The Unpopular And Necessary Wartime Journalist

In wartime, there's nothing more unpopular than the journalist who tells the truth.

The commanders don't like 'em, the politicians don't like 'em and often the public despise them.

Back in the 1850's, the doyen of all war correspondents, William Howard Russell travelled with the British Army in the Crimea, reporting for the Times of London.
His eyewitness reports, detailing the failures as well as the successes of the British, brought down a Prime Minister, and convinced Florence Nightingale to start a career in nursing. The British commanders hated him just as much as the commanders on both sides of your civil war, where he continued to tell the truth, as he saw it.

Last week, the chairman of Tony Blair's governing Labour Party showed just how bad relationships are between the fourth estate and the politicians, when he lost his temper with a much respected journalist, accusing his organisation of acting like the Friends of Baghdad. Round about the same time, another journalist actually in the Iraqi capital was accused of succumbing to their propaganda.

Now there are others who will say that, now the war is under way, journalists should support our boys out there. It's all so much hooey and hogwash. Journalists, out there, or back here in our seats of Government, are our only tenuous link with reality. We need the good ones, the unbiased ones, who tell us what they know, with no fear of hindrance.... like we've never needed them before.

Wartime is when truth goes out the window and unless we're careful, we believe everything we're told, because to believe otherwise is to be 'unpatriotic'. For our governments and for their commanders, one of the many unlearned lessons of Vietnam seems to be: You can control where journalists go, but you can't control what they see.

By Simon Bates