Looking back at this week's interaction with members of the prestigious National Defence College (NDC) Course in Delhi--an annual feature--I realised, more than ever before, that media evokes intense interest even among military leaders, no matter what their instincts. The fact that my 45-minute talk led to 75 minutes of Q & A is testimony to the extreme reactions media and its functioning can evoke. Below is the full transcript of my talk. A bit long to read, so start only if it interests you.
Talking about Media
to members of this audience that has been told time and again—right from their younger
days in the military and the government--NOT to interact with the media is like
trying to preach religion to a nonbeliever. But what is the use of being a
media practitioner for three decades and more if I don’t try and convert some
of you. And to convince you that understanding the media and its functioning is
useful if not downright advantageous?
So over the next 60 minutes, let me try and
take you through media’s role—sometimes disruptive and unwelcome role—in
national security matters.
Just a week before I
was to come here, I mentioned the topic Media and National Security to a dear
friend in the military—a three-star officer—to try and elicit his views on the
possible elements for this talk. His instant reaction was Media AND national
Security? Are you joking? Does media understand the concept of national
security? Does it even care? Well it doesn’t, I retorted, simply because in a
country that does not even have its own national security doctrine—at least not
in the public domain—how do you expect us bunch of uneducated, ill-informed and
irresponsible (his words, not mine) hacks to even begin to grasp the concept of
national security?
My sarcasm was probably lost on him since we were both two
drinks down but my contention that India does not have a well-articulated
national security doctrine had a salutary effect. He side stepped the issue of
national security and we quickly moved on to discussing Dedh Ishqiya and the undiminished beauty of Madhuri Dixit. For the
foreign officers here, Madhuri Dixit is India’s answer to Julia Roberts and may
be a couple of more Hollywood beauties.
But coming back to media and national
security!
Traditionally,
national security has always been viewed through the prism of combating
external threats and meeting internal challenges. Use of force for protecting
the core values of a nation—in India’s
case its democracy, diversity and tolerance—has been defined as national
security.
But of late, the
discourse on national security is undergoing a subtle transformation. The scope
of national security has been widened. It is no longer confined to counting
force levels or just matching military power with a neighbour. Now, experts
talk about a multi-dimensional, multi-faceted approach to define National
Security.
The threats are
manifold and before getting into discussing how the Indian media has dealt with
and will deal with issue of national security, it is important to briefly dwell
upon what defines comprehensive national security, although this is the last
thing perhaps that this learned audience needs!
In the
not-too-distant future, major powers will be focused on the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, narcotics, and organized crime more
than conventional armed conflicts. Information warfare, threats emanating from
cyber space and aerospace will consume more national resources than ever
before.
Rising regional
powers like India will have to contend with regional
conflicts and developments associated with them: refugee crises, peacekeeping,
humanitarian emergencies, environmental problems, global health issues,
technological developments, and economic collapse. Issues of demographics,
including migration and health; depleting natural resources and degradation of
environment will lead to conflicts. And nations will have to be prepared to
combat these more than the traditional threats.
According to a CIA
trend analysis, by 2015 more than half the world’s population will be urban.
The number of people living in mega-cities--those containing more than 10
million inhabitants--will double to more than 400 million. The explosive growth
of cities in developing countries will test the capacity of governments to
stimulate the investment required to generate jobs and to provide the services,
infrastructure and social supports necessary to sustain livable and stable
environments.
Other issues that
will take up more time will be: Health: Disparities in health status
between developed and developing countries--particularly the least developed
countries--will persist and widen.
Developing countries
are likely to experience a surge in both infectious and noninfectious diseases
and in general will have inadequate health care capacities and spending.
The number of
chronically malnourished people in conflict-ridden Sub-Saharan Africa will
increase by more than 20 per cent over the next 15 years.
By 2015 nearly half
the world’s population--more than 3 billion people--will live in countries that
are ‘water-stressed’--having less than 1,700 cubic meters of water per capita
per year--mostly in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and northern China. So
the challenges to national security come not just from the adversary across the
border but also enemies within: Disease, hunger, natural calamities, mass
migration and lopsided development.
Meeting these
challenges and not just guarding the borders will constitute National Security.
Like Comprehensive National Power, National Security is all encompassing.
But traditionally,
we in the media have looked at national security from the narrow prism of hard
military power, simply because media more than anyone else loves wars and conflicts.
As a famous editor in the US, Michael J Oneill had famously said: “It is well known that media
are more devoted to conflict than to tranquility, and that war is routinely
defined as news, while peace is not. What is good for the world, in other
words, is not necessarily good for the news business."
Ladies and gentleman, coming
to India specifically, in the first 15 years after India attained independence,
the Indian media was generally conformist. Since India was in the nation building phase,
media was supportive of the effort as far as possible. So very few
anti-establishment views were articulated in that phase. But the debacle in the
short but brutal war with China in the winter of 1962 was a game
changer not only for the establishment but also for the Indian media. The
shortcomings and wrong decisions at the policy level were so blatant that the
Indian media was forced to sit up and review its pro-establishment stance. DR
Mankekar, was among the tallest media personalities in
India that time. He was a courageous reporter, a brilliant editor and an
outstanding author. In the preface to his slim but valuable book titled—the
guilty men of 1962, Mankekar explained: "In a democracy, the people have a
right to know the why and wherefore of a national disaster. The government is
accountable to the people. Where the government fails in its duty, a publicist
may step in to fulfill that task."
Indeed by the time,
the 1970s dawned the Indian media had started focusing more and more on military
issues, thanks to big international events like the Bangladesh Liberation war
of 1971 or the peaceful nuclear explosion at Pokhran in 1974.
Today, it is almost
compulsory to have dedicated journalists reporting on various ministries like
Defence and Home, traditionally considered the bastions of national security.
But even today, we are stuck in covering day to day activities rather than
looking at larger issues in these ministries.
There is too much trivia
that gets dished out in the name of reporting on these two ministries mainly
because there is a lack of skills to handle to relevant issues both among
journalists and security personnel in the armed forces and the central police
organizations. This weakness needs to be overcome quickly. How do we do that? I
will come to that a little later but let me draw your attention to the
evolution of military-media relations over the past two centuries and then look
at what the present is and the future may look like.
In 1869, Field
Marshal Joseph Garnet Wolsley wrote a book
called The Soldiers Pocketbook about his experience during the Battle of
Crimea. One of the highlights for me was his observation: “Those newly
invented curse to armies who eat all the rations of the fighting man and do no
work at all.
The “curse”
that the Field Marshal was talking about more than 140 years ago was the War
Correspondents who reported on the military campaigns of Victorian Britain.
Among the first to
live and march with combat troops in modern era was William Howard Russell who reported
for the The Times of London during the war in Crimea in
the 1850s. His reporting highlighting the shortcomings and bungling in the war were
not liked by the authorities but the people were outraged leading to reform and
correction in the military.
The Field
Marshal’s anger and disgust was primarily directed at Russell but by the time
he wrote his famous treatise The
Soldier’s Pocketbook in 1869,
several other “War Correspondents” had made their way to the battlefield,
stayed with the troops, braved the bullets and bayonets and brought home the
real picture of the battles.
Clearly,
journalists have been billeted with troops for over 100 years before George
Bush’s war against Saddam Hussein in 2003 brought the term ‘Embedded
journalism’ into popular lexicon.
In the military campaign
that followed, a unique access to the battlefield was granted to embedded
journalists for war news coverage…The United States (U.S.) Department of
Defense (DoD) authorized the embedding of more than 500 journalists in their
military fighting units. The
‘embeds’ (as the journalists traveling with the army units were called) were
defined by the Pentagon as: “A media representative [that lives, works,
and travels with a military] unit on an extended basis -- perhaps weeks or even
months... [in order to] facilitate maximum, in-depth [news] coverage of U.S.
forces in combat and related operations.”
This decision stirred
up a lot of controversy relative to the type of news content that was
being reported by embedded versus non-embedded journalists.
As a result, the
issue of embedded versus non-embedded war journalism has fueled much
controversy and debate.(http://knol.google.com/k/the-embedded-war-journalism-controversy)
There are those
who believe that the American decision to embed journalists with frontline
combat units stemmed from the US military’s two contrasting experiences—one
bitter, the other sweet.
The first was in
Vietnam when the antipathy between the military and the media reached its peak.
In a detailed
study on the military-media relationship during that period, a US Army War
College researcher came to a conclusion: “Prior to the Vietnam War, the
American press had generally supported national war efforts and the national
leadership with positive stories. The Vietnam war was the first time that
reporters reported on American units that lacked discipline, used drugs on the
battlefield, and had US soldiers questioning war aims while the war was
ongoing. These stories,
though factual, were viewed by the military as ‘negative.’ Moreover, the
uniformed leadership viewed these stories as a major reason they were losing
the war at home while they were winning the battles in Vietnam.” (The CNN Effect: Strategic Enabler
or Operational Risk? by Margaret H. Belknap, United States Army, 2001)
By the time the US
was ready for the Gulf War in 1991, it had learnt its lessons well. The
military had judged the needs of the media and also worked out the ways to
control the flow of information in its favour.
As Belknap said,
“Operation Desert Storm “was the most widely and most swiftly reported war in
history.”
In addition to
being the first “CNN War”, this war also marked a turning point in
military-media relations and a turning point for Americans’ view of that
relationship.
Colin Powell, by
than an important figure in the US military hierarchy, had learned his lesson
from the Vietnam mistakes and the subsequent Panama invasion episode. He
ensured not only media access but that the “right” kind of spokesman stood
before the camera lens before the American audience.
Powell recalled,
“We auditioned spokespersons. … We picked Lieutenant General Tom Kelly, as our
Pentagon briefer because Kelly not only was deeply knowledgeable, but came
across like Norm in the sitcom Cheers, a regular guy whom people could relate
to and trust.”
Belknap says
Powell also understood that live press conferences meant that the public would
see both questioner and responder. Ever since the Vietnam War, the public
viewed the media as fighting to get “the truth” from a military hiding behind a
cloak of secrecy During the Gulf war, Americans saw both media and military on
the TV screen.
Powell later
wrote: “When the public got to watch journalists, even the best reporters sometimes
came across as bad guys.” Perhaps the strongest evidence of the shift in
American perceptions was a Saturday Night Live, a popular American TV
programme.
Toward the end of
the Gulf war the media was ridiculed on Saturday Night Live. Belknap’s study
notes: “They were (reporters) portrayed as enemy Iraqis trying to wrestle
Americans war plan secrets away from an Army spokesperson.”
THE
SUB-CONTINENTAL EXPERIENCE
The
Americans went on to further refine the concept of embedded journalism in
Afghanistan but in India, it is still a halfway house.
There is no
official embedding as such but the Indian military takes reporters on official
guided tours to various facilities and events, fully on government expense. So,
most of the reports are episodic, event-based in nature.
There is another
kind of arrangement that exists between the media and the Indian military.
Reporters’ travel to border areas or insurgency hit areas where the Indian army
is deployed in large numbers. The Army than ‘facilitates’ their visits, shows
them around, briefs them about the tasks, talks about the difficulties and
achievements and then reporters write about or broadcast what they witnessed
and understood during the trip.
It is a ‘loose’
arrangement, but the only one that comes close to the ‘embed’ arrangement in a
semi-war situation. I say semi-war since the Indian army is continuously
involved in counter-insurgency in Kashmir and the north-east in a no war no
peace situation
Old-timers in
India however recall that in 1965 and 1971 wars with Pakistan, select reporters
did travel with the Indian military. Indeed, an All India Radio journalist is
famously in the frame of an iconic photograph of the Indian general accepting
the surrender of 90,000 Pakistani POWs at the end of the 1971 war!
In the most recent
war in Kargil over a decade ago, there was no formal embedding but most of us
who reported that war, interacted closely with the troops and many a times
depended on their support for sustenance in the war zone. Volumes have been
written about the synergy between the media and the military in Kargil and its
contribution in whipping up a patriotic fervour across the nation that time but
all of that was happenstance not design.
Currently, there
is an intense discussion on in the higher echelons of the Indian military on
how to deal with the media at large and whether to have a policy that will
allow embedded journalists in future conflicts.
But elsewhere in
the sub-continent, notably in Sri Lanka, I personally experienced the reality
of embedded journalism.
Eelam
War IV, (2006-2009) will in fact is remembered for the flawless execution of
information warfare techniques by the Sri Lankan state.
Embedding
journalists was just part of the entire Information Warfare strategy.
I
found the Sri Lankan methods both effective and offensive.
Effective, purely as a battle strategy. Offensive, to my sensitivity as a journalist.
The
idea was to create a firewall around the battle zone.
The
objective was two-fold: control and denial.
Control
the flow of information and deny access to unpalatable journalists.
Simultaneously,
the Sri Lankan government created a one-stop shop for information from the
battle zone.
The
Media Centre for National Security (MCNS), which functioned from a small,
non-descript building in the heart of Colombo’s high security zone but outside
Defence HQs, became the most important address for visiting and local media
during the war. You went here to register yourself for a trip up north, into
the battle zone. You asked for and got war footage here and you got your latest
information from this centre.
The
weekly briefing by a cabinet minister, Keheliya Rambukwella, whose sole task
was to interact with the media, were held here; the army, navy and air force
spokesperson, all senior serving officers, worked under a Director-General, a
civilian trusted by the President and his brother, the defence secretary,
functioned out of this building.
The
DG, MCNS, Lakshman Hullugalle, a pleasant, accessible man, became the most well
known face and voice from Sri Lanka during the war since all TV channels went
to him for a phono-in and a byte whenever they needed an official update. And
he obliged everyone. The MCNS worked 24x7, updated defence.lk, an
information-rich website, almost every hour and all key personnel, including
the DG, remained accessible round-the-clock.
By
putting in place this system, Sri Lanka virtually eliminated the possibility of
any other source giving news to the information-hungry media. Even the trips to
the battle zone—I went on three of them—were beautifully orchestrated. We were
always asked to report at the airport before dawn.
There,
after a thorough security check, we would board a Russian-built AN-32, land at
Anuradhapura, a historic town in central Sri Lanka, and then get transferred to
two waiting Mi-17 Helicopters. Cameras would start rolling the instant we were
on board the choppers. A piece to camera (PTC) or a standup to use an American
term, on board a helicopter after all gives that sense of realism to war
coverage!
So
inevitably, most of us TV reporters would record at least two or three PTCs
before we landed at either Kilinochchi or Paranthan, close to the battle.
Another very subtle arrangement used to be in place at those locations. An
assortment of armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and jeeps would be waiting for
us to be taken to the brigade headquarters or a location closer to the actual
fighting zone.
Now,
a ride atop an APC is a television reporter’s delight. A piece to cam aboard an
APC, which looks like a tank, but is not really a tank( but then how many
people can discern or distinguish a tank from an APC) would do very well for
your own as well as the channels image, thank you. The viewer will certainly be
impressed!
So
all of us TV reporters used to clamber atop an APC, do our PTCs and then go for
a briefing, which from TV’s point of view, are boring anyway. A formation
commander at a lectern, explaining tactics on a map is not great television, so
we would wonder out in search of images that conveyed a war zone. Invariably we
would find soldiers in various stages of battle readiness outside the briefing
rooms: some would be resting, some others would be cleaning their weapons; APCs
and jeeps full of soldiers in their fatigues would be whizzing past. So cameras
would be busy recording those images.
The
point is: the Sri Lankan military had worked out what TV crews need and
provided the props accordingly. I am not saying any other military would not
have done it. But most military planners in the world would have been less
subtle.
The
Media handling by the Sri Lankan state would in fact make for a fascinating
study. Having realized that the LTTE in the past had made very good use of its
access to international media in projecting its image as an outfit fighting for
a separate homeland for Tamils, Sri Lanka decided to cut off the oxygen supply
of media support to the LTTE cause and instead deluged journalists with timely
information and restricted access.
The
local media was tamed through twin methods of coercion and chauvinism. Those
who refused to fall in line, were coerced, threatened and even killed (14
journalists lost their lives in Sri Lanka in the last four years) and all
others were won over by a simple appeal: it is as much your war as ours, so
please cooperate. Simultaneously, pro-LTTE blogs and websites like Tamilnet.com
were made inaccessible inside Sri Lanka.
The
result: a completely lop-sided coverage of Eelam War IV.
As a
student of media, the Sri Lankan strategy has fascinated me. They have refined
the lessons and practices adopted by the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan and
evolved their own model that shuts out every other contrary view. But war is a
dirty business and nations adopt tactics that suit them.
As a
journalist, I was not happy being part of a one-sided coverage, but to be fair
to the Sri Lankan state, winning the
information war was as essential as gaining a military victory. That a section
of the Western, bleeding heart liberal, media is now targeting the Sri Lankan
state for what it calls war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan army, is in a
way, a left-handed compliment to its strategy of creating a bubble around the
war zone in which no one could enter without the permission of the Sri Lankan
military.
So is
embedded journalism or traveling with the military good or bad for journalists?
Many news media
experts believe that embedded journalism provides a more accurate story of a
war when compared to the traditional approach of news gathering via military
briefings prepared for the press.
In contrast with this perspective, however, many other broadcast
media specialists believe that embedded journalists who travel with military
units become too emotionally bonded to the troops after long periods of time
and will therefore lose objectivity in their news reporting.
I
personally have a mixed feeling on this one.
However,
reporting on conflicts should be just one part of covering national security
issues. Media houses either have to hire specialists to report on highly
technical and sensitive subjects like missile and nuclear programmes to make
the complexities easy to understand for the average viewer or reader. Or at
least allow those involved in reporting on those issues—even reporting on the
art of war is complex—time off to master the subjects. Unfortunately there is
neither inclination nor resources to implement such a wish. Instead, little knowledge
is sought to be passed off as great expertise because the tendency in the media
today is to be a participant in the process rather than be a detached observer
and chronicler.
When
the military criticizes the media for lack of interest and knowledge, it
forgets that the media does not have the luxury of undergoing periodic upgrades
and courses—YOs, Senior Command, Higher Command, NDC Course to cite just a few
examples—as the military men do.
The
21st century is marked by an abundance of information. In
previous years, dominance was achieved through rationing information, exercising
information control, censorship and propaganda. Such methods are not
practical or prudent in the contemporary world. There is a constant increase in
the number of sources of information which cannot be muzzled and have to
be managed. The security forces therefore will have to focus on balancing
openness with security to exploit the power of the media, both tactically
and strategically. Media strategy can longer be the job of the public
relations officer alone, but must be seen as a command function. Security
Forces will have to think of ways to function outside the vertical silos
if the media war is to be won.
While the media certainly
needs to train and equip itself to discern, detect and dissect national
security issues, the government, the armed forces and even academics who deal
in issues of national security, have to understand the way media functions.
There is a crying need to have more interaction between these players without
the pressure of deadlines. So far, the tendency is to keep away from each
other. That does not help either side. Unless national security becomes the
concern of the nation and not just a handful few, we will continue to have a
problem of wrong projections.
And as I have said
in the past, the traditional media has been a friend and supporter of national
aims and national security.
I am not so sure
about the new elephant in the tent: the Social media. It is wild, it is
irreverent, it has its own set of rules and it does not bother about big names
and bigger reputations.
As
National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar
Menon, recently said at a cyber security conference: “Cyberspace is today the
fifth domain of human activity, in addition to land, sea, air and outer space.
Our dependence upon cyberspace for social, economic, governance, and security
functions has also grown exponentially. Unfettered access to information
through a global inter-connected Internet empowers individuals and governments,
and it poses new challenges to the privacy of individuals and to the capability
of Governments and administrators of cyberspace tasked to prevent its misuse.
“The govt’s job is complicated by the unique characteristics of cyberspace. It is borderless in nature, both geographically and functionally; anonymity and the difficulty of attribution; the fact that for the present the advantage is with offense rather than defence; and, the relatively anarchic nature of this domain.”
“The govt’s job is complicated by the unique characteristics of cyberspace. It is borderless in nature, both geographically and functionally; anonymity and the difficulty of attribution; the fact that for the present the advantage is with offense rather than defence; and, the relatively anarchic nature of this domain.”
Media
practitioners—both traditional and those in the fifth domain—will necessarily
continue to focus on national security as they view it. It is up to
decision-makers and national security mandarins to exploit their presence,
reach and influence to suit to their own aims and objectives. Therein lies the
trick.
In
the end I want to leave you with a thought: More interaction, not
less between the media and keepers of national security is the way forward.
Familiarity in this case will breed more knowledge not contempt.
