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Wednesday, Nov 24, 2004

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Embedded journalism

By Alex Thomson

Somewhere along the line of reporting the "war on terror," things will have to change radically.

FALLUJAH HAS been a one-sided battle, and we have had one-sided news coverage to go with it. We have become accustomed to the first part of this. From Operation Desert Storm in 1991 onwards, through the invasion and occupation of Iraq to the reinvasion of Fallujah last week, the world has come to accept the Pentagon war-fighting doctrine of overwhelming force as normal.

I wonder, though, whether we might be in danger of accepting the one-sided coverage of Fallujah, the invasion and occupation of Iraq and, yes, the global so-called war on terror as normal too.

Since 9/11 we have seen the evolution of the embed, the transition from traditional war hacks who got lucky and tacked themselves on to a particular unit for the duration, to a strictly controlled invitation-by-ticket-only. Go embedded or face the — often lethal — consequences.

The coming of age of the `embed' has coincided with an utterly ideological world conflict. As one side gets into embedding, the other side are into crusaders versus martyrs. Utterly convinced of the righteousness of their cause, they do not need any journalists along to record their war and their motivations.

But even Saddam Hussein learnt about the propaganda value of having western reporters in town. Operation Desert Storm in 1991 saw the Ba'athists get totally shirty the minute the air-raid sirens wailed over the Tigris. Out went the assembled hacks, with the exception of Peter Arnett and CNN and bizarrely, a single enterprising correspondent from El Mundo.

By the time of last year's invasion, Saddam Hussein had learned a lesson or two. OK, so Comical Ali's briefings were not exactly clever. But at least the hacks remained in town, and were able not just to capture the "shock-and-awe" fireworks but to visit Baghdad's hospitals and discover the impact of modern British and U.S. high explosives upon the flesh and organs of children.

To a limited extent, then, we got something of the other half of the picture. There was something against which to measure the claims of the British and US media-briefing operation. It was not great — but at least it existed.

In the ideological and military clash of Christian fundamentals with Islamist fundamentals, the western media are simply off-limits to the latter. I am still getting emails every week from viewers demanding why we are not in Fallujah, Tikrit, Amara covering this war properly and showing the other side.

Many viewers appear to think the media still have some kind of conferred neutrality. That the press badge can still act a bit like the Red Crescent. That murdered British hostage Ken Bigley's appalling death could surely not happen to western journalists. Well, those days have well and truly gone.

So we come to the assault last week upon Fallujah. I've been embedded and I'm not against it. Those who think embeds are the very spawn of Satan should sit down in a dark room, take a long hard look at the coverage British Channel 4 News's Lindsey Hilsum and the BBC's Paul Wood have produced and ask themselves: would you rather you did not know this?

Somewhere along the line of reporting the "war on terror," things will have to change radically if we are to be able to do anything like a proper job.

Al Jazeera is all but shut out of Iraq by the pro-U.S. "government." Attempts at swingeing censorship are being made. "Tell it our way, or leave the country" appears to be the new "freedom." So even Al Jazeera would be hard-placed to pick up the resistance embed, should it one day be offered.

My best guess is that it will come though. Even now in Iraq there are some signs that the insurgency is becoming more open to the efforts of Arab cameramen and producers. Should it happen, we in the west must be ready to get the best of it. At the same time, western media organisations must redouble their efforts to work with Arab journalists.

Then, with luck, these days of the one-sided view might begin to fade. Then we may begin to cover not just Fallujah and Iraq but the whole global conflict more fairly. —

(Alex Thomson is a presenter of Britain's Channel 4 News. An earlier version of this article appeared in the UK Press Gazette)

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