Defense & Foreign Affairs - Strategic Policy

Tacitus, who lived in the first century of the Christian era, made the comment: "They create desolation and call it peace. " He may well have been speaking of today's media reporting on political - and therefore strategic - topics. Shakespeare, more than a thousand years later, made the comment in Much Ado About Nothing. "They have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders;...thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and to conclude, they are lying knaves." Today's national leaders, almost without exception, must harbour similar thoughts about today's consumer news media: from newspapers and magazines, to radio and television. We are in an age of unrestrained information control even, to a large extent, in the more authoritarian state systems.

The explosion of media power is a direct result of the expansion of technological means of infommation dissemination which resulted from R&D directly connected with the Cold War competition of the past 50 years. It is also directly related to the greater concentration of control of the media, and the resultant competition between media groups for audience and advertising revenue. The explosion of technologies to communicate has not, ironically, created the hoped-for diversity of viewpoints expressed by a multiplicity of sources.

On the contrary, the ability of major media houses to, at a single move, control first impressions, has meant that - at a stroke - entire political agendas and attitudes can be set. This was exemplified by the fact that the entire world media (and therefore political) attitude toward the current Balkan conflict was defined by the images which first went out over the only television satellite uplinks from the war zone. They were at that time only in Sarajevo and Zagreb, and they broadcast only material promoted by the powers in control of those regions. The parties to the conflict left unrepresented by the control of satellite uplinks - the Bosnian Serbs, the Croatian Serbs and the Yugoslavs - were unable to recover their political place in the world political stage. The war in the Balkans is the most obvious centre of today's sophisticated image manipulation, most of it (in this instance) originating with govemments controlling infommation flow to media groups and also controlling the communications means used by the media. But in other areas, particularly in the West, it is the media which, for its own objectives is controlling the imagery for its own purposes.

Most of the major media groups' rationale for controlling the political agenda is based on short-term commercial gain : the desire to sell more newspapers, gain more television or radio audience, and soon, all of which results in additional reader and/or advertiser revenues. But some of the media action is politically motivated. The British Broadcasting Corporation's hostility toward the current Major Government in the UK is motivated largely by the fact that the BBC editorial team has developed largely as a politically left-wing body, hostile to Conservative governments in general and, increasingly, to the monarchy. Meanwhile, the Murdoch media group in the UK reflects a clear bias of hostility toward UK Prime Minister John Major and to the British and Australian monarchies . This is believed to reflect the attitudes of Rupert Murdoch, and his News International empire.

The combined BBC-Murdoch hostility toward the Major Government will be a large determinant in the next British elections. This in turn will shape the outcome of the Balkan conflict (which the Major Government has been able to contain by restraining escalation) and will shape the future of European unity. Is this "freedom of the press" democracy, or is it a new private form of dictatorship?

London, November-December 1994