[Media-watch] MOD vs the press: on the front line in Iraq's other war - The Indepenent - 14/11/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://news.independent.co.uk/media/story.jsp?story=582611



MoD vs the press: on the front line in Iraq's other war



Deaths among Black Watch soldiers have meant a stream of damaging stories 
and put the Government and journalists on collision course. Jane Thynne 
reports on a relationship that is strained to breaking point

14 November 2004

As they do every year, press and politicians will converge today for the 
annual Remembrance Sunday services. But this year the relationship between 
those newspapers and the Government officials they liaise with appears to 
have reached an all-time low.

For the Ministry of Defence press office, charged with handling the flow of 
news from Iraq, each fresh PR nightmare adds to ever more tense relations 
with the media it serves. The belief now is that the hostility between 
ministry and media has grown so acute that defence chiefs are preparing to 
make representations to the Government after the general election, demanding 
change.

"In 30 years I've never known the relationship as bad, not even during 
Northern Ireland," says Robert Fox, the senior defence writer. "It's 
appalling and I would go so far as to say it's operationally dangerous. In 
the case of the Black Watch they flagged for so long where the battalion was 
going and there was only one route they could take - that's a tremendous 
mishandling."

Other journalists report "overt hostility", "a non-relationship" and 
"downright lack of interest" from the MoD press office, specifically since 
the arrival of Geoff Hoon as Defence Secretary. "It's don't phone us, we'll 
phone you. They can take two hours to reply when you know from someone in 
the back room that they've got the answer right in front of them. They're 
not at all helpful and at the end of every question there's an invisible 
sigh down the phone," said another journalist. "They've got a bunker 
mentality because they don't get any good news about Iraq, and I imagine 
they dread every phone call, but the point is they're supposed to be 
impartial, aren't they?"

For its part, the MoD is angered at the way it is treated in the press. Such 
is the annoyance about the coverage from The Daily and Sunday Telegraphs - 
the traditional newspapers of armed service families - that Geoff Hoon is 
understood to have written to the new proprietors, Sir David and Sir 
Frederick Barclay, with a list of complaints. If he expected a positive 
response, he cannot have enjoyed the result. Dominic Lawson, editor of The 
Sunday Telegraph, commissioned a piece from Max Hastings which described 
Hoon as "born to be town clerk of Bootle rather than Her Majesty's Secretary 
of State for Defence" and attacked the Government's public management of the 
war, including the "shameful and draconian injunctions against opening their 
mouths" issued to senior military officials.

This attempt to clamp down on relationships between journalists and senior 
members of the armed services, is cited by several correspondents as a 
serious obstacle to responsible communication. When Labour came into power 
certain military figures are understood to have been sent letters requesting 
that they should not deal directly with the press - instructions not always 
treated with due gravity. "A friend of mine, a very senior military man, 
rang me and said 'I'm just notifying you that I can't speak to you and now 
I'm throwing the letter in the bin'," one correspondent comments.

Yet journalists claim that close relationships with military commanders 
increase, rather than imperil, security. "There's a level of trust between 
military and media that can be useful. Such an uncontrolled situation as you 
have now allows speculation to become rampant," one correspondent says.

As Dominic Lawson puts it: "We're absolutely inclined to believe what senior 
and experienced military officers tell us and not inclined, through bitter 
experience, to take on trust what politicians tell us." Many of the 
difficulties stem from the Hutton report, described as "a milestone moment" 
in relations between the MoD and the media.

Earlier this month members of the armed forces and MoD officials were told 
they could not say anything which conflicts with government policy and that 
even communicating with journalists or disclosing information to them 
without authority could lead to legal action or dismissal. That advice also 
requires MoD officials to tell the ministry's press office when "novel or 
contentious information" is released under the Freedom of Information Act. 
That act comes into force in January, and is expected to spark a fresh round 
of tension between media and ministry over the issue of defence procurement.

Yet relationships with the press are not the only headache for the Ministry 
of Defence in its efforts to control the flow of news. The level of protest 
emanating from bereaved families and serving soldiers is thought to be 
unprecedented in Britain in a time of war.

While the Ministry of Defence denied that it had banned families of Black 
Watch soldiers from talking (and those families insisted that they had been 
told by officers of their own battalion to avoid journalists), that didn't 
stop Craig Lowe, the brother of Private Paul Lowe, a Black Watch soldier 
killed by a suicide car bomber, and himself a serving soldier, telling the 
media: "We think Bush is an arsehole for starting a war over nothing. Trying 
to get money and oil. That's what Paul thought."

In an age of 24-hour information and the internet, controlling access to 
journalists no longer plugs holes in the dam. Bloggers, email and burgeoning 
websites offer forums for soldiers and families to express sentiments that 
might not have been aired in earlier engagements. The Black Watch website 
contains hundreds of angry messages from families and serving members, with 
savage attacks on MPs and Tony Blair, demanding troops be withdrawn.

The MoD was so concerned by the claims of Rose Gentle about the manner of 
her teenage son's death from a roadside bomb in June, that it employed a 
Defence Advisory notice - the voluntary system by which media agree not to 
discuss issues in the cause of national security. The DA notice of 3 
September stated that after "the recent press conference given by the family 
of the late Fusilier Gordon Gentle" certain issues should not be discussed 
in news coverage in any more than "general" terms.

The difficulties of reporting the Iraq war concerns the International 
Federation of Journalists. "It's very dangerous that there's never been a 
clear establishment of workable rules between the military and the media, 
and as you go into a unique situation like Iraq it becomes more and more 
obvious that they're desperately needed," says a spokesman.

No one within the MoD is denying the difficulty of relations, but sources 
say they are optimistic about improvement. "It's been a difficult couple of 
years and a lot of coverage has been speculative at best, mischievous at 
worst, but we're keen to get through to a more healthy relationship."