Censorship in the Gulf Part 1

In Peter Braestrup's interpretation of our authors main idea in Hotel Warriors by John J. Fialka we learn about censorship during the First Gulf War, more popularly known as Operation Desert Shield and Storm. Mr. Fialka relates the experience of Mr. Fialka from the Grenada debacle to his coverage of Desert Storm specifically. He prepares us for the notion that media today is sometimes shut out because of its unending thirst for airtime. Looking back in history media coverage of our nations wars have been largely censored but in different ways usually. By the time of the Gulf War, General Schwarzkopf's central command had a taste not to trust the media. During the time the leaders of the United States wanted to ensure everyone that this war would not be another Vietnam. A war which arguably got a great deal of freedom for coverage and slammed the military far too often. The name of the book itself really describes whats to happen in coming chapters. Hotel Warriors they were, often confined to limited areas, waiting great lengths of time for press conferences with commanders. The first Gulf War and the one today are the first to be censoring a mob of news giants bent on reporting the news good or bad. Theme being that such actions were good for both the servicemen and women as well as our civilians at home and abroad.

War: Reality vs. the Facade

John J. Fialka's work Hotel Warriors uncovers the media's involvement of a war's facade fed to the American people. Fialka goes onto describe the decadent hotel where news correspondents stayed over seas during the first Gulf War. According to Fialka these were the people who had the power to create the image of this war. The duality of war is implied with his description of the hotel holding the American media.

"The hotel, long since booked solid by journalists, fairly bristled with sophisticated gear: laptop computers, satellite telephones, shortwave radios, fax machines, frared cameras, and other electronic paraphernalia designed for nearly instantaneous communication from the desert." pg 4

Reading that description can almost remove you from the serious aspect of the brutality and loss of life in war. The author brings you back into some sort of reality besides fancy equipment when he mentions the setting of the desert. The desert here represents the real soldiers on the front actually fighting and potentially dieing. Perhaps this is a reflection on the American peoples' perspective of war and their detachment from its reality.

Ch.1 Hotel Warriors - Media Censorship

“It was a war that the great majority of journalists saw from the vantage point of the briefing rooms of posh hotels in Riyadh or Dhahran or from the gray metal chairs in the broadcasting studio on the E-Ring of the Pentagon” (Fialka 2)

The beginning of hotel warriors gives us a glimpse of media censorship during the Gulf War. Very often what the media relays to the public is a slanted, distorted or ambiguous version of the facts. During the war journalists were denied access to areas they would need to enter in order to create an accurate story. Fialka gives a reference to generals who blame the media for losing the Vietnam War. We are shown how unpleasant the relationship between the media and military can be.

“Scott Applewhite, an enterprising Associated Press photographer, who was the first journalist to arrive at the single most costly event of the war for U.S. forces-the crash of an Iraqi Scud missile into a barracks in Dhahran where 27 GI’s were for his pains, he was shoved around by guards, he had his film confiscated, and then he was escorted back to the Dhahran International Hotel by a public affairs officer” (Fialka 3)

Media Bias and Censorship is just as rampant in the current war in Iraq as it was in the Gulf War. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is the main apparatus used by watchdog groups and journalists to access federal documents. Due to the 2006 Defense Authorization Act the department of defense in the pentagon is exempt from FOIA requests. This leaves journalists helpless. The DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) is now able to flout access to files that expose corruption. Various organizations have relied on FOIA to uncover documents on the U.S. military’s involvement in the torture and mistreatment of foreign detainees in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and Iraq.

Ch.1 snippets from "Hotel Warriors"

" The "truth" for most news consumers during the war came from Pentagon-produced video-tapes or on the fancy charts prepared to explain each bite-size chunk of the war."

"For us it was different. We saw and experienced things that never made the briefings." (Pg 2)

The reporters said they saw incompetent army men put there by media-wary generals, that believed and blamed the media for losing the Vietnam War. They also said they were escorted away from dead bodies that had been "pulverized by B-52 raids, lacerated by friendly fire, and chopped up by artillery, because this type of stuff doesn't play well politically.

(Pg 4) "There would be 159 journalist covering U.S. units in the Golf War, more than twice the combat coverage of any previous war." Was this going to be a good aspect, a break through in war history? They say hell no. They hardly had enough equipment to do the job and they had to be escorted by military. (PG5)"Worst of all we faced a jury-rigged system to get our copy, film, audio, and video tapes back."

(Pg 6) "Censorship by lack of access" Walter Porges. There were plenty of video tapes that never made it out of the editing room. "Most of the tapes from the battle field came in after the war and a lot of the stuff that came in after the war never got used."

The Army: "Business as Usual", or SNAFU as an art form.

"Within hours of the launching of the largest military attack since WW II, the armie's system for supporting the reporters who were covering it collapsed. Only small pieces of it survived to help journalists with units in the battlefield during the 100 hours of the ground war."

Chapter 2 of the book "Hotel Warriors" goes to great lengths to describe the ineptitude and lack of enthusiasm the army displayed in it's handling of the press corps. Generals and politicians recognized the propaganda power of the media and planned for extensive coverage, but were unable to impress the rank and file. The author puts forth the notion that many officers had an ingrained distrust of the press, blaming them for losing the Vietnam War. (That notion would be funny if 55,000 Americans and a million Vietnamese hadn't died.) So if you don't trust them, you mistreat them, and that's going to make things better? Very short sighted, and a flaw corrected by the administration of Bush2, which learned from the first Gulf War how to spin a war, and even how to make one disappear from the public consciousness, say with a distraction like ruining the economy.