by Alessandria Masi

Created on: June 17, 2010

Cover Your Eyes: We’re At War

According to Phillip Knightley, author of The First Casualty, the American government, specifically Bryan Whitman, Deputy Assistant of Secretary of Defense, put the American Media Plan into action at the beginning of the war in Iraq in 2003, to clarify the media’s role in the war. It can be summed up in four points: 1. Emphasize the dangers posed by the Iraqi regime. 2. Dismiss and discredit those who cast doubt on these dangers. 3. Do not get involved in appeals to logic but rather to people’s hearts. 4. Drive home the message to the public “Trust us. We know more than we can tell you”.

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This plan was used to turn the American media into propaganda and completely defeats the purpose of a war correspondent. War correspondents in Iraq can get information in three government-approved ways: briefing, embedded reporting and unilateral. They come with a very convincing packaging, but once unwrapped one understands they are just a way to control what the public sees of the war. The approved methods of getting information are a direct result of the American media plan and therefore the method’s flaws prove that the media plan itself is incredibly defective.

The first system Whitman implemented is briefing and it takes the fight out of the war, reducing it to a talk show. Media briefings are held in multimillion-dollar press centers at the Central Command station. Seven hundred journalists flock to the conference room, no doubt equipped with the snacks and coffee the press center coffee bar offered, to try and understand the war. Once in the press center, they have the option of watching parts of the war unfold through the stacks of TV monitors on display, or to sit and listen to the daily briefing given by military officers.[2]

The latter supposedly comes with a question and answer period, which is lacking in the answers. Journalists go into a war thinking their job is to hold the military accountable for what is being done in the name of the country, to expose their mistakes, exaggerations and false claims but to also praise real victories. In order to do that, they need the military to provide them with factual and complete answers to understand the war. The military officers are under the watchful eyes of Jim Wilkinson from the Pentagon and Simon Wren from 10 Downing Street, in Britain who come prepared with a list of topics to avoid and evade at all costs.[3] Journalists are clearly not getting

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