 |
The
selling of war - Spinning to Win on BBC World Service
How
governments sell war to voters is explored in Spinning to Win from
28 July on the BBC World Service.
Robin
Lustig investigates the relationship between politicians, the
military, the media and the public by drawing on the recent war
in Iraq and other wars of the broadcast era.
Politicians
who have led their countries into war will be featured, together
with newspaper, radio and TV editors who have covered war stories.
The
series will question whether journalists have to give up their usual
stance of neutrality during times of war, whether the public can
expect to be given a full picture of what is going on and how war
changes political communication.
The
first of the three programmes charts the rhetorical transition from
the possibility to the inevitability of war.
Philip
Knightley, journalist and historian, discusses the need to persuade
the public of the rightness of the cause, a goal sometimes achieved
by portraying an enemy as a psychopathic monster.
In
the second programme on 4 August journalists discuss how their approach
to coverage changes once the conflict gets underway and politicians
give way to the military as the main news source.
Robin
Lustig discovers that a sophisticated PR machine has evolved.
During
the Iraq conflict, for example, former J Walter Thomson advertising
executive Charlotte Beers was employed to rescue the United States
government from a dip in support for the war.
PR
firms Hill and Knowlton and the Rendon Corp were hired by the Kuwaiti
government as part of a campaign to denounce Iraq's 1990 invasion
and mobilise public support for Operation Desert Storm.
Robin
Lustig says: "Military press officers are no longer lowly operatives.
They have become key strategists in the war of words."
The
final programme on 11 August reflects on how journalists, politicians
and the military decide if they've had a "good war" and
examines the manipulation of casualty and death statistics.
The
late Godfrey Talbot, a veteran BBC broadcaster, explains that in
World War II journalists had to use government figures which exaggerated
German casualties and minimised Allied ones.
Recent
wars in the Gulf and Afghanistan were possibly the first where the
public didn't expect soldiers to be killed.
How
do people then react to body bags and friendly fire deaths when
things go wrong?
Notes
to Editors
Spinning
to Win is a series of three programmes, 25 minutes each.
The
presenter is Robin Lustig and the producer is Ivor Gaber.
International
Broadcast Times
West
Africa: | Mon 09.06 rpt 16.06 | Tues 00.06 | Sun 22.06
Europe: | Mon 08.06 rpt 13.06, 18,06 | Tues 00.06 | Sun 19.06, 23.06
E and S Africa: Mon 08.06 rpt 13.06, 18,06 | Tues 00.06 | Sun 19.06,
23.06
Middle East: | Mon 07.06 rpt 16.06 | Tues 00.06 | Sat 18.06 | Sun
13.06, 23.06
South Asia: | Sun 23.06 rpt Mon 05.06, 09.06, 14.06 | Sun 06.06
East Asia: | Mon 02.06 rpt 17.06, 12.06, 18.06 | Sun 08.06
Americas: | Mon 14.06 rpt 19.06 | Tues 00.06, 05.06 | Sun 23.06
Listen
online from 18 August (updated weekly on Mondays) at
www.bbcworldservice.com/programmes
- choose Spinning to Win from the drop down list of programmes
BBC
World Service broadcasts programmes around the world in 43 languages
and is available on radio and online.
It
has a global audience of 150 million listeners while its website
- www.bbcworldservice.com
- receives 100 million page impressions each month.
All the
BBC's digital services are now available on Freeview,
the new free-to-view digital terrestrial television service, as well
as on satellite and cable.
Freeview
offers the BBC's eight television channels, interactive services
from BBCi, as well as 11 BBC radio networks.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
