to escape constraints and report on their own. Beyond that, the military wanted to influence news content without appearing to be doing so. Making journalists beholden for access (and personal safety) was a way to accomplish that. For their part, news organizations wanted to bring their audiences timely, exciting, “up close” reporting from the frontlines. The arrangements that were agreed upon were far from perfect, but they more or less served the interests of both parties.²⁰

The military units in which journalists were embedded found themselves with their mission expanded in a nontraditional way. Fighting the Iraqi enemy was the principal task, but some soldiers’ frontline responsibilities now included feeding, housing, and safeguarding a coterie of journalists. Most of these journalists had never served in the military and had received only brief training in matters such as first aid and dealing with a chemical weapons attack. Despite their occasional bravado, these men and women were amateurs among warfighting professionals, and they had to be treated with care by their hosts.²¹

      The military wanted to facilitate news gathering that would show US efforts in the most favorable light to ensure continued popular support from the American public. With the 9/11 attacks of 2001 still very much on the public’s and journalists’ minds, some news organizations decided that putting a patriotic spin on their coverage would appeal to news consumers (and advertisers).²² Mutually beneficial coexistence between combat operations and journalism was becoming a more integral element of military and journalistic doctrine.

      Nevertheless, with the Vietnam War still a frequently cited precedent, the government and news media continue at times to wrestle for control of the information flow. As journalists know, the boundaries between “military necessity” and “political expedience” can sometimes be hard to discern when it comes to withholding information or making it available to the public.

      Chapter 3, “War Information Expands,” considers the broadened scope of war-related information-gathering. While wars keep being fought and journalists keep covering them, use of new information technologies has extended well beyond the professionals to whom it had long been limited. Perhaps the most revolutionary new tool is the cellphone camera. With it, unseen wars can be brought into the vision of governments and publics, and they can decide whether this information merits intervention in response. Today we can look into the past and ask, “What if …?” about previous wars. What if Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 had been able to show the world their country’s genocide in progress? Would foreign governments have responded more promptly? A half-century before that, what if the Holocaust had been documented as it happened? Would the Allied powers have altered their strategy and made liberating the Nazi concentration camps a higher priority?

The list of such questions is virtually endless. The device so many of us carry in our pockets today may not have been available to alter events and save lives in the past, but it might do so today. Along with other tools, it is used by “citizen journalists” who have little or no formal journalism training but gather and disseminate descriptions and images of events that take place in front of them. Established news organizations see them as assets. The BBC, for instance, may ask witnesses to terrorist attacks and other such occurrences to provide photos, video, and general information that can be included in news reports.²³ Sometimes a deluge of responses is the result. At first glance, this may seem to be a valuable expansion of the flow of news. But vetting can be difficult; once the door is opened, fraudulent photos, videos, and text might come racing through. This means news organizations must pay particular attention to the accuracy of material from citizen journalists. Errors may be deliberate or accidental, but they should not be presented to the public.²⁴

      Nevertheless, citizen journalists’ work can have great value. Syrians reporting from their hometowns during the war that began in 2011 have bravely provided coverage from places that conventional news organizations cannot (or dare not) reach. Rulers such as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are finding it more difficult to slaughter their opponents without the rest of the world learning about it. How the world will respond to atrocities documented in real time remains open to question, but perhaps this new dimension of information availability will somewhat alter the calculations of bloodletting.

      “Slaughter” is not too strong a word to describe what happens in a war, and not just to combatants. Civilian casualties and the destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and much else tend to receive only secondary attention; they are the detritus