Complex Environments: Battle of Fallujah I, April 2004:

The absence of Western media in Fallujah allowed the insurgents greater control of information coming out of Fallujah. Because Western reporters were at risk of capture and beheading, they stayed out and were forced to pool video shot by Arab cameramen and played on Al Jazeera. This led to further reinforcement of anti-Coalition propaganda. For example, false allegations of up to 600 dead and 1000 wounded civilians could not be countered by Western reporters because they did not have access to the battlefield.

...In the absence of countervailing visual evidence... Al Jazeera shaped the world’s understanding of Fallujah…

...the assessment stated that later in 2004, when U.S.-led forces successfully retook Fallujah, they brought with them 91 embedded reporters representing 60 press outlets, including Arabic ones. "False allegations of non-combatant casualties were made by Arab media in both campaigns, but in the second case embedded Western reporters offered a rebuttal," the authors said.

The key to counteracting disinformation campaigns like that mounted during the First Fallujah, was to break the stranglehold of "access journalism". As the Army report concluded, once there were a multiplicity of reportorial sources on-scene it became difficult to manipulate the message...

...Information Operations were not the only factor in the outcome of the first Battle of Fallujah, but they were a factor. “Hotel Journalism^[1]” ceded the battlefield to “journalists” picked by the enemy, to the detriment of the US mission and, ultimately the Iraqi people.

It is breathtaking how completely successful AQI was in clearing the information battlefield. It is also breathtaking how silent key media outlets have been about being manipulated in this way...

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 19:04:13 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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