The Media as an Instrument of War

Abstract

T he media, in the modern era, are indisputably an instrument of war.This is because winning modern wars is as much dependent on carrying domestic and international public opinion as it is on defeating the enemy on the battlefield.And it remains true regardless of the aspirations of many journalists to give an impartial and balanced assessment of conflict.The experience of the US military in the post-Cold War world demonstrates that victory on the battlefield is seldom as simple as defeating the enemy by force of arms.From Somalia and Haiti through Kosovo and Afghanistan, success has been defined in political, rather than military, terms.Today's military commanders stand to gain more than ever before from controlling the media and shaping their output.The laws and conventions of war, however, do not adequately reflect the critical role that the media play in shaping the political outcome of conflicts.International humanitarian law requires that media members are afforded the rights of civilians; the question is whether this is sustainable when the exigencies of warfighting suggest that controlling the media is essential.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 48 citations exist upstream.