In Vietnam, the phrase “credibility gap” entered the language. An old friend and outstanding war correspondent who was killed in the 1973 Middle East War, Nicholas Tomalin, gave me some parting advice before I left for my first trip to Vietnam early in 1970. “Remember”, he said: “They lie, they lie, they lie”. Some American soldiers would say that this was a classic example of journalistic arrogance and lack of understanding. But Nick Tomalin was dead right. Even if the media did not lose America’s war in Vietnam, it certainly caused public support in the US to ebb away towards vanishing point. In Iraq and Afghanistan today, allied forces are much better at admitting the truth than they ever were in Saigon. To be sure, in these theatres too, the media has told a tale of frustration and failure, which has resulted in the loss of public support in both Britain and the US. The success for the armed forces, of both countries, I think, is that hostility to the cause has not spilled over into hostility to the men who have been serving it. The images certainly of the British Army and in large measure of the American have remained untarnished, even amid the most bitter scepticism about the operations in which they are engaged. Responsibility has been rightly laid at the doors of the politicians who embarked upon disastrous policies, not the fighting men. This, I think, is a just and encouraging aspect of what is otherwise a sorry story. Every study of American, and in some degree British military operations in the last half of the last century showed that the official word from generals was trusted neither by the media nor the public. Today, this has changed. The soldiers are much more trusted- even despite some shocking lapses of discipline and conduct. It is the political leaders who are not.
Whether for the Americans, the Israelis, the British, or the Canadians, the same problem obtains in handling the modern media at war: there are far more journalists who want to report than there can be facilities available to handle them. Vietnam was unique, in providing a large, semi-static war zone whose parameters shifted little for fifteen years. Thus, for a time, a large number of journalists could roam more or less at will, with the aid and vast transport resources of the US armed forces. It should be said as an aside, however, that some odd myths prevail today about Vietnam as a place where a reporter could whistle up a helicopter at will. One of my own lasting memories of the theatre is of waiting for days, sometimes, for a helicopter or fixed-wing ride to my chosen destination. Vietnam could be a tough place to get around. Yet American generosity and willingness to provide transport was never in doubt. This is not a situation very likely to obtain in a future conflict. Most major world military crises today attract up to 2000 journalists and broadcasters. Some of these people, it must be said, don’t want to leave the capital, and are perfectly happy to do their reporting from press centres and hotels. So be it. But others – including all the good ones – will want to go to the front.
There is only one way to cope with this from the viewpoint of a military command: by recognising the limitations of what can be done, and to organise a pool for selected reporters and TV crews, who take their turns at being given transport, escorts and information and a chance to see what is happening at the sharp end.
There are few uglier spectacles in the modern world that that of a mob of competitive media people turned loose upon a hot story. The fisticuffs, the cynicism, the inhumanity towards suffering, the stupidity and selfishness and ignorance displayed by college-educated journalists who, at home, treat at least their second wives quite decently, make all of us, at times, ashamed to be journalists. I know. I have been among those baying throngs, willing to go to almost any lengths in pursuit of a story. Even soldiers for whom war is a profession tend to recoil in disgust from the animal behaviour of journalists in bulk.
In my own time, I’ve done my share of things that have provoked disgust among military witnesses. I have schemed and lied to gain places on helicopters, shouted down junior officers and sought to intimidate signals or transport personnel. My defence would be that, faced with petty military bureaucracy, I should never otherwise have been able to file my stories. Armed forces rest for their very survival upon obedience, group loyalty and coherence. Successful journalism relies upon the remorseless pursuit of self-interest- but with luck, self-interest on the part of good reporters will mesh with the interests of an army that wants its story told.
I will now say a word about special issue of TV. In the propaganda struggle that is now an essential part of every conflict, many governments are above all preoccupied by the television pictures seen by the world. It must be said that the difficulties of conveying accurately, effectively, or even remotely truthfully what happens on the battlefield remain enormous, and are likely to continue to do so, because of the intrinsic nature of the television medium. This is, I am afraid – and I speak as a practitioner with some direct experience – the most distorting of information channels. Television companies give most airtime to the stories of which they have best footage. Yet again and again and again, the result grossly misrepresents what has taken place. A viewer who looks at the television footage of the Falklands war would have a quite false impression of what the campaign was like, because all the film was shot in daylight. Yet most of the military action, and almost all the land fighting, took place at night. I have now in my mind’s eye the most vivid picture of the Battle for Mount Harriet. Yet this action taking place in the last generation of the twentieth century is recorded only in the watercolour impressions of a war artist painting after the event. This state of affairs will obviously recur, given the importance of night fighting in modern war.