On the last session of our studies in the University Of Westminster we had a great opportunity to watch a BBC film on war spin.
The theme is extremely essential as "war spin" seems to appear almost in every war.
The example we saw was the story of Private Lynch, that became a war hero in the times of Iraq War.
The media widely covered the issue of a poor 19-year-old girl captured by Iraqis and saved by the US forces.
Actually when the film began I couldn't quite understand what happened on the screen: soldiers with guns were running under the song of 50Cent. Looks weird. It all seemed like the shots from a movie,not like a real documentary. All the moves,words and actions of the army-guys seemed to be rehearesed.
Well actually it all was a fiction.
Private Lynch wasn't captured and tortured by Iraquis,she was perfectly fine in one of the Iraq hospitals,and all the personnel treated her well.
According to one of the witnesses it was a complete madness.The forces broke into the hospital and acted like heroes of an American action movie.
Actually one member of staff who helped the girl to be passed to the US army forces (while actually it wasn't allowed for him by Iraq law) was killed by the US army.
He was killed for his help!
Isn't it absolutely crazy?
Meanwhile the American journalists in Iraq covered the issues happening in Iraq at that time.
Tip here: They were passing from 12-16 hours in the depot.
Question: how could people who sit all day long in the depot,not seeing what is actually happening around write the truth?
Answer: By no means
So here is the essence: the US government used the inability of people know the truth and their lack of information of what is happening in Iraq to promote US actions as only possible, reasonable and important.
The slogan of this war is "Maximum imaginary-minimum insight".
Well, here I can say, comes the concept of PR ethics. I know that political PR has never been really ethical,bit how can it all be so dirty and unjust?
I think PR profs should fight more for their profession to be seen as ethical. Isn't it the theme of conversations held for such a long period of time?
Anyway, US PR profs and the government had an extremely distinct view of what they wanted to get as the result of their actions. They had clear tactics and strategy. And it is really hard to say that their actions were unsuccessful. The huge nation and some other countries of the world believed in the US actions.
Taking my eyes away from the problem of Iraq I can say just one thing- here PR people worked well.It's hard to deceive so many people,but the US Government and PR professionals made it.
The got what they wanted.
I think that we as ordinary people,as well as journalists (in this case locked on the depot) should get the access to the information on a free basis, so that it is our idea whether to believe military forces and government or not.
Unfortunately, I think, it won't be realistic in future.
Here comes the power of people. Noone wants to lose it so easily.
These days the power is in the hands of those who have the information and believe me-they won't let us bite even a tine bit of their "power" cake.
P.S. For you to think:
George W Bush succinctly explains his job- The catapult of Propaganda
Pro-War Ad
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