Martin Shaw

From managed media to active representation:

the Gulf War and the Kurdish refugee crisis

Contents:

Chapter 6 Television as managed media (the Gulf War)

Chapter 7 Television as active representation (the Kurdish refugee crisis)

Chapter 8 Newspapers, ideology and representation

Chapter 9 Media and representation in global crises

Bibliography

Martin Shaw is professor of international relations and politics at Sussex University and editor of the global site m.shaw@sussex.ac.uk

Because of the limitations of other civil society institutions in the representation of global crises [discussed in Part II, Chapters 3-5 of this book], mass media played an exceptionally critical role. There has been a huge amount of analysis of the media in the Gulf, but it has not been set in the context either of the limitations of civil society or an analysis of public opinion and individuals' responses. Nor, of course, has it examined the Iraqi wars together: it has been focused on the Gulf War, to the neglect of the other wars and even the Kurdish refugee crisis. [Chapter 2 outlined this political context.]The treatment of the latter is curious: it is widely recognized that the media played a strikingly different role than it did in the Gulf conflict, but all studies of media in the Gulf stop when [President] Bush stopped, with the ceasefire on the 28 February 1991, and ignore the tumultuous two months of revolt, repression and human disaster which followed in Iraq. This study is the first to present a detailed account of the media coverage of this process.

Critical discussion has been focused, moreover, on one medium: television. It is beyond dispute that television was the central medium of communication in the war, and it is essential to understand its role. Many analyses have, however, merged the discussion of television and other media and have not distinguished between their distinct roles. Television's role was limited in important ways and we need to understand both these limitations and how far other media overcame them. In the discussion which follows I first summarize the role of television in the Gulf War;' (1) then present my analysis of television coverage of the Iraqi revolts culminating in the Kurdish refugee crisis; and finally, 1 develop a broader account of the media, arguing that newspapers played critical-and contradictory-roles in articulating and forming responses and representations of the Iraqi wars.

1. My discussion is based chiefly on Taylor, 1992.

Chapter Six

Television as managed media

The televisual mediation of the war was one of its most striking characteristics; many responses of both institutions and individuals contain a commentary on this process. We saw in Chapter 3 that for Baudrillard, the media war displaced the 'real' war. For the combatant states, the media war was undoubtedly an integral part of the war. Saddam Hussein appeared to believe that he could utilize the media to overcome his military disadvantage: that if he could inflict thousands of American casualties, pictures of returning body bags carried by television into American homes would force the administration to end the war. Conversely, the US and its allies aimed to limit their own casualties and to manage the media coverage so as to present a sanitized picture of the war.

In their approaches to media both sides reflected beliefs about the role of television in Vietnam. Iraq sought to emulate the supposed success of the Vietnamese in weakening America's resolve from within. (1) Bush aimed to exorcise the 'Vietnam syndrome' of military defeat and his media managers aimed to avoid the excess of unrestricted television coverage which was seen as having contributed to the USAs downfall. They aimed to build on the successes of media management by the British in the Falklands and the USA in Grenada and Panama.

These beliefs about Vietnam have been questioned by academic research on the media in that war (2) and were challenged during the Gulf War by Freedman, who argued:

In the Gulf, Freedman pointed out, the willingness to accept loss of life grew with the fighting: 'Public opinion can tolerate mounting casualties as long as there is real belief in the military objectives. ... The public can tolerate pain; it is less forgiving of futility.'

The USA was nevertheless taking no chances in the Gulf. The five-month lead in to the war created an unprecedented opportunity to plan media management, and when the USA attacked Iraq, they had created a 'controlled information environment'. Reporters were integrated with the military, either accompanying selected units through the 'newspool' system, or being fed selected information directly in briefings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (although there were also 'unilaterals', who operated outside the pool and were often credited with more objective coverage). (4) This system led to media mostly supplying controlled information which amounted to highly effective propaganda. (5)

In Britain, the government set up a propaganda committee, hired a public relations firm and agreed how to announce British casualties so as to minimize embarrassment. (6) Direct censorship appears to have been instituted voluntarily by broadcasting organizations, who cast their net widely. The BBC banned sixty-seven popular songs (some of them 'among those most often requested by the squaddies themselves') (7) and comedy programmes with a vaguely military theme. The banning by the minority Channel 4 of a series of Vietnamese films indicated a level of general cultural control that went beyond the political censorship evident in all the countries directly involved in the conflict.

'The Gulf War', Taylor points out, 'broke out on television. Or that at least is how television subscribers in many parts of the world will remember it.' (8) The instant coverage of air attacks on Iraq on 16 January 1991 was taken live from Cable News Network (CNN) by news organizations around the world, including both main British providers. Television coverage of the early phase emphasized high-technology efficiency: film was widely shown of American fighter pilots describing their assaults-'exactly like the movies', 'Baghdad was lit up like a Christmas tree. It was tremendous!', 'It was kinda neat'.

This was 'the video game war', in which the apparently remorseless efficiency of high-technology weapons combined with lack of evidence of casualties to match computer simulations. This was the war which later turned up as a computer game:

(This was one of several games, with names like Desert Strike, which came on the market.)

During this phase, many in the media 'failed to keep their distance from [the] terminological fog' involved in the 'high-tech' war: 'Like two sports commentators, David Dimbleby and [BBC] defence correspondent, David Shukman, were almost rapt with enthusiasm. (10) Even more, they often reproduced the military's linguistic devices for masking the attacks' violent effects: 'It might appear that official coalition propaganda had not only dictated the overall picture but had even permeated the language of the media.' (11) The other side was, however, that 'television gives faces and histories and fears and weeping wives and children to troops. ... In this conflict, the latest airman posted missing might be someone who has just been speaking to us.... The concept of cannon-fodder is harder to sustain.' (12)

The real cannon-fodder were Iraqi soldiers whose sufferings were completely unfilmed, victims of a conspiracy of silence between Iraqi and coalition governments neither of which wished people to know their fate:

When the ground war began, the process was completed in some parts of the front by the extensive use of bulldozers to fill in Iraqi trenches, their occupants buried alive in the sand. This, too, never made television. (14) Nor, of course, did Iraqi atrocities in Kuwait, where cameras were banned.

After two or three weeks of the 'high-tech' war, with the war of attrition against Iraqi forces out of sight, there was 'a dearth of sensational new stories'. It was in this climate that attention shifted in early February to ,collateral damage', the effects of the bombing of Iraqi cities on civilians. (15) It was the destruction of the Amiriya shelter on 13 February 1991, killing hundreds of people, which really shook media management, creating ,precisely the kind of allied nightmare and the sought-after Iraqi propaganda opportunity which coalition media managers had feared since the outset of the air attacks on Baghdad. (16)

The coalition had initially highlighted its avoidance of civilian casualties, but gradually shifted to stressing that they were regrettably unavoidable and that responsibility lay with the Iraqi regime: they were, for example, the result of Iraqis shooting down coalition missiles, deflecting them from their precisely guided targets and causing them to explode in unintended locations. The 'lofty pedestal' on which the coalition placed itself in the propaganda war, claiming not to target civilians, was 'always vulnerable to collapse when ... accidents occur.' (17)

This was what happened at Amiriya. The Iraqis lifted all censorship and Western reporters were able to transmit what they liked. Gruesome footage arrived in newsrooms and was censored by the broadcasters: 'The pictures were so horrific, and the filming of the corpses so graphic, that they would need skilful editing if audiences were not to be offended or alienated ... rather in the same way as television editors would treat pictures of a motorway or rail crash.' (180 Television reports overwhelmingly confirmed that there was no evidence of military activity: as the BBC's Jeremy Bowen put it, 'I think all the signs are that this was indeed what the Iraqis say it was - a civilian shelter ... I am as certain as 1 can be that this was a shelter.' (19) Nevertheless, this breach in the orderly progress of the war became a source of great controversy: 'Words turned out to be the sore point in the coverage; the pictures may have been self-censored but even the sanitised images were still so shocking that the commentaries of journalists became the focus of ire. (20)

Although a British military official suggested it might have been a mistake, the co-ordinated official reaction was that 'it was a military bunker. It was a command and control facility.... We have no explanation at this time really why there were civilians in this bunker.' It was plausible, the American briefer suggested, that Saddam might have deliberately placed civilians in this bunker for a propaganda coup.' (21) This line was again indicated in later briefings and was picked up, we shall see, by the majority of the British press. Eyewitness accounts of television journalists clearly contradicted this line, and CNN, BBC and Independent Television News (ITN) continued to report their stories. The coalition line, meanwhile, was successful with public opinion: around 80 per cent of people interviewed in both the USA and Britain agreed that the shelter was a legitimate target, although sources at the Pentagon and in Riyadh were soon admitting privately that the bombing resulted from an intelligence mistake. (22)

The Amiriya incident also changed the British political debate about television and the war. In January, Major had

dealt peremptorily with a Tory backbencher who criticised the refusal of the BBC to refer routinely to 'our' British troops ... [and] said that the BBC was trying to strike a balance in its coverage, and it was important that the Corporation's coverage was believed in countries other than Britain. (23)

After the Amiriya bombing the BBC was dubbed the 'Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation'by Tory critics, and Major's press secretary, Gus O'Donnell, intervened to complain over its failure to say that Iraqi censors had approved its film and the text of reports of the shelter. Whether Conservative protests reflected real viewer dissatisfaction is doubtful: the Broadcasting Standards Council received only twenty complaints over BBC and ITN coverage of the shelter bombing, (24) and polls showed television was trusted far more than the government, military or the press to tell the truth about the war. (25) Nevertheless, right-wingers were vociferous in their attacks on television, with suggestions that Brent Sadler of ITN was manipulated by Iraqi propaganda and a Freedom Association court challenge over two Channel 4 programmes which it claimed were 'one-sided propaganda'. (26) That minority programmes with a critical editorial stance should attract criticism, when the preponderance of stridently pro-war coverage in the press did not, says more about the politics of the right than about the real situation in the media. (27)

The other incident in which, to a lesser degree, television coverage departed from the smooth track of news management was at the end of the war. On 26 February, as television crews, denied serious access to the land campaign, homed in on liberated Kuwait, American planes were bombing a makeshift convoy of Iraqi troops and civilians withdrawing from Kuwait, on the highway to Basra near Mutla Gap. Bumper-to-bumper traffic-of civilian as well as military vehicles-was caught in what US pilots called a 'turkey shoot' and like 'shooting fish in a barrel'. Probably thousands were killed in or near their vehicles, in an operation of questionable military utility. It was only on 1 March, however, 'that the real extent of the carnage was brought home to television viewers around the world.' A CNN reporter called the event 'a massacre'. BBC viewers were treated to an item by reporter Kate Adie in which, as Taylor puts it, 'the reapers of carnage had turned angels of mercy' as one wounded survivor was shown being treated by the Americans, but British television still conveyed the horror. British soldiers interviewed expressed their disgust. Indeed television gave 'the impression that an ambush followed by a massacre had taken place. In fact it had been a battle. It may have been one-sided owing to the coalition's air supremacy but it had been a battle nonetheless. (28)

This story was largely lost in the general relief at the end of the war and the horror at environmental damage caused by Iraq's firing of Kuwait's oil wells. There remains considerable suspicion about the reasons for the delay in transmitting footage of it. There is also the possibility that as John Simpson suggested, 'awareness of what the TV pictures of the slaughter at Mutla Gap might do to public opinion at home played an important part in President Bush's decision not to pursue the Iraqi troops any further, and certainly not to take the war to Baghdad', (29) although this has been discounted by others.

Coalition governments and armed forces won a stunning victory in the military campaign; they also won overwhelmingly in the television war. The war appeared to be virtually bloodless; fewer than two hundred coalition troops had been killed and the killing of tens or even hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers had been conducted almost entirely out of sight. Propaganda had been largely successful, even if some of the claims for bombing accuracy were later shown to have been misleading. There was relative unanimity of media coverage, due to tight control of information at source. The fact that the war was fought mainly from the air produced distance between the bombers and the bombed which television then amplified.' (30)

2. Mandelbaum, 1982; Hallin, 1986.

4. Taylor, 1992; pp. 31-86.

5. Taylor, 1992; Introduction, especially pp. 23-6.

6. Independent, 17 January 1991. Casualties were to be announced by the defence secretary: the government wished to avoid repeating the Falklands situation when a civil servant, Ian McDonald, had become notorious for his wooden announcements. Statements to Parliament were to be avoided because they would give a platform to antiwar MPs (Guardian, 26 January 1991).

7. The favourite, according to British Forces Radio, was Barry Mcguire's 'Eve of Destruction', followed by 'Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now', 'Eve of War', 'Bang Bang' and 'Stop the Cavalry'. 'Reflecting the sardonic humour of the men who have nine seconds to put on their gas masks when there is an alert, the so-called "Saddam Hit List" also included "The Air That 1 Breathe".' Independent, 14 February 1991.

8. Taylor, p. 31.

9. Guardian, 2 May 1991. This was not the only exploitation of the war for commercial purposes: advertising also latched on to the war. Travel agents, Thomas Cook, were quick to offer free holidays for troops, over a picture of victorious soldiers on a tank - 'As soon as they come home we want to send them away.' The clue lay in the statement, 'After all, the travel business suffered more than most as a result of the Gulf War.' During April 1991, as Kurdish refugees were barred from entering Turkey, its tourist office advertised in British papers that 'Now is the time to come to Turkiye' - 'Turkiye, rich in history myth and legend, has 5000 miles of coastline, most of it untouched by tourism. There are mountains, lakes, plains, forests and vast unspoiled landscapes which Turkiye is determined to preserve. ... Come this summer!'

10. Philo and McLaughlin, 1993; p. 6.

11. Taylor, 1992; p. 47.

12. Mark Lawson, quoted, Taylor, 1992; p. 49.

13. Taylor, 1992; pp. 154-5. See also p. 221.

14. Guardian, 13 and 19 September 1991. Pilger claims, however, that film of this briefly formed the backdrop to a BBC2 Late Show discussion (New Statesman and Society, 19 May 1995). It also appeared in the BBC series The Gulf War, 16 January 1996. See too Maggie O'Kane, Guardian, 16 December 1995.

15. Taylor, 1992; pp. 163-4.

16. Taylor, 1992; p. 169.

17. Taylor, 1992; p. 185.

18. Taylor, 1992; pp. 188-9.

19. Quoted, Taylor, 1992; p. 191. The view that it was a civilian shelter was also endorsed by Dr David Manley, Civil Defence Adviser to the Home Office and an expert on military installations (quoted, Taylor, p. 209).

20. Taylor, 1992; p. 193.

21. Brigadier-General Richard Neal, quoted in Taylor, 1992; pp. 194-5.

22. Taylor, 1992; p. 212. However, according to Wafic-al-Samari, then Head of Iraqi Military Intelligence, part of the shelter was used by Iraqi intelligence services (The Gulf War, BBC1, 9 January 1996).

23. Independent, 17 January 1991.

24. Observer, 17 February 1991. CNN was also attacked at this time as the 'US Voice of Baghdad'.

25. Independent, 16 February 1991.

26. Independent Television News, 5 March 1991.

27. Another matter which attracted Tory protests was the BBC's removal of the National Anthem from the close of broadcasting on Radio 4. This was done, the BBC claimed, for practical reasons, because broadcasting continued into the night, but the Anthem was restored after protests. Sunday Times, 3 February 1991.

28. Taylor, 1992; pp. 251-6.

29. Quoted, Taylor, 1992; pp. 259-60.

30. 'The Gulf War may have appeared to have reduced this distance with the presence of video-cameras in the noses of smart weapons, but the fact remains that, once the bomb impacted, the pictures went blank.' Taylor, 1992; p. 275.

Chapter Seven

Television as active representation

If television during the Gulf War was mostly a highly managed medium, the aftermath of the war showed it in a dramatically different light. The changed role had been prefigured only in the moment of tension over Amiriya. Here the critical, even subversive potential of television had been clearly demonstrated, but it was largely smothered by the military propaganda campaign and, as we shall see, the willingness of most newspapers to reinforce it.

The preplanned work of media managers, as of the militaries in general, came to an end with Bush's ceasefire. The Iraqi wars did not end there, however, as the military intended and even most academic media researchers have implicitly accepted. On the contrary, at almost precisely this moment their most turbulent phases began and, with them, the most exciting, dramatic and influential period of media and above all television coverage.

Coverage of the Kurdish refugee crisis (which as we shall see was only one aspect of this period) has been much referred to but-unaccountably except in terms of the inability of researchers to adapt to unexpected events-has not been closely studied. This omission is remedied here by examining key elements of British television coverage of the revolts in Iraq, their repression by the regime and the consequent refugee crises, together with responses by Western states and civil societies.

The account covers the calendar months of March-April 1991, which include all the most active coverage. The focus on British television, rather than CNN or other US coverage, is explained partly by the availability of this material. It is also justified, however, because British television news programmes succeeded in generating such concern for Kurdish refugees that they actually precipitated an historic 'U-turn' by Major's Conservative government, which launched the virtually unprecedented proposal for Kurdish 'safe havens', established and maintained by Western powers, in northern Iraq. The British volte-face predated and influenced the American, which was required to make the proposal effective.

British television coverage thus played, 1 argue, a particular political role; there is, however, no reason to believe that it showed major qualitative differences from that of North American or other countries, television. In this sense, although there are national peculiarities, the analysis of British television's role may stand as representative until there are comparable international studies. This study is based, moreover, on a restricted sample of British coverage, concentrated on a viewing of one full-length (approximately half-hour) BBC bulletin, daily for the whole of March-April 1991, together with smaller samples of ITN bulletins. These are the two major national television news services reaching mass audiences; while study of minority channel bulletins would undoubtedly have revealed more sophisticated analyses, these reached fewer viewers. The study of ITN in two key sub-periods revealed only secondary differences of approach compared to BBC coverage. For this reason it was not felt necessary to replicate the latter with a full study of all ITN bulletins and the coverage of the two services is analysed together. (1)

Discussion is centred around three sets of issues to do with coverage, advocacy and political effect. The first set of questions concerns representation in the sense of what was shown: the extent and character of television coverage of post-Gulf-War Iraq; the coverage of the southern compared to the northern revolt; and the relationship between coverage of Shia and Kurds as rebels and as victims of repression. The second set concerns representation in the sense of advocacy: the degree to which Iraqi people were able to represent themselves in the television coverage or depended on British journalists to portray them; and related to this, whether television was as good at portraying Iraqis as rebels seeking to influence their own life-situation as it was at portraying them as passive victims needing outside concern. The third set, which it is of course difficult to answer from a content analysis, concerns political effect: the extent and ways in which coverage influenced the dramatic shift in government policy in April 1991 and why this effect occurred then rather than earlier at the height of the rebellions. This final set of questions is crucial and, even if answers are only tentative, it is important to suggest them here.

With the end of the Gulf War, television coverage immediately broadened its focus. Alongside reports from liberated Kuwait and Baghdad ,returning to normal', the BBC on 1 March had film from the devastated road between Kuwait and Basra, showing 'rows of Iraqi corpses', a US soldier saying that the 'scene was apocalyptic', and commentary by Adie describing what had happened as an 'inferno' and remarking that it was an 'eerie and grisly end for a fleeing army'. Adie pointed out that many of those who fought and died were from minority communities persecuted by Saddam Hussein such as the Kurds. Her colleague Brian Barron had travelled a few miles further towards Basra and had been turned back by Iraqi troops. He was asked from the studio if there were signs of resistance in Iraq and gave a hearsay account of a tank commander in Basra splattering a portrait of Saddam with fire. ITN, however, had UN Secretary General Perez cle Cuellar saying that the fall of Saddam was a matter for the Iraqi people. (2)

From the moment the Gulf War ended, therefore, revolt inside Iraq was a serious issue for television news-for the first few days it received repeated coverage-but television was also reporting the line being drawn between the 'international community' and this revolt. By 2 March, Basra was 'said to be in chaos' and people were reported to be trying to leave: 'The American military say that aerial photographs show a total breakdown of control, but no sign of revolt.' A US spokesman was shown speculating on breakdown in Iraq, and there was an Iraqi prisoner saying he hoped Saddam was killed. The newscaster pointed out in what was to be a constant refrain that 'conclusive information on what is happening in Basra is impossible to obtain'. Reporters were able to get around Baghdad, from ~~,hich there was a story about a hospital in which children were dying because of lack of water, milk and medicines and the problems of sewage -ind disease in the wake of the bombing. (3)

Television kept the Basra story alive with indirect reports, although information remained sparse and film virtually non-existent. The BBC on 3 March was reduced to quoting from Teheran radio and noting that the 'US military, privately hoping for Saddarn's downfall, today had little publicly to say'. It reported that Basra still seemed to be chaotic and disorganized: 'Reports of revolts against Saddarn remain sketchy, but taken together, they strongly suggest that Saddam is facing revolts which he can't put down, as he always has done before. (4) The following day it again carried reports from Islamic and US sources, on tanks attacking people: 'It looks like there is some anti-regime resistance going on.' The Shi'ites claimed control of Nasiriyah, there were reports of the Kurds taking Sulaymaniyah and that the military had moved two armoured divisions to Baghdad to protect Saddam Hussein. Unconnectedly, it was announced that 'Tom King [the Defence Secretary] has told British troops they will be going home'. It was left to ITN to put a particular political gloss on the revolts: 'Islamic fundamentalists say they control Iraq's second biggest city, Basra,' it told its viewers, while film from Iran showed, it said, a 'fundamentalist' ayatollah speaking. Over eye-witness accounts from refugees, ITN reminded viewers that: 'A major Western concern is that Iraq could literally split apart. (5)

By 5 March, the BBC was already reporting the crushing of revolt by Saddarn's forces. justin Webb, from a US camp seven miles inside Iraq, said that just a few miles on, the Revolutionary Guards 'are saying there is no problem in Basra'. At the US forward position, there were first-hand reports from refugees of the chaos in Basra and other towns. A refugee, asked 'Who's winning?' replied optimistically: 'The people. The people want Saddam down.' The difficulties of reporting were again noted: 'These are dangerous roads for those trying to find out independently what is going on.' Two Austrian reporters had been held by government troops. ITN also interviewed Kuwaiti refugees returning in cars: 'All they want to talk about is the fighting in Basra and Nasiriyah.' It reported how antiSaddam feeling was growing-there was 'a growing revolution outside Baghdad'-and that US satellite pictures confirmed the revolt. A US spokesman talked wisely about the political unreliability of defeated armies. Over film of Iraqi prisoners and aerial pictures of abandoned trenches, viewers were told that 'returning soldiers will decide the fate of Saddam Hussein'. (6)

Although there was clearly a life and death struggle going on in Basra and other cities, television had no film and no first-hand reporting. To the broadcasters' credit, the story was a major one, to which they returned virtually every day, but the difficulty of direct coverage meant that this dramatic conflict rarely made the main lead over more mundane issues with a domestic angle. On 6 March, for example, both channels led with Iraq's freeing of allied prisoners and the BBC followed this with Major's visit to British troops in Kuwait. Both channels reported that government forces appeared to have regained control of Basra, and homed in on a former British army officer, Brock Matthews, freed from a Basra jail by insurgents. The BBC told us that 'his fears are now for the rebels'. According to Matthews, the army were now 'beating hell out of them': they had only small arms, and although the uprising hadn't yet been crushed, it might soon be. ITN, on the other hand, showed Matthews returning to his Kuwait flat and telling the story of his treatment in captivity, but curiously had nothing from him about the revolt. Only Ben Brown on BBC finally raised the obvious implication for the West which both channels had avoided all week, reporting that 'refugees coming out of Iraq are appealing to the allies to intervene on behalf of the resistance, before it's crushed'. (7)

Although in some places the revolt may have been crushed, in others it went on. The BBC reported the Red Cross going to Basra to organize the release of Western journalists held there (none of these seem to have been British); refugees were fleeing 'fighting which by all accounts has now been quelled by the Republican Guard'. Edward Stourton on ITN, however, expelled from Baghdad (where there was no uprising), mentioned the Iraqi opposition's claim that it was still in control of nine cities and voiced Western governments' worries about the Islamic 'tinge' to the revolt in Basra, together with the worry that 'Iraq might become another Lebanon'. (8)

After the first week of March, as it became clearer that there would be no quick victory for the rebels, film from the affected areas remained as elusive as ever. The story, while not disappearing as it did in most newspapers, slipped down the bulletins as other events-the Ribble Valley by-election, riots in Belgrade, elections in Albania, as well as other Gulf stories, took increasing precedence. Clearly things were still critical in Basra, as the Red Cross was barred from going there; the Iraqis released Kuwaiti prisoners early to avoid Red Cross intervention. (9) As US Secretary of State james Baker visited Kuwait, it was reported that mustard gas had been used by the regime in four towns - 'Mr Baker has warned Iraq about chemical weapons, although it is unclear what America can do about it' - and Iraqi opposition leaders met Douglas Hogg, the British foreign office minister'the new fighting is more turmoil for a country still recovering from weeks of bombing, with Saddam Hussein still apparently in power', the BBC opined. (10)

Baker's visit provided an easily filmed focus for Middle East coverage over several days, as he toured various capitals, more concerned with the position of the Palestinians than the insurgents and civilian victims inside Iraq. Mentions of Basra became less frequent and although a united Iraqi opposition conference in Beirut received attention, 'their unprecedented political cooperation has come too late to stave off defeat', viewers were told. (11)

As the initial interest in southern Iraq faltered, new evidence of fighting emerged in the Kurdish north, with the crucial difference that access for journalists, while not easy, was freer than in the south. As early as 12 March, the BBC had a (secondhand) film report from Kirkuk, over which it detailed opposition claims of success in the fighting; indeed it told viewers that there was 'every indication that fierce fighting continues both in the Kurdish north and the Shi'ite south', and that Iran had claimed that napalm was being used by government forces. (12)

After this, although presumably fighting was going on all over Iraq, it was several days before the story resurfaced. On 15 March the BBC reported that the government's victory in Basra was somewhat less complete than had been suggested a week earlier: refugees claimed that although the army was in control of the city, the rebels held the suburbs; there was confusion and 'in many cases it is impossible to tell who is in control'. A deserter appealed to the West: 'I only wish the allied troops would go into Basra, and help the civilians'; but this isolated comment was not picked up in the commentary. Only at the end of the month, when the plight of Kurdish civilians became a catastrophe, did this sort of comment become commonplace and receive back-up from both reporters on the ground and anchors in the studios.

On 16 March news bulletins were able to use film of Saddam Hussein's appeals for unity on Iraqi television. The BBC's voice-over led with 'Rebels say the fighting goes on', and said of Saddam's claims to be crushing the revolts, 'it's wishful thinking.' The opposition claimed to hold Basra and to be advancing in north; their spokesman in London dismissed Saddam's claims. It seemed the BBC agreed: 'Isolated from reality, it now seems that Saddam Hussein is planning to fight to the end.' The story was backed by a report from Jonathan Charles in Iran, with film smuggled out of southern Iraq which 'shows the scale of the uprising', and 'shows the revolt is moving closer to the seat of the Iraqi government'. A doctor was shown saying that outside help, food and medicines, was needed urgently. Iranians, however, were told at prayers that the overthrow of Saddam is a matter for Iraqis alone - this is 'no comfort for the rebels'. In a separate report, Bush and Major also 'agreed that Saddam Hussein should go, but there is still no role for allied military in his removal'. (13)

By now the poll tax, a crucial referendum in Russia and even rising conflict in Yugoslavia vied for the attention of the news, and still information was scanty and mostly without visual support. A report that 18,000 people had been killed by napalm bombs, which probably could not be corroborated and of which there was no film, made only a brief item in the middle of a bulletin. (14) But on 18 March the BBC had video film of Kurdish successes in Irbil, now under control of peshmerga guerrillas. A Kurdish Democratic Party spokesman claimed that despite the US threat that Iraq should not use its planes, it was doing so against the rebels. There was news of other rebel successes: towns were in rebel hands only sixty miles to the south of Baghdad and all over northern Iraq. (15) On 20 March, there was film of Karbala, south of Baghdad, 'said to be sheltering from air attack', and on the following day there were pictures by Japanese television of Kurdish forces in Kirkuk - 'they appear to be in total control'. (16)

Film reports were still isolated items, however, and no British television reporter had yet made it to the areas of conflict. The nearest they had reached was still the southern border, where refugees continued to flee into American-controlled territory. 'Iraqi refugees curse their president and say the allies should oust him,' ran the lead into one such story. (17) Despite the fact that this seemed to be the sort of thing that refugees said whenever they were allowed to speak direct to camera, such coverage was episodic. The demand for intervention received no consistent expression and was never put to British or Western politicians. If concerned viewers picked it up, there was no indication from the bulletins that it was politically relevant in the West.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer's annual budget statement on 19 March totally squeezed Iraqi news, and for several days the story struggled to become important. Even claims that Iraqi helicopters had dropped sulphuric acid only made the final item in a 22 March bulletin, alongside Iraqi calls for the lifting of restrictions on the import of food (conditions of civilians in Baghdad, as a result of coalition bombing, were a much more occasional item than the revolts). (18) Only on 23 March, alongside unconfirmed reports of unrest in Baghdad, did the BBC again give prominence to the Kurds' gains and the first strong indication that 'the Kurds' hold on the north may not be secure'. US intelligence forces were saying that Saddam Hussein was preparing to move the Republican Guards against the Kurds. Saddam was also winning in the south-'everyone is being killed', said resistance fighters in retreat. 'Their revolution, they said, needed outside help', reported Mike Donkin, but still this was an isolated comment, although the situation sounded grim: 'Through sheer fire power, Iraqi armed forces are reducing rebels to a ragged band.' Film showed refugees scrabbling for food distributed by Saudi soldiers. Soon this was to become almost a daily image. (19)

The following day, Western news programmes could again use official Iraqi pictures. Film had been broadcast of the devastation of Karbala, as a warning to other areas. 'The damage to one of the Muslim world's holiest cities is immense,' the BBC announced, linking the story to a call from a rebel leader for the UN to intervene. A 'decisive battle' was reported to be pending between the Kurds and the regime. (20) Meanwhile there was film of more refugees fleeing Basra (from the Shi'ite rebels), of tanks and personnel carriers and towns in rebel hands, and of Iranians at prayer-'death to Saddam'. (21)

Finally, on 26 March, the BBC had a reporter in Kurdistan and the issue of the Western role finally made it into the studio, although still the fifth item in the bulletin (possibly because the reporter could only file over a phone link). Alongside week-old film of Kurdish forces in control of Zakho and the return from exile of Kurdish leader jalal Talabani was a report that the regime's forces were preparing to attack them. jim Muir told Anna Ford that the Kurds 'are appealing to Western governments not to let Iraq use chemical weapons against them; but America's policy is still that it won't choose sides in Iraq's internal struggles', and that the 'Shi'ite rebellion appears to be dying away amid horrifying reports of mass executions.'

In the first clear studio prompt for intervention, Ford asked Muir: 'Jim, are they asking for any help from the West?' Muir replied, 'They certainly are, and they are very angry that United Nations aid is going through the Iraqi government. They're disappointed at the failure of the West to come to their aid, after they encouraged them to revolt against Saddarn's rule.' Muir stressed, however, that the Kurds were not looking for military aid but political and humanitarian support.

This story was followed by a strong report from Baghdad on the 'apocalyptic human crisis' there, with secret film from the International Gulf Peace Team of sewage in the streets, even untreated sewage in the basement of a hospital, and commentary stressing the danger of cholera, critically low food supplies and the grave shortage of water - 'aid workers have said there is little time left to avert a major human tragedy'. But this story did not often get this sort of airing. (22)

After this, the crisis of the Kurdish rebellion and the issue of Western responsibility rose rapidly up the news agenda. Film of Kurdish artillery suggested the rebels' advance, but tanks shooting back indicated the expected counter-attack. Despite Kurdish accusations of the regime using weapons indiscriminately (over film of children in hospital), 'America has said it cannot use the cease-fire agreement to keep Iraqi helicopters grounded' so 'Saddam Hussein is expected to use them to the full'. This story was backed by more evidence of the plight of refugees in the south, and eye-witness accounts of atrocities, the use of chemical weapons and the destruction of holy places. At the same time the BBC showed new film of a soldier's-eye-view of modem high-tech weaponry in the Gulf War without raising the question, however, of why the power used then could not be used to support the rebels. (23)

As the following day's report was to emphasize, the Kurds were lightly armed and faced up to 150,000 heavily armed government troops? (24) Although fresh uprisings were reported in the south, and many government troops were deserting, it was an 'ill-matched battle', and there was 'no sign of the aid or the weapons coming into the region which the Kurds would need to stand up to Saddam Hussein's army'. (25) The Kurds had lost Kirkuk, and Iran claimed that the civil war was 'a barbaric massacre of innocent people'. 'Kurds', the BBC reported in passing, 'have repeated their call to the international community to help them in their struggle. (26)

By the last day of March 1991, the first reports of the refugee exodus were coming in. The BBC had at last not just a reporter, Michael Macmillan, but also a camera crew in northern Iraq. 'Thousands of Kurds', he reported, 'have fled to the mountains of northern Iraq to escape from Saddam. Hussein's forces. ... The Kurds have accused the Iraqis of massacring civilians.' Distressed civilians were fleeing from Iraqi helicopter gunships. 'This is the weapon the Kurds fear most. What they can't quite work out is that the Americans are shooting down Iraqi fixed wing aircraft, and yet they are allowing helicopters to fly. And this is the result of the Iraqi offensive': at this point the film showed a burnt Kurdish child. Macmillan stressed the weakness of rebels, with only rifles against tanks, the shortage of food and the Iraqi armies getting closer. (27) On 1 April, he reported that 'hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes'. The 'faces of refugees told of a terrifying fear ... while the rebels claimed victory'. The Kurdish leader, Talabani, had in fact fled to the mountains, as Kurdish leaders had before, but: 'This time they thought they'd get the help of the Allies to succeed. (28)

Macmillan's stories had many of the ingredients of the weeks of intensive coverage which followed: the flight, the fear, the defencelessness of the refugees, the innocent victims, the failure of the West. The story of the revolts inside Iraq, which had struggled to maintain momentum for much of March, was poised to take off and dominate the news for days and weeks on end, for most of April. So long as the Shi'ites and Kurds were insurgents against the Iraqi regime, their story never fully engaged the attention of British television news. Now that they were being transformed into pure victims, Kurdish refugees (but not their Shia counterparts) engaged it as maybe no similar group has, before or since.

Day by day, the story grew bigger and bigger. On 2 April, the BBC reported the French call for a UN Security Council emergency meeting to discuss the Kurds, over a film report stressing that thousands were fleeing, the revolt was collapsing, and amidst eyewitness claims that 'they are shelling the civilians'. Once again, the US responsibility was raised:

The bulletin stressed that the Shi'ite rebellion had also been crushed, making many people refugees and once again brought up 'the difficult position the Americans find themselves in-occupying as they do 15 per cent of Iraq. ...They're witnessing scenes of extraordinary deprivation. (29)

ITN was a little slower to catch up with the story; its late evening news on 1 April did not even mention it. But by 2 April it too was upping the stakes and pointing the finger at the White House. It had American film of deserted Kurdish towns - 'and fleeing to the Turkish border, thousands of refugees'.

And everywhere, the same question to the American cameraman. 'And constantly 1 was asked, When will the outside world come to our aid? And of course, 1 really couldn't give an answer.' The State Department gave an answer today. The United States will give food to the refugees and moral support to the rebels, but that's all. ... President Bush, fishing in Florida, is keeping the whole matter at arms' length. No American lives will be risked. The United States does not recognize the Kurds' right to self-determination.

Bill Nealy reported that a CNN journalist swimming across a river to Turkey had been fired on by Turkish troops: 'They got through. Tens of thousands of Kurds are trapped. They have only the mercy of a vengeful Iraqi president to rely on'. (30)

The following day, 3 April, was when the issue totally took over television news. It occupied almost a whole BBC bulletin. The main lead was a story which baldly stated: 'They've no escape: thousands of men, women and children face famine and death.' Two million were on the road in

Tom Carver, by phone, filled in the graphic human detail: families digging Lix the snow for water to make tea ... women in childbirth ... old women in dressing gowns ... children crying with no shoes on because their feet were frozen. 'Propelled by hope and fear,' he said, 'they blame America and the West for not intervening to help them. The question they keep asking is: Why did not President Bush finish what he started?' Television was putting world leaders on the spot, linking them directly to the visible plight of the miserable refugees, putting the victims' accusations against the powerful.

In this light, the Security Council debate on the French resolution to condemn the persecution of the Kurds simply magnified the leaders' failure: 'Despite the allies controlling a fifth of Iraq, diplomats say the UN Charter means it has to steer clear of interfering in Iraq's internal affairs to help the Kurds.'And to make sure the meaning of this was utterly clear the report added: 'The best the Kurds can hope for are some kind words and some humanitarian assistance.' This was followed by film of a demonstration in Washington attacking Bush for abandoning the Kurds; then Bush himself was seen golfing. It was mentioned that Major had promised help to the Kurds, but he was upstaged by former prime minister Thatcher, shown receiving a Kurdish delegation, who 'wants action now': 'They need help and they need it now,' she said. Then there was film of a London demonstration against Bush's double standards; the Kurds want military as well as humanitarian aid, it is reported. Meanwhile, the relief agencies were 'hopelessly short' of the means to help the Kurds. (31)

ITN's report was in a very similar mould: 'Relief workers say the situation is catastrophic.'A quarter of a million people were trudging to the Turkish border-it was 'an exodus of fear'. 'There is also anger and bitterness at President Bush's refusal to intervene.' Fleeing journalists were interviewed: 'It's a problem that we really must ... we have an obligation to do something about. They've been let down very, very badly.' 'They're running for their lives ... They've had no water or electricity since the beginning of the bombing by the Americans. They're absolutely desperate. (32)

These reports had the essential ingredients of what was, effectively, a campaign which lasted for several weeks, although within a single week it was to achieve a major change in Western policy. The graphic portrayal of human tragedy and the victims' belief in Western leaders was skilfully juxtaposed with the responsibility and the diplomatic evasions of those same leaders to create a political challenge which it became impossible for them to ignore. Television reporters and anchors never said, as their leaderwriting colleagues in the press did, that Western leaders ought to help the Kurds. They did not need to: by simply showing what was happening, and putting on it a strong, clear and unequivocal moral construction, they created an unanswerable case without ever generating a single editorial statement.

What remained was to show what these reports described. By 4 April, although they led with a domestic story, both channels had copious film from the mountainsides. On the BBC, 'From the air the huddled masses can be spotted. They've run from a man who wants to kill them towards a country that wants to avoid them.' There were more refugees on the Iranian than the Turkish border, and the Iranians would let the Kurds in,a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak situation.' The BBC made it very clear why the Kurds were in this desperate position: 'They had no end of determination to fight. They needed help, but it never came.' They also gave a very high profile to the only Western agencies actively working for the Kurds, the humanitarian relief organizations. Their opinions of the situation were regularly quoted with great authority, and spokespeople for bodies like the Red Cross and Save the Children were interviewed, calling for coordinated international action. Intermingled with footage of desperate Kurdish civilians, was a simple and powerful message: 'They escaped Saddam Hussein's troops, but now the Kurds face new enemies-cold and starvation. The weakest are dying-the old and the children.' Meanwhile, Kurdish representatives in London 'say all the aid is too little, too late'. On the diplomatic front, President Bush is described as 'caught between his own rhetoric ... and America's obvious interest' in keeping out.' (33)

ITN's Andrew Simmons also piled on the agony: 'This is a place where all hope has been lost. A mountainside, with nowhere else to go, and little else but caves for shelter.'And then the appeal: 'Amongst the despair and fear, there is also a deep anger among these people. ... "We need all of the world to help. "' This is backed up with a picture of a child 'burnt in a napalm attack'. The report stressed that temperatures were below freezing and most had no protection. 'Now here in the place where they wanted sanctuary, they could face the prospect of death through starvation or exposure.' Norman Rees took it still further:

Once again, a powerful and emotive case was followed immediately by an expos6 of Western leaders' political shallowness. ITN showed the most damning film of the official British abdication of responsibility for the crisis. After a lead-in saying that Britain was sending £1 million of blankets with £20 million to follow, it reported that according to John Major, 'there'll be no intervention'. Major, was then shown saying in his most pathetic tones:

But, asked a reporter, hadn't the West encouraged the Kurds to rebel? Major responded with the classic: 'I don't recall asking the Kurds to mount this particular insurrection. There is a civil war going on. ... We hope very much that the military in Iraq will remove Saddam Hussein.'

This revelation of ineptitude was followed by an interview with a spokesperson for Save the Children who stressed that helicopters were needed and that the USA had them. As if to stress that Major's insensitivity was not unique, Alistair Stewart (from the studio) interviewed President Ozal of Turkey, accusing him of letting down the Kurds; the bulletin then turned its attention to Bush, accused by Kurdish leaders of 'standing by and doing nothing'. The way Bush was described made it absolutely clear what ITN thought: 'President Bush set off for California tonight, turning his back on the muted protests at his policy towards the Kurds, determined not to interfere. Nothing is being allowed to interfere with his celebration of victory. A few say, that's a betrayal.' As if to underline ITN's endorsement of this view, there followed interviews with Senator Al Gore - 'we encouraged them to rise up' - and a Kurdish leader who simply asserted that, 'The Gulf allies have brought this calamity on the Kurds.' (34)

This was only the beginning of the campaign. The following day ITN had 'four exclusive reports'. The two most highly emotive were from Kurdistan. Simmons reported from a refugee camp: 'Another day and one day closer to death for the families of the Kurdish exodus. Conditions have worsened. ... It may be difficult to believe, but these people are being described as the lucky ones.' (Others are kept on the mountains by the Turkish army.)

He interviews a paediatrician, who has nothing to offer people but makes a heartfelt plea in broken English: 'We expect helps from France, from Britannia, from America, from any country. We are very need helps.' As if this was not enough to sum up this 'human tragedy of colossal proportions', a 'woman with a seriously ill baby tried to sum the situation up. "Tell everyone they either save us or kill us."'

The second film, from Dahuk, focused on a child victim with a burnt face. Pictures showed people fleeing the town; a man on the mountainside called out, 'George Bush why don't you interfere with this? God help us.' The 'stream of barefoot humanity ... chose to risk death in the bitter cold in the mountains rather than risk the troops of Saddam. But at the end of the long march there was no safe haven, just a makeshift camp on the hillside.' Thus a week before Major's about-turn brought 'safe havens' into political debate, ITN was already defining this agenda. Once again, the plight of the Kurds was trenchantly connected to the inadequate world response: 'Tonight, another delay at the UN, more time for the Kurds to suffer unrelieved.' The Soviets and Chinese were blamed for blocking the French resolution backed by the USA and the UK, but Bush's anger at charges of betrayal - 'I have not misled anybody about the intentions of the United States of America' - was also unconvincing given the context defined by the bulletin. (35)

Reports from elsewhere in Iraq were less effective simply because the channels' own journalists were not on the spot to build up the emotive picture of suffering and Western callousness or because the victims could not be shown suffering in the same way. In the same ITN bulletin, there were pictures from an Iraqi cameraman in Iran of refugees from Basra, victims of napalm attacks. It was said the rebels fought with weapons which were practically useless and 'as many as 100,000 may have died in the uprising', but like the figures at the end of the Gulf War, this did not carry the same weight as the news from Kurdistan because no one could be shown dying and no correspondents could build up the story. For the same reason, although many more Kurds fled to Iran than to Turkey, the reporting of the former was intermittent, and the television campaign built up almost entirely around the latter where correspondents had daily access.

The campaign was incessant, with the overwhelming suffering of the Kurdish people described in strong, emotive language; the simple, heartfelt pleas of individual refugees: 'We are need peace ... survive ... do something, all countries'; the graphic film of both individual predicaments - women who had given birth, old ladies who could not even stand - and collective desperation - the daily scramble for food, the Turkish soldiers with their brutality. The voices over these scenes underlined both the human situation: 'These people reached breaking point long ago' and the imperative for action: 'Survival will depend on food and adequate shelter reaching them soon. (36)

Frequently the news gave prominence to the warnings of the humanitarian agencies: on 7 April the BBC led with the news that the International Red Cross 'has just said the situation is drastically deteriorating'. Commentary often highlighted the visual images by linking an explicit message to a particular visual image: 'Many have lost their shoes, many never had any in the first place. It is an image of suffering which demands help but still there isn't anywhere near enough.' Although the Kurds on the Turkish border were the focus of this unremitting campaign, occasional coverage of their fellow-sufferers on the Iranian side, or of the refugees in the south, buttressed the main coverage. During film of a protest in southern Iraq, where '10,000 refugees are trapped in no man's land', and whose fate 'couldn't be less certain' as the Americans withdraw, a man was shown saying, 'They are as good as dead', and 'People ask, why did President Bush only liberate Kuwait?' The political point was being pressed home on Western leaders, although only the Kurds would substantially benefit from eventual success. (37)

By 8 April, the worms were beginning to turn. Major had announced his proposal to create 'safe havens' and overseas aid minister Lynda Chalker claimed 'we're going full guns' (although this was not to be taken literally, only food, blankets and medicines were on their way). (38) News at Ten showed US Secretary of State Baker spending 'just ten minutes' at a refugee camp and uttering Majoresque banalities - 'It's really quite a tragedy, that's my impression' - which were quickly exposed as inadequate both by the commentary and the filmed intervention of a refugee. 'He seemed stunned. Whoever had briefed him had quite obviously understated the scale of it all.'

A Kurdish man appealing to Baker directly made the media's pitch to the statesman as well as his own: 'and we have been on the ice all these days, and we are suffering, our children are suffering, from hunger and starvation. So you have got to make for us something, to help us.' Baker could only agree: 'We know that and we're going to do that.' But the man hadn't finished: 'You see, the first thing we want now, we don't have enough water supply here. We are thinking all the nations in the world, just to help all these people here.' Once again, Baker could only concur: 'We are going to mount a very large international effort just to do that.' The commentary underlined the point: 'Mr Baker can now be under no illusion. The worst is not over, it is getting worse.'

The remainder of this bulletin underlined the political point with more graphic visual and verbal reminders: Turkish soldiers had shot a little girl dead; there were dangers of cholera and typhoid; people had napalm wounds; the very young and the old were most at risk. 'We watched this three-year-old girl dying.'Aid, it was made clear, was too little and too late: it was distributed by people scrambling over each other for food. 'This is the disgrace. All this way they have come to find shelter ... when really it ought to have been brought to them.' Michael Nicholson repeated the political point from the Baker report: the aid so far 'really is a drop in the ocean. What really is needed is massive international aid, and now, just as Mr Baker promised today. (39)

Television did not let up because Major had made his move and the USA appeared ready to follow, nor was it yet ready to give them much credit, even if Major's move was seen as a 'coup' in political terms. The following day, the first ten minutes of BBC news were again direct from the Turkish border, with graphic film and commentary: 'babies, already weak because their mothers can no longer feed them, are the first to die'. The immediate political context was still dire: refugees were stopped from crossing the border by Turkish troops, so they couldn't get food; and they 'fear that in two or three days' time, Saddam Hussein's soldiers will come to kill them. ... All they want is a place to live in peace.' A Kurdish engineer repeated the main political demand: 'We want from George Bush and John Major to save us, to help us,' and the commentary underlined the gap between Baker's promises and the reality: 'Yesterday, US Secretary of State James Baker called for a massive international effort to help these people. Today, that aid still seems a long way away.' The report then cut to an item showing an RAF Hercules on an aid mission returning to base because of severe weather, before returning to the politics of intervention. An academic expert underlined the limitations of Major's proposal: 'The government is stressing that it does not support the creation of an autonomous Kurdistan.' (40)

On 10 April, television could report that Bush 'has finally been pushed into reversing his hands-off policy in Northern Iraq'. His spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater 'even fought shy of supporting Britain's idea of supporting enclaves for the Kurds', but announced that US troops would defend refugees and aid workers. John Major and Douglas Hurd, it was said, over film of Kurds on the mountainsides, were 'defending plans for a Kurdish enclave in Iraq' although 'the British plan still looks like partition and could involve long-term military involvement'. The USA was willing to provide protection from the air above the 36th parallel, but Major wanted to protect all Kurdistan, including Sulaymaniyah which was in Iraqi hands. This political activity was underlined by commentary which emphasized the brutality of the situation on the ground: 'This is the attitude of the Turkish military to the Kurds' (they had stopped a mother carrying her dead baby through a checkpoint). Michael Macmillan reported: 'We have seen children dying here today from cold and disease ... a week after these people arrived here, there is no effective aid for them. The much talked of international aid effort has not yet begun. And time is now running out.' Although some aid was getting through-the RAF Hercules. aircraft prevented from flying the previous day were now accompanied on a successful mission-refugees were being injured in the dash for the supplies which were dropped. (41)

The days which followed showed the story remaining the main lead (or when some domestic issue pipped it to the top of the bulletin, the longest item), usually with the same pattern of the latest political developments backed up by lengthy film of the desperate situation on the ground. Gavin Essler, from Washington, neatly summed up the US (and British) position as that 'they want to help the Kurds to survive, without actually helping them in the civil war' (by now, mention of continued fighting was becoming rarer). The emerging Western plan, it appeared, was 'drastically scaled back from John Major's original scheme and depends on Iraqi support'. The US reluctance to use force was set against the realities: 'children continue to die here of starvation and severe cold; yet another mother has lost her baby'; 'it is suffering on a terrible scale'; 'even at the bottom of the mountains, weather conditions are appalling'. In the end, however, the complexities of the political and military situation were not of central concern to the broadcasters, either: 'The task tonight is to save lives.' (42)

By 12 April, the details of what the USA would back were becoming clearer: over film of refugees scrabbling for food, the BBC argued that it was 'the first step away from the daily fight for life for refugees'. While Major was 'still talking up Britain's plan', what the US proposed 'was much less than the Kurdish enclave he was proposing last week'. The USA, moreover, was withdrawing from the south of Iraq just as it engaged in the north. Nevertheless, the strength of American feeling was represented by Congressman Stephen Solarz announcing that: 'Fundamental American values are at stake. The principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries cannot be used as a rationale for paralysis when a government which clearly lacks legitimacy is engaged in the annihilation of its own people.'

Coverage on the ground was now shifting from the sheer misery of the people to the contradictions of the aid effort: people being killed by airdrops; the shortage of helicopters; the impassable state of muddy tracks; the desperate conditions of makeshift hospitals. Aid was coming, 'but it seems too little, too late. ... A woman in the hospital with a sick child mourns for another who's already dead. She says she's ready to tear her eyes out with grief. After days and weeks in the mountains, their strength has almost gone.' A spokeswoman for Save the Children, one of the agencies which received most coverage, claimed that the death rate was worse than Ethiopia at its worst and called for the Turkish government to allow more refugees down from mountains. A Turkish spokesman defended what the report called 'its apparently callous treatment' of the Kurds.' (43)

As the large-scale efforts of the agencies were increasingly supplemented by governments, the plight of the refugees remained acute and the political situation, both in Iraq and among Western governments, uncertain. While most newspapers largely dropped the issue after Major's and Bush's eventual recognition of the crisis, television news continued to show dramatic film of the refugees' plight. Visits to Kurdistan by the overseas aid minister, Linda Chalker-who linked aid for the Kurds in Iran to Iranian help over British hostages in Lebanon-and her Labour Opposition counterpart, Arm Clwyd-who more daringly ventured into areas of fighting-gave a political dimension to the coverage. There were also reports of further fighting in Basra, refugees flowing into the demilitarized zone, and sit-down protests as refugees tried 'to persuade the Americans to stay'; but coverage of this downside to the reluctant US intervention in northern Iraq was much more limited and intermittent. (44) John Simpson also filled out the BBC's coverage with a series of reports from government controlled areas.

In mid-April, the Kurdish refugees were still the main story and there was still harrowing and emotive coverage of their plight: 'At first light, the bodies of the children who died in the night are brought down from the mountain...'; 'people without hope, whose strength has gone, lie next to piles of human excrement and wait for death'; 'it was easy for a camera crew and a foreign journalist to get past the soldiers at the border. ... We left Ahmed with his mother, struggling for his life."' There was increasing reflexive commentary on television's own role: the BBC showed a refugee family with dying babies but watching television: 'They watch the world they think has abandoned them' and interviewed an RAF man: 'Sitting at home watching it on telly before we came-you're so remote, you can't tell, but now, you just want to help.' (46) The critique of Bush was still strong:

Major, on the other hand, was getting some credit, at least from his own party.

Every day for three weeks, the refugees had dominated television news. In the last ten days of April, the coverage became a little less strong, although the story was still a major one. As Western troops and humanitarian agencies began to take control of the situation in northern Iraq, some of the political tension was going out of the issue. Occasional reports highlighted continuing contradictions: Chalker, for example, was shown visiting refugees, 'but they told her that they wanted more than food and shelter. "We want some help to fight Saddam Hussein."' Her prim reply highlighted the limitations not only of her government's response but of much of the television campaign: 'We understand that very well, but we must keep you fed and clothed.' (48) As British troops settled in, with predictable media attention, journalists also talked to the peshmerga who appealed for weapons to fight Saddam. There was also new attention to the neglected refugees existing 'in pitiful conditions' in Iran-'it's an exodus at least as twice as large as that near Turkey'-but this situation never became a major focus.' (49) Too late, Simpson made it to Basra, to a landscape devastated by the allies, the rebels and the Iraqi army, and where 'the people who are left face a new scourge', cholera and typhoid. 'It's almost more than they can take.' (50)

In the last week of April, attention increasingly focused on Western troops' encounters with the remaining Iraqi forces in Kurdistan, Kurdish leaders' attempts to deal with Saddam Hussein (on which the BBC expressed considerable scepticism) and Kurdish fears (highly understandable in view of what the US had done in southern Iraq) of an allied withdrawal. There was conflict between Western troops and Kurdish militants who wanted the allies to extend their control southwards. 'The Royal Marines', the BBC pointed out 'are extending their control to reassure the refugees, not to create a safe haven for the rebels in Iraq's civil war.` Moving hundreds of thousands of refugees down from mountains ivould be a 'daunting task'. (52) There were reports, too, which suggested the difficulty for refugees of returning to their homes, especially to a village destroyed by napalm and orchards ruined by chemical attack: 'Returning to this village will be a difficult, if not depressing experience. (53)

It was time too for more reflective reporting. 'The President is defusing an issue which called into question his very victory in the Gulf War', Essler reported from Washington, while Simpson noted that: 'By comparison with the Kurds, the predicament of the Shi'ite people has had very little attention in the outside world. That is not surprising; there have been no pictures of the suffering of the Shi'ite refugees; the Iraqi government has seen to that.' But, Simpson pointed out, the Shi'ite rebellion 'was far greater and cost many more lives than the Kurdish uprising'. (54)

1. BBC1 and ITN (ITV, not Channel 4) bulletins were studied in the video archive of the University of Leeds Institute of Communications Studies. The ULICS archive on the Gulf, which is much more extensive for January-February 1991, contains all BBC1 and ITN bulletins to the end of April 1991. Italicized sections in quotations from these bulletins are my emphases, rather than emphases in the originals.

2. BBCI, Six O'Clock News, and ITN, News at Ten, 1 March 1991.

3. BBCI, early evening news, 2 March 1991.

4. BBCI, late evening news, 3 March 1991.

5. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News and ITN, News at 5.40, 4 March 1991.

6. BBCI, Six O'Clock News, and ITN, News at 5.40,5 March.

7. BBCI, Six O'Clock News and ITN, News at

5.40,6 March.

8. BBC1, Six O'Clock News and ITN, News at

Ten, 7 March.

9. BBC1, Six O'Clock News, 8 March.

10. BBC1, 9.25 pm, 9 March 1991.

11. BBC1, Six O'Clock News, 12 March 1991.

12. BBC1, Six O'Clock News, 12 March 1991.

13. BBCI, late evening news, 16 March 1991.

14. BBCl, early evening news, 17 March

1991.

15. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 18 March 1991.

16. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 20 March 1991

and Six O'Clock News, 21 March 1991.

17. BBC1, Six O'Clock News, 21 March 1991.

18. BBCI, Nine O'Clock News, 22 March 1991.

19. BBC1, late evening news, 23 March 1991.

20. BBC1, early evening news, 24 March 1991.

21. BBC1, Six O'Clock News, 25 March 1991.

22. BBC1, Six O'Clock News, 26 March 1991.

23. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 27 March 1991.

24. BBC1, Six O'Clock News, 28 March 1991.

25. BBCI, Six O'Clock News, 29 March 1991.

26. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 30 March 1991.

27. BBCI, Six O'Clock News, 31 March 1991.

28. BBC1, early evening news, 1 April 1991.

29, BBC1, One O'Clock News, 2 April 1991.

30. ITN, News at Ten, 2 April 1991.

31. BBCI, Nine O'Clock News, 3 April 1991.

32. ITN, 12.30 pm, 3 April 1991.

33. BBCI, Six O'Clock News, 4 April 1991.

34. ITN, News at Ten, 4 April 1991.

35. ITN, News at Ten, 5 April 1991.

36. BBC1, late evening news, 6 April 1991.

37. BBC1, early evening news, 7 April 1991.

38. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 8 April 1991.

39. ITN, News at Ten, 8 April 1991.

40. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 9 April 1991.

41. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 10 April 1991. 42. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 11 April 1991. 43. BBC1, Six O'Clock News, 12 April 1991.

44. BBC1, late evening news, 13 April 1991.

45. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 15 and 17 April 1991.

46. BBCI, Nine O'Clock News, 15 and 16 April 1991.

47. BBCI, Nine O'Clock News, 16 April 1991.

48. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 19 April 1991.

49. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 22 April 1991.

50. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 23 April 1991.

51. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 28 April 1991.

52. BBCI, Nine O'Clock News, 30 April 1991.

53. BBCI, Nine O'Clock News, 29 April 1991.

54. BBC1, Nine O'Clock News, 26 April 1991.

Chapter Eight

Newspapers, ideology and representation

While television played the main part in creating images of the war and disseminating basic information to the largest number of people, a thesis of this book is that the press had a very significant role in informing attitudes and responses in British society. In this chapter, I show how different papers dealt with the contrasting issues arising from the Iraqi wars, by considering their glosses on the television coverage and the attitudes they struck. To simplify the account, I concentrate on English national dailies (1), not dealing with the Scottish, local, regional, Sunday and weekly press, although papers within each category made distinctive contributions. This analysis is linked in Part IV to evidence which suggests that newspaper readership was strongly and systematically related to differences in attitudes to the war in the population.

At the lower end of the tabloid market were mass-readership papers which not only sensationalized and trivialized the war as entertainment but carried blatant patriotic propaganda. Britain's largest-circulation tabloid daily, Rupert Murdoch's Sun, fully lived down to its reputation during the Gulf crisis. The paper which won notoriety in the Falklands War with its 'Gotcha!' headline (over the sinking of the Argentine battleship Belgrano) adopted a highly stereotypical approach to Iraq. Saddam Hussein was 'THE DEVIL'S CHILD' who 'lusted for blood', was 'hooked on murder', was a 'mad dog', 'barking mad'; 'so crazy he is the most dangerous man in the world' according to 'a top psychologist'; the 'BASTARD OF BAGHDAD' who should be hung 'long and slow'. (2)

The Sun's unique contribution to strategy was its advocacy of using nuclear weapons. A tasteless joke calendar for Iraq, headed 'DOOMSDAY', showed no dates after 15 January 1991. 'The use of tactical nuclear weapons in the Gulf will NOT mean the annihilation of Baghdad's five million people,' the paper reassured its readers in a calmer moment, and a 'readers' phone-in' on the brink of war revealed 49 per cent in favour of using nuclear weapons.'(3) The paper returned to the theme as 'The Sun's General Perkins' argued that: 'A series of shells could wipe out the entire 120,000 strong elite Iraqi Republican Guard. (4) This nuclear cocktail was offered in a climate of fear, with the paper predicting that half of Britain's 35,000 troops could be hospitalized.

Although the USA dominated the coalition, for the Sun this was a patriotic conflict, a re-run of the Falklands. Its 16 January front page was a Union Jack with a soldier's head in the middle and the message: 'SUPPORT OUR BOYS AND PUT THIS FLAG IN YOUR WINDOW.' The flag became a daily masthead for 'THE PAPER THAT BACKS OUR BOYS'. The effect of this patriotic appeal was questioned: one observer reported that

If this was true, the Sun gave little sign of noticing. It backed 'brave' British 'lads', denouncing foreigners (French and Belgian appeasers and 'GERMANS HELPING TO GAS US AGAIN. They helped Iraq hit Jews' (6)) and all suspected of a lack of patriotism: Labour leaders, backbenchers and councils (although Kinnock, depicted as a 'British defector' in early January, had become a hero by late February);(7) minor royals like Prince Andrew and his wife, 'Fergie', accused of living it up while the nation rallied to war (although by mid-February, the paper was hypocritically urging the press to 'Get off their Royal backs');(8) and most unpleasantly, British Muslims. The Sun's hate campaign focused on Muslim workers who objected to its flags posted in the workplace and 'FANATICAL British Muslims who have called for a holy war of vengeance after the shelter attack'. (9) In a full-page feature, the paper asked, 'WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE, WHO NEEDS ENEMIES... BRIT MUSLIMS PRAYING FOR SADDAM TO WIN.' (10)

The Sun's contribution to patriotism was sexual titillation for 'our boys'. Starting with a 'Page 3 girl' wearing nothing but a Sun Union jack T-shirt, the paper's regular scantily clad feature was devoted to patriotic sexual teasers until, in early February, the paper probably judged that readers were bored and dropped them (the war had generally left the front page by now). Although it also featured women soldiers, army wives and mothers with soldiers' babies, the sexual motif was predictably stronger.

The Sun was the most blatant of the papers in its distortion of the Amiriya shelter attack, failing to cover the actual events while telling its readers:

Saddam Hussein tried to trick the world yesterday by saying hundreds of women and children died in a bomb attack on an 'air raid shelter'. He cunningly arranged TV scenes designed to shock and appal. But the victims were sent to their deaths by the Iraqi leader himself. Hours later, Allied chiefs had shot down his story. (11)

The Sun was too busy celebrating US General Norman Schwarzkopf football-style as 'MAN OF THE MATCH' and attacking John Major for failing to hold a victory parade even to cover the Mutla Gap massacre. (12) The paper also ignored the Shia uprising and was slow to pick up on the Kurdish revolt, only mentioned once or twice in March. Finally on 4 April, an inside-page story told of 'Saddam blitz on freedom convoy' and a small editorial argued, 'Help them now', with tents, food, blankets, but not, the Sun argued, guns or troops. Patriotism had now become selfish as the paper proclaimed. 'If the UN decides to heed the French call to arm them, count us out. Britain has done its share in the Gulf.' (13) The paper then made matters worse by arguing 'Bush right to put golf before Gulf' - 'President Bush and the West are NOT responsible for the tragedy of Iraq ... he never promised military intervention' . (14) After this. coverage was minimal until Major's U-turn, when the Sun was quick to claim that he had 'scored a triumph' with his safe havens plan. By this point, the paper had reverted to its more sophisticated position on Saddam: 'Bump him off." (15)

The Sun was not alone in its approach. Its nearest rival, the Daily Star, responded in kind but with two political nuances: it was less consistently racist and did not advocate nuclear weapons - although it was not above this editorial comment: 'surely the latest Gulf joke is the sickest yet: Q: Have you heard the weather forecast for Baghdad on Wednesday? A: Very cloudy and 3000 degrees Centigrade. Like it, Sacidarn?' (16)

As the Star was targeted at younger, especially Northern working-class men, its coverage was if anything even more 'macho' and less 'serious' than the Sun's. Its formula was simple: weapons on the front page, 'tits' inside. Its masthead showed a Union jack with 'CO GET 'EM BOYS' over it; a -,ilhouette of a warplane partially covered the word 'Star'. Its demonology of Saddam. Hussein played the Hitler card: 'The changing face of evil Saddarn' showed him turning into Hitler in four photographs. (17)

The Star's secondary targets were familiar Europeans ('Why must our boys fight for these Euro cowards?'), Tony Benn and the Church of England (because the Archbishop of York urged prayers for Iraq). Like the Sun, the paper regularly used the sexual angle, with topless 'Starlets' selling giant Star yellow ribbons. A particularly nasty story exploited one soldier's children:

Not to be outdone on the Amiriya bombing, the Star proclaimed:

Like the Sun, the Star had no coverage of Mutla Gap.

While it headlined Major's remarks 'hoping that his own people will deal with him in the way he deserves' - 'RID THE WORLD OF THIS TYRANT. Angry Iraqis urged: Rise up and topple mad Saddam" (18) - the Star wholly failed to cover the uprising that actually occurred in southern Iraq! Only in late March did it give a front-page warning, 'GENOCIDE', repeated when Margaret Thatcher made her plea for the Kurds. The paper was easily impressed by the smallest gestures, believing that 'the dithering UN were shamed by John Major as he pledged £1m for the suffering Kurds'. It noted that 'those squawking loudest for us to make our lads fight for the Kurds were the same ones squawking for Stormin' Norman to stop when Baghdad was at his mercy'. (19) Stories about the Kurds were usually on page two, opposite a topless girl on page three, and they quickly faded out of the paper altogether.

The Sun and Star seemed like caricatures of tabloids in their sensationalizing and distortion of the war, but there was also a caricature of these caricatures in the sex-and-sport Sunday Sport. The flavour of its coverage can be gauged from these headlines: 'SADDAM IN GAY LOVER STORM' ('Furious Moslems last night accused America of a gay smear campaign'); ' SADDAM CABBIES INSULT TO BRITS' ('Fanatical Moslem cabbies have outraged a British town by pinning up pictures of detested tyrant Saddam Hussein in their taxis'); 'MAD SAD'S MUM ON CAME' ('Whoring Mum's past sent Saddam insane'); 'BUTCHER'S MEAT' (over a photograph captioned: 'Burning hell ... severely burned bodies line a Baghdad hospital-victims of the allied bombing raids and martyrs to sicko Saddarn's quest for power'); and 1 I'M CONNA SNUFF OUT MY DAD, SAYS MAD SAD'S LOVECHILD'. No wonder that the Imperial War Museum wanted a file of Sports for its Gulf War collection: as Dr Alan Borg, its Director, was alleged to have said: 'These papers are items of immense historical and sociological value and a priceless addition to the nation's cultural and historical heritage.' (20)

The Daily Mirror faced a problem as it tried to project patriotism while differentiating itself from its rivals. Its readership was older, more traditionally working class and Labour-voting than either the Sun's or Star's. The paper itself supported Labour and had to deal with the party's dilemmas as well as its own. Partly, doubtless, because a pose of moral superiority was more likely to be successful than trying to beat the Sun at its own game, the Mirror positioned itself on distinct political terrain. Although the Mirror's patriotic indulgence of the war has led critics to dismiss its differences from the Sun, (21) taking its coverage as a whole it is clear that it was fighting a different campaign.

Editorials were quite clear on the need for the war: by January it was 'Too late for the Labour Party ... to plead for more time for sanctions to have an effect ... fighting to win in the shortest possible time is the only sane choice. ... This is what Mr Kinnock and Mr Kaufman should tell the Shadow Cabinet. (22) Despite this strong stance, the paper gave space to the left-wing alternative, reporting Tony Benn's anti-war plea 'straight' the next day. (23)

On the eve of war, the Mirror matched its rivals in patriotism, with huge pictures Of 'THE HEROES' (a 'young corporal' - 'my biggest worry is if I see one of my mates get killed'-and a 'veteran RAF pilot' - 'It would be a helluva end to my career to KO Saddarn') and 'THE VILLAIN' (over a picture of Saddam Hussein with the quote: 'We will make them swim in their own blood'). Even so, inside John Diamond's colunin asked, 'Just what will our lads be dying for? It's hard to make a good case for one soldier's death.' (24) Like Labour, the Mirror was trying to have its cake and eat it. The paper's demonization of Saddam also reached down to its rivals' level - 'He's as mad as Hitler' (quoting the same psychologist used by the Sun) - and invited readers to 'Make a mug of yourself', with a front-page cut-out 'ugly plastic mask' of Saddam Hussein. (25)

Its political line was otherwise quite distinct, however, stressing interparty unity and reporting prayers and even protests for peace in a favourable light. Where the Star glorified weapons, a Mirror report highlighted 'a battlefield stocked with every diabolical device it is possible to concoct'. A double-page spread on the bombing of Baghdad stressed: 'Bombers drop twice as much explosive as it took to flatten Dresden. THE BIGGEST BLITZ MANKIND HAS EVER SEEN.' 'But the Baghdad blitz spared civilians' through computer targeting, the paper reassured. Coverage also stressed bomber crews' anxieties - 'We went in as low as we dared, dropped the bombs and ran like HELL" (26) - and pity for their victims

The Mirror was up-front in attacking its rivals. Columnist Joe Haines argued that

the gung-ho squad insult our soldiers:

If soft porn was missing from the Mirror, however, this was only because its sexual appeal was more demure, its beauties in bathing costumes. Even before the war, the Mirror had sent pictures of 'Kerry, the eyeful on parade' to the troops. (29)

The Mirror's 'home front' coverage was more balanced than its rivals'. It headlined 'Defiant Britons still fly the flag' (council chiefs ordering flags down so as not to offend Muslims) and parents criticizing a headteacher who banned Gulf War games: 'It's natural for little boys to play war games.' But it also reported the 'ORDEAL OF KIDS WHO FACE WAR HATE. Thousands of children with common Muslim name of Hussein are being tormented by their classmates.' (30) Political coverage included Labour criticism of the war, the role of Britain in supplying weapons to Iraq, cuts in troops' pay and criticism of 'victory' celebrations. The Mirror also continued Paul Foot's colun-m, which was unashamedly anti-government, and made more than its rivals of the 'friendly fire' deaths in which British soldiers were killed by US planes. Bell notes, however, that Foot never used his column for an all-out attack on the war and speculates that he was kept in check by his editor. (31)

Certainly, the Mirror was trying hard not to appear too critical. Haines wrote, 'I don't want to appear unfeeling, but the constant harping on civilian deaths in Iraq verges on hysteria. (32) (No stories of civilian deaths had appeared in the Mirror at this point.) The Amiriya bombing challenged the paper's balancing act: interestingly it was the second front-page lead. The paper led with a photograph of a victim under the neutral heading, 1 WHOSE FAULT? "500 dead" in shelter; Slaughter, says Iraq; Military target, say US.' Alone among tabloids it corroborated television journalists' accounts: 'Whatever the truth, there was no disguising the horrific scenes of civilians incinerated in the worst incident yet of the Gulf War. ... Correspondents said they cotild see no evidence of any military presence inside the wreckage.' (33) The Mirror didn't follow up the story and even Foot's column failed to deal with it. (34)

The Mirror was probably the only tabloid to bring up (during the conflict) the Iraqi death toll: 'HORROR TOLL MAY NEVER BE KNOWN. ... The cost in human life in the conflict showed dramatic differences between the two sides last night. Iraqi casualties are of horrific proportions.' The paper estimated that possibly 20,000 soldiers had died and reported that the Red Cross 'has revealed that civilian casualties in Iraq are "far higher" than those announced by Baghdad. Even with the "smart" laser-guided weapons, some homes, schools and mosques have been hit.' (35) This was an important report, and the paper also had a front-page story on a British bombing error - 'We hit a town by mistake admits RAF'. (36)

Mutla Gap, on the other hand, was mentioned only in a report entitled, 'SNATCHED BY THE BRUTES. Retreating Iraqis flee with 5,000 hostages on death road.' 'It was feared' said the paper, 'that some of the hostages would have been caught in the fire that rained down on the Iraqis.' Nevertheless the Mirror unusually gave some idea of the slaughter: a US pilot was quoted as saying, 'They were like sitting ducks. It was like the road to Daytona Beach on a holiday. Bumper to bumper.' (37)

The Mirror had a little more coverage of the Iraqi insurrections after the war than its rivals. A double-page spread, 'MOTHER OF REVOLUTIONS', dealt with the Basra revolt, but this contained nothing on the Allied refusal to intervene? (38) Only later did Foot comment: 'The US forces in Iraq drew back to allow the hated Republican Guard access to Basra to smash the insurrection there,' and quoted US and British official sources saying that the Shi'ite and Kurdish insurrections were not good for the West.' (39) Since at this point the paper had had no reports on the revolts for twelve days, readers may have had little idea what Foot was writing about. It was an isolated comment, and for two weeks afterwards the Mirror reverted to silence.

Only in April did an editorial puncture this to proclaim: 'Britain should not allow the slaughter in Iraq to go on for one more day. ... Why must we wait?' This was followed by the Mirror's only full front-page coverage of the Kurds which reported: 'YOU MEN. Do something for these doomed people, says Thatcher', with pictures of Bush, 'ZZZZ', gone fishing, Major, 'Z7ZZ, gone watching football-contrasted with some Kurds: 'Help please, we're dying'. This time the editorial-'And STILL we stand by'-compared Saddarn's massacre of the Kurds to the Nazis' murder of six million Jews. (40) The Mirror was certainly more assertive in its support for the Kurds than its closest rivals, but its coverage was minimal compared to television's. On 6 April the banner heading, 'WHO WILL SAVE US,' referred not to a picture of the Kurdish airlift but to a larger one of monkeys at London Zoo.

The mid-market tabloids, the traditionally Conservative Daily Express and Daily Mail and the newer, politically looser Today, faced fewer political dilemmas than the Mirror. They articulated the same nationalist ideology as the Sun, but their approaches, imagery and language were more restrained: chauvinist but not overtly racist and concerned more with the 'family bond' of male soldiers to women rather than the 'sexual bond' of the gutter press. (41) The violence of the war made occasional appearances, although these were only glimpses.

The Express, traditionally a Tory imperialist paper, was the most robust in its support of the war. Like the Sun, it attacked the Belgians as ,cowardly', the Germans for chemical deals with Iraq and Labour for 'turning soft on Iraq'. Not for it the government's 'understanding' approach to Kinnock's 'balanced' pro-sanctions, pro-war stance: 'Labour-split Kinnock faces both ways', the Express claimed, in 'an impossible balancing act'. (42) The paper made light of the plight of Iraqi and Palestinian detainees in Britain, headlining the -Holiday camp" life-style of our Iraqi prisoners'. (43) Its war-prose was traditionally patriotic (Shakespeare's 'those at home now a-bed shall think themselves cursed', from Henry V) and its scorn for peace campaigners routine. Of all tabloids, the Express was most consistent in presenting the land war in narrowly national terms - 'DESERT RATS HIT GUARDS' - as though it was a duel between the elite forces of Britain and Iraq. (44)

However, the Express defended the Royals from its tabloid rivals; avoided the overt racism which soiled the gutter press; and was the only tabloid to feature the West's unsung Arab allies with a rare feature on a 'Saudi dogfight hero'. The features on servicemen's spouses were more upmarket, with photos of a Brigadier's wife, and conservative coverage of women in the forces, asking, 'Should women be up at the frontline?"' Columnist jean Rook even presented 'Hero Norman [Schwarzkopfl' as 'a wanting woman's fantasy conquest'. (46) Like all the mid-market papers, it pandered to environmentalism and animal welfare concerns with photospreads of oilstricken cormorants.

One report from its Riyadh correspondent pointed out that blood was the 'missing element' of the 'video games' and 'computer images hiding the real horror of conflict':

It pointed out that the Republican Guard are targets 'of the 2000-1b bombs of the B-52s, that gouge out craters 36 ft deep and 50 ft across, send shrapnel flying 1500 ft, and blow out eardrums more than a mile away', aimed at demoralizing and forcing surrender.

This was however an isolated feature, suggesting that 'the unspoken battle to tell it like it really is', which the reporter argued occurred daily in briefings between military spokesmen and media, may have extended to Express editorial offices. (48) Early in February, the paper was hard on 'media fifth columnists', the television journalists in Iraq: 'Everything the broadcasters send back from Iraq serves Saddarn's propaganda purposes. He would allow nothing else. (49)

The Express had no difficulty, therefore, in proclaiming of the Amiriya bombing: 'IT WAS A MILITARY BUNKER', although its report more accurately noted that 'Saddam Hussein was last night accused [emphasis added] of deliberately sacrificing hundreds of women and children in a military bunker he knew was the target for Allied bombers.' Its editorial moreover posed the question, 'Was it a civilian shelter, as the Iraqis say, or a military bunker, and therefore a legitimate target, as the Coalition maintains?' only to conclude that'it would be a brave individual who decided it was safe to take Baghdad's word. However, the BBC TV reporter on the spot assured viewers this was no propaganda stunt. Carefully chaperoned, how could he tell?' In reality Jeremy Bowen had neither taken Baghdad's word nor been chaperoned, as his reports made clear.

The paper conceded that 'either way, civilians have suffered and that is regrettable', admitting too that: 'Alas, even the awesome precision of the allied bombing cannot guarantee that all [civilians] escape. This is the price the innocent pay in war. The pity is that Saddam Hussein is making his people pay it.' (50) These were fair enough points in general, although in context they placed the responsibility for the coalition's killing on the Iraqi leader. By the following day, this position hardened in a full page headed: 'SADDAM ALLOWED FAMILIES TO BE SLAUGHTERED FOR A SICK PROPAGANDA STUNT: Facts and fiction behind the bunker blast,' with an editorial arguing, 'TV men should come home from Baghdad.' (51)

Coverage of Mutla Cap also neatly inverted responsibility for the killing: 'Slaughter of the innocent: Victims litter valley of death' turned out to be about how 'Iraqi troops slaughtered civilians in a last act of wanton destruction as they scurried from Kuwait. Horrific evidence of their atrocities lies along the main route from Kuwait to Iraq where the destruction and human cost of war can be seen at its most shocking.' The American bombing, it suggested, was only a response to this killing: 'the Allies took revenge on the Iraqi killers. Five dead Iraqi soldiers lay on one stretch of the carriageway within a 600-yard stretch alone ... a combination of Allied cluster bombing and Iraqi atrocities had reduced the trunk road to a slaughterhouse'. Only after this did it refer to 'unbelievable scenes of carnage' seen by a British officer, and reveal that 'as Iraqi troops fled toward Basra, Allied planes bombed their getaway route. Cluster-bomb cases bearing US marking littered the roadside and surrounding wasteland', and inform readers that 'civilians on the road were caught up in the bombing.' (52)

The Express provided some clues to Iraq's devastated condition, quoting a US official saying, 'If they can't raise the money, Iraq will stay at a primitive subsistence level for 20 to 30 years.` Once the war had ended horrific estimates of Iraqi casualties (100,000) appeared. The paper reported only spasmodically on the civil wars, only once raising the question of Western responsibility: 'We let him escape by not wiping out all the Guards, say allied commanders: KO that could have finished off Saddarn'.` The Express was rather more concerned that there should be a June election-'capitalise on Major's credit from Gulf'. (55)

Only after a month of revolt, although earlier than some, did it attack Western leaders' inaction: 'DESERTED IN THEIR HOUR OF NEED. Bush refuses to halt Iraq's agony. (56) The paper made official US and British positions clear, I WAS RIGHT SAYS BUSH. Britain backs "keep out" policy as Iraq revolt is put down'-while editorializing on 'The shame of our silence':

For a while, the heroes were retired politicians like Thatcher and David Owen who were calling for action, but it quickly endorsed Major's 'safe haven' proposals and did not embarrass him by recalling his former antipathy to intervention. Once the West decided to intervene, the Kurds faded from the paper.

The Daily Mail's themes were similar to the Express's, but with differences apparently related to its large female audience. It used the psychological theme for Saddam Hussein (much more prominent at the bottom end of the market), enlisting ubiquitous Oxford historian Norman Stone to provide 'the final proof Saddam IS mad'. (58) Its attack on Germany was over the rapid rise in conscientious objection during the war. (59) It shared the Express's ambivalence on women soldiers, but gave coverage to 'warrior wrens', featuring for example a US woman soldier who was given a ten-day deferment due to childbirth and - the Mail equivalent of a Mirror bathing beauty, perhaps - an attractive young Israeli woman soldier with a gun. (60)

The Mail was more concerned than the Express about social aspects of the war. Coverage of British Muslims actually acknowledged their dilemma: a front-page feature posed a question, 'You are Muslim and British: what DO you feel?', reflecting rather than condemning Muslim ambivalence. (61) Its 'expert on Arab affairs', John Laffin, wrote about the humiliation felt by a billion Muslims world-wide; he also explained 'Why we can't just kill Saddarn'. (62) The paper's coverage of the environmental disaster was fuller, but it tried to have it both ways, saying that while the Green warning on the environment was justified, it was no reason to stop the war. 'Nature does fight back!' after oil slicks: a claim backed up with pictures of clean Brittany beaches and 'a healthy cormorant' twelve years after the Amoco Cadiz disaster. (63) The Mail also plugged away at the Royals' roles, commissioning a poll which showed 'a sense of unease running through the country over the example being set by the Royal Family during the Gulf conflict'. (64)

The Mail carried no reports of civilian casualties before the Arniriya bombing: instead it echoed David Frost's criticisms of the showing of film of injured children, with an ITN report singled out. (65) So it comes as no surprise to find its coverage of the shelter bombing headed, 'Were civilians deliberately put in bomb-target bunker? VICTIMS OF SADDAM'S wAR' and, lower down, 'Shameful that the civilians were there, says US Army'

together with a diagram of a 'typical bunker' showing a military lower storey beneath a civilian shelter in the upper storey. (No such 'lower storey' ,.,..as in evidence at Amiriya: it was the Mail which had a lower story.) A fullpage inside article, 'Outrage as TV's bunker bomb bulletins "show bias to Saddam-, claimed that readers phoned the Mail to complain and that TV switchboards were 'swamped'. (66) (The number of calls was later shown to have been small.)

The Mail's coverage of the violence of the war was limited. A 'world picture first' of the French bombing the Republican Guard mentioned only tanks being taken out, not men. (67) A report on napalm reassured readers that the USA would not use it on people, only to ignite oil in trenches.' On 1 March, a special twenty-four-page supplement included nothing on the loss of life: it was all weapons, heroes and the mistakes of Saddam. The next day, Mutla Cap finally merited an inside spread, 'On the highway to horror: a bottleneck of carnage as looters fled into an ambush', emphasizing the looting and making virtually no comment on the justification for the US .iction. (A British motorway pile-up made the front page twelve days later.) (69)

Mail reports on the uprising in southern Iraq tended to stress Iranian involvement and Islamic fundamentalism. On 16 March a front page headed 'BUSH'S TROOPS ON THE MARCH' pointed out that 'some are now within easy striking distance of Iraq's second city of Basra' and warned Saddam 'to end his war on rebels in his country'. Over the next few days the paper reported massacres in Basra with US troops quoted as observers, but the failure of any intervention to materialize (of which it had warned) went unremarked. (70) Only on 21 March did it criticize the USA:

Within days, the paper was also picking up the Kurdish crisis, and soon it was castigating Bush-'Gone fishin' while Saddam slaughters the Kurds'-and praising Thatcher-1t takes Maggie to speak out for the Kurds. THE VOICE OF CONSCIENCE': 'As President Bush played golf and Prime Minister John Major watched football, it took former Premier Margaret Thatcher to stir the world's conscience last night over the genocide looming in Iraq. (71) Over the next days there were many full reports of the Kurds' plight. When Major and Bush proposed 'safe havens', the Mail was still critical, headlining the 'Shame of the West in sending so little, so late'. Columnist Ann Leshe condemned the West for betraying the rebels, with a sideswipe at Edward Heath, Tony Benn and Marjorie Thompson, who had spoken out against military involvement before the war began: 'are they now protesting about our abandonment of the Iraqi people?' (72)

The third of the mid-market papers, Today (like the Sun, from the Murdoch stable), with an even stronger female audience, presented a generally more simplified view. Even during the launch of the air strikes, Today played the British card, with echoes of 1940 - 'THE FEW: 16 TORNADOS TO LEAD WORLD ATTACK (73)-and constantly featured the 'Desert Rats'. It devoted much space to women and children: within five days at the beginning of the war it had three large features: a colour spread, 'WAR OR PEACE: THE GULF THAT SEPARATES THE SEXES' (picturing wives and a woman nurse reservist), a full-page feature, 'The children's voice' (the general gist of this was that war was bad, but we had to stop Saddam who was like Hitler) and a further double-page spread on women in war (featuring big colour photos of a woman doctor in uniform and a woman soldier together with a woman marrying a male soldier). (74) Likewise, it was quick to see the 'women and children' angle in Iraqi attacks on Israel and to give the full treatment to the 'agony of first woman PoW ... just 20 years old, she is threatened by every degradation suffered by womankind.' (75) Today did not bother with the Express's and Mail's political sniping at Labour.

By early February, as in most tabloids, the war was off the front pages. Inside, Today reassured its readers with the words of British spokesman Captain Niall Irving:

Not surprisingly, then, like most of its rivals, Today pinned the responsibility for the Amiriya killings not on those who aimed the bombs but on the Iraqi government. 'ENTOMBED BY SADDAM', Today asserted, not leaving the question open even to the extent of the Mirror, Express or Mail: 'He sent them to certain death, sheltering in the same camouflaged bunker in which the Iraqi military directed operations.' The inside story reinforced this message: '400 HUMAN SACRIFICES ... SADDAMS VILEST WEAPON ... The "shelter" was hit yesterday ... as Saddam had calculated it would be, sooner or later.' Curiously, the editorial struck a different note, as though the leader writer had watched television but not seen Today's headlines: 'It is no good even blaming [!] Saddam Hussein for apparently [!] moving civilians into a military target. We could expect nothing less from him.' (77) By the following day, he or she had caught on and the paper's attack on the BBC and ITN was strident: 'They presented their reports as though they were completely impartial. If they really feel like that, they are a disgrace to their country. ... The nation is at war. And the BBC and ITN cannot be conscientious objectors.' (78)

Today's hyper-patriotism and essentially unserious approach was reflected in how it covered the war's end. On 1 March it carried a frontpage picture of a commando reclaiming the British embassy in Kuwait with the absurd caption: 'For 75 days it was part of a desecrated country where a tyrant swept away all semblance of justice. Now its liberation heralds a victory for the freedom of all mankind.' The paper simply did not cover either the Mutla Gap massacre or the uprising in southern Iraq, although it did manage a full-page colour picture of a British motorway accident two weeks later; its '80 mph road to hell' may have owed something to other papers' coverage of the Mutla slaughter.

Only on 28 March did Today wake up to the repression in Iraq.

If the Allies restarted their war machine now there might be the same terrible loss of life that we saw on the road from Kuwait City as the invading forces attempted to flee. But if there must be deaths it is better that they should be of the Republican Guard rather than of women and children strapped to tanks or bombed with poisonous gas. It is not too late for the allies to act to even up the sides in Iraq's civil war. They should do so.

Once again, it appeared that leader writers had been watching the muchpilloried television news, as they would not have known about the earlier massacre from their own paper. This impression was confirmed on 4 April, when the paper noted that 'it makes it worse when we see harrowing pictures of the Kurds on TV intercut with President Bush on the golf course or fishing'. Interestingly, there was no mention of Major in this context; the paper later welcomed his 'plan to establish a safe haven for the Kurdish people' as 'a noble and practical act', but was quick to sound the alarm about the British input: 'how long does he propose to keep British troops there? ten years? twenty? fifty?' (79) Today's coverage of the Kurdish issue was desultory, however, and the issue was not often on the front page.

The broadsheet (or 'quality') press provided substantially more varied Lnformation and comment on the Iraqi wars, not only than the more informative tabloids but also than television news. Most information which is in the public domain, including much on which this book is based, appeared in this section of the press. While in the tabloids the medium was often the message-coverage and opinion were difficult to distinguish-in the broadsheet press this basic distinction was largely viable. In the following discussion, rather than delineate coverage in detail, attention is given only to the most distinctive features of papers' coverage along with the main lines of editorial opinion.

There were significant differences among the broadsheets, particularly between the conservative Daily Telegraph and Times and the liberal Guardian and Independent. All had wide-ranging factual coverage of the Gulf War, and to a large extent of the subsequent revolts, but there were major editorial differences: the liberal papers' support for the war was more qualified and their criticisms of the coalition powers far stronger.

The Telegraph, with by far the largest broadsheet circulation, took a vigorously pro-war, pro-American and pro-government line, seeing Saddam Hussein as evil, if not to be compared with Hitler or Stalin.' (80) Its version of the common Conservative complaint against 'Europe' was that 'Europe should not seek a role for the sake of its own misguided self-importance. It already has a role. This is to stand behind its American ally - indeed leader - amidst one of her greatest challenges for many years.' (81) 'Beware the peace-mongers', it editorialized; it criticized Labour for its 'weakening determination' but 'Why Labour hates England' by Roger Scruton turned out to be about the party's opposition to foxhunting. (82)

The Telegraph had a clearer strategic conception than any of its rivals. 'For all the loose talk in the West about the prospect of allied air forces "flattening Baghdad," nothing of the sort will take place,' argued its editor, Max Hastings: 'no systematic effort will be made to terrorise or inflict casualties on the Iraqi civilian population, because such strikes would damage the moral basis on which this war would be fought'. (83) However John Keegan, the paper's defence editor, argued that the war'would be like nothing ever unleashed on a battlefield before, since the Americans have taken to the desert the apparatus of the "Air Land Battle".' He concluded that the military balance was overwhelmingly against Saddarn Hussein, who was 'moved only by inner voices, not intelligence appreciations.' (84)

Coverage included reports from a correspondent in Baghdad, giving 'on the ground' information; despite its strongly pro-war line, it interviewed CND's Marjorie Thompson and reported peace protests and the responses of British Muslims. Toby Young's analysis of the peace movement was surprisingly avant garde, recognizing that critics had no sympathy for Saddam Hussein, and arguing that protest resulted from the 'inauthenticity' of war, the end of certainty and commitment, and postmodernism. (85)

The Telegraph lead on Amiriya was 'Military HQ was in bombed bunker, says Washington' and its front-page story entirely about the political context. Inside, however, a full-page story gave no indication of any military use, and an'Analysis'by Hastings failed to uphold official explanations, concentrating on more general reflections.

The paper dealt with the Mutla Gap massacre on its inside pages and offered no comment.

Hastings noted that: 'Even if the Iraqi president's fall is not an explicit war aim, it is an outcome devoutly wished for in Washington and other allied capitals.' (87) At the end of the war the paper reported: 'The Prime Minister called yesterday on the people of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power as the first step towards their country rejoining the international community.' (88) The following day's main headline proclaimed "Saddam is finished" cries as Basra explodes in anarchy'. But the paper presented insurgents as 'fundamentalists' and 'Muslim rebels' and offered generally weaker coverage of rebellions than either the liberal broadsheets or television news.

Editorially the Telegraph was extremely sparing of comment on the Iraqi revolts. Its end-of-war comment celebrated Britain's 'decisive political attitude and unwavering military commitment ... in sharp contrast to the wavering or frankly feeble performance of all the other Europeans, with the marginal exception of the French?' Keegan vented his spleen against the 'television grandees' whose commentaries had sold the pass on the real balance of forces in the war.' (90) Bush, Major and Schwarzkopf were lauded. Only on 16 March did editorial comments notice the Iraqi revolts, pronouncing that: 'from a coolly geopolitical point of view, the continuation of a tough-minded dictatorship in Iraq might be preferable to ,he kind of chaos that would accompany the country's break-up.' There was, however,

Stories about the revolts remained on inside pages until late March, and when on 1 April, as rebellion was crushed, the Telegraph finally returned to the issue, it was to firm up its opinion that 'there are good reasons for ,tanding aside'. By 4 April, the paper admitted that the allies had badly miscalculated the damage they had inflicted on the Saddam regime. Keegan conceded that the assumption that he would be removed was wrong, but said there was no military option; Saddam was like Hitler after his 1944 defeats, wounded but not yet finished:

As Keegan himself recognized, 'that may seem a tame recipe'; but it was acceptable because Saddam was not Hitler: he had 'so far oppressed only his own people and one small neighbour, not a whole continent'.

The paper acknowledged that the 'harrowing plight of the Kurds ... demands a response from the west', but its recipe was now restricted to sanctions. 'Western public opinion must accept, and harden its heart to the fact, that this course will inflict further pain and suffering upon the people of Iraq.' (91) By 9 April the paper was moved to criticize Bush: 'By pursuing even a marginally more active policy, the Americans could have much enhanced the prospect of deposing Saddam, without fatally engaging themselves.' The emphasis on disengagement was very much the centre of the Telegraph's position: it made no active moral representation of the Kurdish disaster. The limitations of Hastings' and Keegan's narrowly strategic views were very evident in the Kurdish crisis; as Keegan recognized, there was considerable irony in his and the paper's espousal of sanctions rather than intervention.

Interestingly, the Telegraph's Sunday counterpart was far more forthright. Well before the refugee crisis, it argued that stopping the war when Bush did was

'The road to hell,' it concluded, 'is paved with good intentions. But whose hell? It is always the same. Western liberal humanitarians do not suffer themselves. ... If the Iraqi war was worth fighting at all it was worth fighting to the finish.' The critique of liberalism would have been at home in the Daily Telegraph, but it reached radically different conclusions.

The Times, once Britain's premier journal of establishment opinion but by 1991 one (Murdoch-owned) broadsheet among others, carried a quantity of editorials fitting to its former station. 'Almost anything would be preferable to war', it agreed with Edward Heath, but 'appeasement would not'. (93) Like all Conservative papers, it took a superior stance towards French and European diplomacy, but it was sympathetic to Labour's dilemma, recognizing early that the party would back war when it came. Its leader on the outbreak of war held that it was about 'upholding international law'; 'This is a war about peace, not just in the Middle East, not just in our time, but in tomorrow's world. That is why British soldiers are rightly asked to risk their lives.' It supported 'containing war', noting that the allies had decided not to conquer Iraq or topple Saddam; 'the moral essence of this operation is its strict conformity to United Nations resolutions'; and it approved the lack of 'mock heroics' by political leaders. (94) Its copious leading articles, continuing apace in the war's early weeks, said little that was remarkable given the paper's solid support for government policy. For one critic, however, this was 'The Times clinging to power and its exercisers with the pattering and shaming reverence which has been its hallmark across the century. (95)

The Times's coverage was broad and its policy on commentary liberal: editor Simon Jenkins could plausibly claim to have given 'plenty of coverage to the anti-war campaign' and to have columnists such as Anthony Parsons and Michael Howard who (while impeccably establishment) were certainly not jingoistic. (96) After Amiriya, the paper headlined the basic fact: 'Hundreds of Iraqis killed in shelter,' with a subheading, 'Allied leaders claim bombed bunker was legitimate military target.' It included an eyewitness report discounting a propaganda stunt and a Washington report emphasizing that behind the scenes there was a lack of confidence in the official line. Despite this, editorial comment avoided direct speculation that the bombing was a mistake. (97) The paper printed a pool report on the 'grim slaughterhouse' which 'Allied cluster bombing' created at Mutla Gap, but its editorial concerned'Kinnock's good war'. (98)

The second week in March saw a build-up of stories about the Iraqi revolts. The Times had urged on 12 February that the allies think more about Iraq 'after Saddam' and give the Iraqi opposition 'a fair hearing in Western chancelleries'. It was not until 13 March that it acknowledged that allied success had caused the revolts, but now it urged caution and curiously concentrated on the danger of the regime's use of chemical weapons (which was not known to have happened) rather than responding to the actual pattern of rebellion and repression in Iraq. On 16 March it reported US troop movements inside Iraq, 'apparently designed to deter Saddam from crushing the rebellion'; but with no comment on the growing evidence that it was indeed being put down most brutally. The Times was more concerned about the Iraqi public health crisis and called for an end to sanctions, warning against the 'Lebanonisation' of Iraq and proclaiming that

By the beginning of April, of course, the paper was reporting Kurdish p leas for help, but it remained firm that Bush should resist the temptation to shift objectives and should 'withdraw from Iraq as soon as he can.' (100) There were no suggestions on how to help the Kurds. By 4 April, however, they were front-page news and a leading article proposed 'Saving the Kurds'. The text argued however that

Soon, however, The Times's line had to shift - the very 'sanctuary' it had deemed so 'fanciful' and the 'temptation' to intervene it had urged resisting were coming on to the agenda. The leader of 6 April saw the task as to define what the international community could do to give the Kurds back 'domestic security and to ensure them a measure of self-government'. This would involve 'intervention in the internal affairs of what ... is still a sovereign state, and an intervention well beyond the temporary occupation of a defensive zone next to the Kuwaiti border'. The paper saw this as setting aside a sound principle in the name of a higher morality, of ,protecting defenceless people against slaughter'. It failed, however, to argue for specific actions. It was even more cautious than other broadsheets on Major's initiative, pronouncing only that 'relief to refugees within defensible safe areas that stops short of unseating Saddam could mark the start of more effective collective policing'. (101)

The daily liberal broadsheets produced very wide coverage, their readers treated to the fullest examinations of military, political and social aspects of the war and its aftermath of any media audience. They also obtained much information about the death toll, the carpet bombing of Republican Guards, everyday life in Baghdad and the attitudes of Muslim organizations and the anti-war movement in Britain-aspects which got cursory mention in the tabloid press and on television-and the most sophisticated analyses of the media themselves.

The Guardian's coverage was distinguished by regular reports by Alfonso Rojo of the Spanish daily, E/ Mundo, who with Peter Arnett of CNN was one of only two Western correspondents left in Baghdad after the coalition air attacks began, and the only one whose reports were carried regularly by a British newspaper. (102) Rojo's 'Eyewitness' accounts of the effects of coalition bombing on the Iraqi people played a distinctive part in coverage from early February. When the Amiriya shelter was bombed, the Guardian was able to run Rojo's account, 'Bodies shrunk by heat of fire', alongside a political story, headed 'US insists it hit army bunker' which began: 'An unrepentant Bush administration courted a propaganda disaster yesterday, insisting in the face of televised evidence of hundreds of civilian corpses that US precision-guided weapons had struck "the legitimate military target of a command bunker" in Baghdad.' (103)The paper was thus the only national daily clearly to proffer disbelief of the military line in its coverage.

Rojo continued to file eyewitness accounts, for example of the RAF bombing, admitted to have hit civilians, at Fallujah. (104) The paper had to rely, however, on the pool for its Mutla Cap coverage. (105) It had very full coverage in comparison with other press of the Basra revolt and the rebels' pleas for allied support. (106) Correspondents Simon Tisdall in southern Iraq and Martin Woollacott and David Hearst in Kurdistan (and with Iraqi oppositionists elsewhere in the Middle East) provided unrivalled coverage of the revolts as they developed and then of how they were crushed with enormous suffering.

The Guardian was the only daily to argue editorially against war in January: 'There is no moral evasion in recognising that in the very specific circumstances faced in the Gulf, war could prove catastrophically counterproductive, and that reliance on sanctions may still be a far wiser course.' (107) It was consistent in opposing any extension of force to topple Saddam Hussein and the temptation to extend the war. Even when its correspondents exposed the disastrous situation of Shias and Kurds inside Iraq, it opposed Western military support:

Thus two Guardian journalists could claim it for the anti-war cause against left-wing criticisms:

The case was stronger because the paper's regular columnists, notably Woollacott and Hugo Young, often more impressive than its leader writers, had taken critical stances -and Edward Pearce was a trenchant opponent of the war. Its letter pages were also overwhelmingly anti-war.

If opposition to war had a fairly consistent national expression, it was - as it had been over the Falklands - in the Guardian's pages. The paper's pacific message lost force, however, as these same pages provided so much evidence of the suffering of the Shias and Kurds. The Guardian failed to run a strong editorial campaign - even for humanitarian aid - to match its coverage, unlike (as we shall see) the Independent. Unlike some who had supported the war, who acknowledged a responsibility to help its victims, the paper seemed handicapped by its earlier stance. Only after the West had agreed to safe havens did it clearly move on:

1-he broader perspective was commendable but pious in the absence of serious proposals to extend international action to other victims.

The Independent's coverage was also wide-ranging and included the reports of Robert Fisk, perhaps the most enterprising and critical British 1 unilateral', whose reports earned him a bouquet from the rival Guardian. (111) The paper's 'War Commentary' was provided by Lawrence Freedman, whose arguments were always sober and incisive. Unlike the Guardian, however, it did not stand out against the use of force in January. In endorsing the initial assault against Iraq it emphasized, however, the need for minimum civilian casualties and for political control of war, arguing that 'the way the war is won will shape the ensuing peace'. (112)

The Independent's coverage of the Amiriya bombing was cautious: it headlined the coalition's claims in inverted commas - 'Shelter "a military target"'-underneath an agency report interviewing survivors, while inside features argued that the bunker may have had a dual purpose. Fisk was more outspoken, arguing that military spokesman Richard Neal's obstinate insistence that the shelter was a 'legitimate target' itself came to 'the aid of the enemy'. (113) A follow-up editorial argued that 'horrible and tragic though the deaths in the shelter at Amiriya were, they should not obscure the untelevised horrors of murder, mutilation and torture that President Saddam inflicted' on Kuwaitis and Kurds. (114)

The Independent was also restrained in its coverage of Mutla Cap. On the day it was revealed, it had no coverage, except a short commentary piece, and its editorial, 'The doomsayers routed', attacked Labour Is Denis Healey, Edward Heath and others who had prophesized disaster. It was several days later that it finally commented:

It was in the aftermath of the war that the Independent really came into its own. Fisk's stories told of Iraqi soldiers 'caught between bombs and death squads'-the executions of deserters, the impossibility of running away, what it was like to be on the receiving end of cluster bombs-and of 'wild dogs tearing to pieces the remains of Iraqi soldiers' on the Basra road. (116) Karl Waldron reported from Basra on Iraqi troops landed from barges after fleeing: 'Bodies and blankets rest under the shattered trees, perforated and torn by the shards of palm wood splintered by ordnance. ... There were not enough whole bodies left to count.' (117)

As the struggle inside Iraq grew, the Independent took a much stronger line than the Guardian:

The Independent consistently emphasized Western responsibilities:

The military conditions of the ceasefire should be strictly enforced. Not only fixed wing aircraft but also helicopters should be banned, since they are being used as weapons of terror against civilians as well as insurgents. If necessary, they should be shot down. Next, the current rebel leaders should be encouraged to set up a provisional government on Iraqi territory. ... The victorious coalition is liable to squander much of the credit it has earned if it comes to be seen as a passive accomplice of Saddam Hussein's intolerable regime. (119)

At its height the Kurdish crisis had constant front-page coverage, remaining prominent until late April. Editorials challenged fellow-supporters of the war in the name of responsibility:

Non-intervention, it suggested, was a very selectively applied principle: if it was acceptable for the US to intervene in Panama and Grenada, and justified in the cases of Tanzania in Uganda and Vietnam in Cambodia, so too for the Kurds. The Independent was less mealy-mouthed than the ~tiardian about the principle involved: 'What matters is that human rights should come to be considered to be as sacred as the sovereignty of nations. The Kurdish issue is bringing that day nearer.' (121)

17. Daily Star, 28 January 1991.

16. Daily Star, 27 February 1991.

17. Daily Star, 14 February 1991.

18. Daily Star, 1 March 1991.

19. Daily Star, 9 April 1991.

20. Sunday Sport, 6, 20, 27 January; 3, 17 February and 3 March 1991.

21. Steve Bell, 1991: pp. 9, 15, 26.

22. Daily Mirror, 8 January 1991.

23. Daily Mirror, 9 January 1991.

24. Daily Mirror, 15 January 1991. Despite this sort of comment, Bell sees Diamond's criticisms as muted.

25. Daily Mirror, 16, 28 January and 7 February 1991.

26. Daily Mirror, 16 January 1991.

27. Daily Mirror, 30 January 1991.

28. Daily Mirror, 19 January 1991.

29. Daily Mirror, 14 January 1991.

30. Daily Mirror, 23 January and 1 February 1991.

31. Bell, 1991.

32. Daily Mirror, 9 February 1991.

33. Daily Mirror, 14 February 1991 (italics in original).

34. Daily Mirror, 15 February 1991.

35. Daily Mirror, 16 February 1991.

36. Daily Mirror, 18 February 1991.

37. Daily Mirror, 27 February 1991.

38. Daily Mirror, 4 March 1991.

39. Daily Mirror, 16 March 1991.

40. Daily Mirror, 4 April 1991.

41, This useful way of putting the issue I owe to Allan Shepherd.

42. Daily Express, 9 January 1991.

43. Daily Express, 26 January 1991.

44. Daily Express, 26 January 1991.

45. Daily Express, 1 February 1991.

46. Daily Express, 26 February 1991.

47. Daily Express, 21 January 1991.

48. Chris Buckland, Daily Express, 4 February 1991.

49. Daily Express Express, 4 February 1991.

50. Daily Express, 14 February 1991.

51. Daily Express, 15 February 1991.

52. Daily Express, 1 March 1991.

53. Daily Express, 26 February 1991.

54. Daily Express, 8 March 1991.

55. Daily Express, 4 March 1991.

56. Daily Express, 30 March 1991.

57. Daily Express, 2 April 1991.

58. Daily Mail, 15 January 1991.

59. Daily Mail, 6 February 1991.

60. Daily Mail, 7 February 1991.

61. Daily Mail, 26 January 1991.

62. Daily Mail,18 January and 2 February 1991.

63. Daily Mail, 7 February 1991.

64. Daily Mail, 15 February 1991.

65. Daily Mail, 4 February 1991.

66. Daily Mail, 14 February 1991.

67. Daily Mail, 5 February 1991.

68. Daily Mail, 23 February 1991,

69. Daily Mail, 2 and 14 March 1991.

70. Daily Mail, 18 and 19 March 1991.

71. Daily Mail, 2 and 4 April 1991.

72. Daily Mail, 11 April 1991.

73. Today, 14 January 1991.

74. Today, 15, 17 and 19 January 1991.

75. Today, 23, 26 January, 1, 2, 7 and 11 February 1991.

76. Today, 7 February 1991.

77. Today, 14 February 1991.

78. Today, 15 February 1991.

79. Today, 10 April 1991.

80. Editorial, Daily Telegraph, 15 January 1991.

81. Daily Telegraph, 4 January 1991.

82. Daily Telegraph, 6 January 1991.

83. Daily Telegraph, 8 January 1991.

84. Daily Telegraph, 11 January 1991.

85. Daily Telegraph, 20 January 1991.

86. Daily Telegraph, 14 February 1991.

87. Daily Telegraph, 14 February 1991.

88. Daily Telegraph, 1 March 1991.

89. Daily Telegraph, 2 March 1991.

90. Daily Telegraph, 4 March 1991.

91. Daily Telegraph, 4 April 1991.

92. Editorial, Sunday Telegraph, 24 March 1991.

93. The Times, 2 January 1991.

94. The Times, 16, 17, 18 January 1991.

95. Edward Pearce, Guardian, 18 February 1991.

96. Guardian, 25 February 1991.

97. The Times, 14 February 1991.

98. The Times, 2 March 1991.

99. The Times, 22 March 1991.

100. The Times, 2 April 1991.

101. The Times, 10 April 1991.

102. Rojo's account of his stormy relationship with Arnett is described in 'Reporters at war', Guardian, 12 April 1991.

103. Guardian, 14 February 1991.

104. Guardian, 18 February 1991.

105. Guardian, 2 March 1991.

106. Guardian, 4 March 1991.

107. Guardian, 4 January 1991.

108. Guardian, 28 March 1991.

109. Victoria Brittain and John Cittings, letter, New Statesman and Society, 31 January 1992.

110. Guardian, 18 April 1991.

111. Philip Knightley, Guardian, 4 March 1991.

112. Independent, 18 January 1991.

113. Independent, 14 February 1991.

114. Independent, 15 February 1991.

115. Independent, 5 March 1991.

116. Independent, 2 March 1991.

117. Independent, 4 March 1991.

118. Independent, 12 March 1991.

119. Independent, 25 March 1991.

120. Independent, 4 and 5 April 1991.

121. Independent, 13 April 1991.

Chapter Nine

Media and representation in global crises

No one has doubted the importance of the media in the Gulf War. As numerous accounts have shown, media management was comprehensive and largely successful. Many critiques generalized, however, about 'the' media as though they were homogeneous, without differentiating sufficiently between media or between outlets within media. Even more sophisticated studies, while distinguishing ad hoc between different media, nave not analysed systematically the relationships among them.

This book has attempted to show the differences between television and and among newspapers.' Television was central in diffusing information and images to the majority of the population. In Britain, over ---1 per cent watched television compared to around two-thirds who read newspapers.' Non-readers and readers of tabloids would have obtained substantially more and certainly less-distorted information from television than from newspapers. At key moments and especially those unplanned by media managers - the initial aerial attacks on Iraq, the Amiriya bombing, the Mutla Cap massacre and above all the Kurdish crisis - television clearly led coverage and newspapers followed.

There is no doubt that readers of broadsheets could usually have obtained fuller information from these sources than from television (although this was not always true in the Kurdish crisis). Compared to the best newspaper coverage, television accounts, although occupying endless hours, were largely superficial and repetitive. Television, moreover, covered little of what was not filmed. The television war was fundamentally unbalanced-would Baudrillard have written that the 'Gulf War did not take place' if he could have seen the incessant bombardment of the Iraqi soldiers in their trenches on his television screen, seen the bodies of the estimated tens of thousands of dead? It was mainly in newspaperseven occasionally in tabloids-that he could have found a little information about the central killing field. Only through reading newspapers would he have realized that the debate over civilian casualties-although important in its own right-masked the reality that this was a war in which direct casualties (rather than those who died later as a result of civil war or disease) were overwhelmingly military.

Similarly, the uprising throughout southern Iraq, in which tens of thousands probably died, went unfilmed. It was, nevertheless, arguably more thoroughly reported on television than in all but the two liberal broadsheets. Considering the lack of film, television gave the Shi'ites considerable attention, but because of this absence never developed the sustained campaign which it waged for the Kurdish refugees.

At least as important as difference in coverage were differences in how media presented moral and political stances towards the war. Television news was formally neutral, referring to 'British troops' rather than 'our lads' and earning Conservatives' ire. In reality, during the Gulf War it largely purveyed the images and information desired if not produced by military managers-a fact that disturbed some journalists. During the Kurdish crisis, it played a very different political role, strongly and explicitly campaigning for Western aid to the refugees. Television did not just show what was happening: its linkage of human suffering with Western responsibility constituted powerful advocacy and achieved a remarkable and probably exceptional breakthrough, forcing a major policy change.

In the press advocacy was explicit and often supreme, to the point that much news coverage was dominated by propagandist values. The daily press was united in support for the war, with major reservations only in the Guardian. This fact does not take us far, however, in understanding the press's relationship to the war. Support in the manner of the Sun - with its incitement to use nuclear weapons and indifference to Iraqi victims whether of the coalition or Saddam Hussein - was very different from that of the Independent, foremost in drawing the conclusion that those who had launched war against Iraq also had a duty to protect its people from repression.

Badsey comments that

This view neglects the fact that tabloids are purveyors chiefly of attitudes rather than information and have a particular niche in the propaganda war. The tabloid press was the home of patriotic hype which presented a war in which Britain was a junior partner as an overwhelmingly national campaign. It must have been the tabloids which Tony Benn had been reading when he claimed that Britain was 'experiencing the greatest wave of jingoism that I have seen in my life'. Others disputed this: according to the Sunday Times,

Despite this criticism from an upmarket rival, no tabloid was deterred from perpetuating stereotypical patriotism. It was inevitable that British papers would focus-as indeed did British television-on British soldiers .3nd their weapons. But natural concern for one's own became, in the hands of most editors, instant denigration of (even friendly) foreigners and a distortion of the war in which Saddam Hussein was either mad or Hitler reincarnate, and the West's Arab allies - even the Saudis in whose country the West was based - were hardly mentioned.

The violence perpetrated in 'our' names was hardly acknowledged, as the tabloids mostly swallowed the military myth of a 'surgical' war in which weapons and buildings were destroyed but violence against people was absent. At this level we had 'a press edging towards the totalitarianism of inadvertence, a press which can be worn by the executive like a dress handkerchief. (5) Moreover as John Simpson put it, 'We cannot explain such absences by government restrictions alone and it is not correct to see the British media as being simply forced along by politicians in the early stages of the war. Many of them, especially the popular press, were willing participants in a mood of patriotism and near euphoria.' (6) Or as another critic put it, the tabloids didn't 'stop at self-censorship; they hone and they select, they embroider and, where embroidery is not sufficient, they verge on outright fabrication.' (7)

Nevertheless, as we have seen, there were important differences between tabloids. Only the Sun and the Sport consistently indulged their patriotism in explicit racism directed intentionally at British Muslims. These and the Star were the only papers to link the war crudely to sexual exploitation. The rest of the tabloids mostly recognized, at least in occasional reports, the slaughter that was being carried out by the West. None, however, had the courage to emulate the television reports and clearly suggest that the .Amiriya bombing had been a mistake. Nevertheless, there was a difference between those who simply asserted the military version and those who reported the question mark over the building's use.

The tabloids, especially the Sun and Star, represented much of the worst of British responses to the Iraqi wars. Their hyper-patriotism, racism and indifference to violence were more extreme than anything generated by the state or other institutions in civil society. On the other hand, the Mirror represented the only source of critical reflection on the war going into a large number of (largely working-class) homes, and even Conservative mid-market tabloids included some critical information which readers might not have gained from television.

Although much less than the liberal broadsheets, the Mirror and the midmarket papers campaigned for the Kurdish refugees, making explicit the message implicit in television news that something big had to be done to save them. With the exception of the broadsheets, the press jumped on television's bandwagon at a late stage. Its advocacy was nevertheless important to the campaign's political impact: its chorus was the final straw, the signal to Major that it could not be ignored. Although the tabloids generally denied 'our' responsibility when Western military actions had tragic human consequences (Amiriya, Mutla), they pinpointed Western responsibility when the West could do something to help Saddam Hussein's victims. Since Major's volte-face played an important part in Bush's, not only British television and broadsheets but even some tabloids can be said to have made a significant contribution to the change in Western policy on Kurdistan.

The political importance of the tabloids was, of course, their mass audience. The broadsheet papers had a different sort of significance: to set a standard of information - e.g. about the unfilmed wars of the trenches and the Shi'ites - which underlined the limitations of television. As Fisk put it,

Print journalism could challenge the demand of television news for 'immediacy, brevity, and, most pathetic of all, "sound-bites" - words that are both tasty and meaningless, a five-second substitute for human thought, the journalistic equivalent of junk food.' In a powerful critique of television, Fisk suggested that: 'Having therefore offered viewers war without responsibility, television ended the Gulf conflict by giving them war without death.' Whereas television reporters were interested in the present, not the past, and rarely held politicians to the record, print journalists alone provided the analysis, 'taking history books into battle.' (9)

It would be hard to argue that most print journalism lived up to a higher standard than television. Much of the broadsheets' coverage and discussion, however, including Fisk's own contributions, provided daily evidence, interpretation and comment of a sophistication not found anywhere else. Where politicians and religious leaders provided occasional comment at moments which suited them, where educators could choose when if at all to provide guidance or analysis, where campaigners could choose the issues around which they wished to focus, the press provided daily commentary and guidance.

For all the media's endemic failings and compliance with media management during the Gulf War, the Kurdish crisis was clearly a moment of great significance for the media as a whole. Even Fisk acknowledged that this was one of television news's finest hours, an 'obvious exception' to his general critique:

Videotape of the Kurdish catastrophe helped to shame George Bush and John Major into humanitarian involvement in northern Iraq. One had to read the dispatches of print journalists ... to appreciate the dimensions of the tragedy and political betrayal involved. But the satellite television pictures of babies and children actually dying on screen could not fail to be more powerful than the written word? (10)

Fisk over-simplified: it was not just pictures but authoritative journalistic commentary relentlessly pinning responsibility on Western leaders.

The media's flexibility and responsiveness to the Kurds' sufferings stand in contrast to the immobility of the other institutions of civil society. This was, as we have seen, a moment when the main opposition party was neutralized by its political compromise and its positions against 'extending the war'; churches, with their abstract messages, were slow to respond; and the anti-war movement was beholden to its anti-interventionist rhetoric. Those groups and individuals in British society who moved to act, notably humanitarian agencies and their donors, did so precisely because they were stimulated to do so by the media.

This was the media's finest hour, which brings into question some of the simpler, more general critiques of the media in the Gulf War. The public debate about media and warfare has been bedevilled by propositions of simple, unilinear effects: official doctrines which give too much credibility to the critical effects of media in order to maximize the case for control; and critical doctrines which give too much credibility to the manipulative successes of governments and militaries. The Iraqi wars show how the power relations between media and states can crystallize in different ways on closely related issues over short periods of time. The media which helped give Bush his Gulf War victory also almost snatched it from him in a matter of weeks. The very mobilization of Western (and hence global) media with the coalition's war against Iraq created their close involvement with the Iraqi crisis which exploded in the faces of Bush and Major.

Whether it was typical of the media's role in contemporary global crises, I shall discuss later in this book. [See Chapter 13, 'From Kurdistan to Bosnia and Rwanda'.] First I examine evidence about 'public opinion' and how 'ordinary' individuals in Britain responded to the Iraqi wars and to media messages. I shall extend my argument about the significance of the press by showing how strong were the links between attitudes and newspaper readership.

1. Radio also gained importance during the war, although clearly less significant in terms of establishing images of the war than television and less significant in terms of attitudes than the press. I did not have the time or resources to incorporate radio into my study.

2. In our first sample 90 per cent regularly watched television news of the war, 72 per cent read the local evening paper and 65 per cent read a national (or regional) daily newspaper. For details of the surveys, see Appendix. Television viewing increased dramatically during the war: in the first month, people in Britain watched 4.5 hours more per week than in an average week in 1990; the BBC's audience share, normally a minority, rose to over 50 per cent, reflecting the Corporation's authoritative reputation as a news-provider; and eleven of the top thirty BBC programmes were news (Independent, 18 February 1991).

4. Editorial, Sunday Times, 20 January 1991.

6. BBC2, 'Our war', 25 May 1991, quoted in Philo and McLaughlin, 1993; p. 13.

7. Steve Platt, New Statesman and Society, 22 February 1991.

8. Independent, 8 January 1992.

9. Independent, 8 January 1992.

10. Independent, 8 January 1992.