"You can win the battle but lose the war if you don't handle the story right."

General Colin Powell in a speech to the National Defence University, 1990.

Both the Gulf War and the Falklands War were extremely different not only in how they were fought but also how the media covered them. In this paper there will be an examination of how the media performed with particular reference to the British Media in the Falkland's and the American Media in the Gulf.

It is widely accepted that relations between the military and the media suffer from friction and at wartime this even more true. This it has been argued is due to the fundamental differences between the military and the media. The media sees publicity as the way to its success, whereas for the military secrecy is essential to the success of its operations. For the military information and the control of it is seen as a weapon (1). The British media suffered several problems in covering the Falklands. First of all there was the location of the islands. Being 8,000 miles away from the United Kingdom and more than 400 miles away from the nearest landmass and also being s

Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Gulf War, (HarperCollins: 1993)

12: John Pimlott and Stephen Badsey (ed), The Gulf War Assessed, (Arms and Armour: 1992), pg.220

Glasgow University Media Group, War and Peace News, (Open University Press: 1985)

One phenomenon that was to first appear during the Falklands War was that of the Armchair Strategist. More often that not these would be retired senior military officers who would be asked on television to speculate on the next phase of the campaign, which was to lead to the controversy over the battle for Goose Green. This was to occur during the Gulf War as well with the military writer James F. Dunnigan correctly predicting every major aspect of the air and land war in November 1990 on American television. Often this is no more that harmless speculation, but sometimes they gave away information, such as the case involving Goose Green, that may have been of use to the enemy. This led to an outcry from those on the military and those in government. Baroness Thatcher, the then Prime Minister, called these speculations nothing short of treachery (8).

John Ajit Singh Gosal, Conflict in the Falklands: Media-Military Relations, War Studies Journal, Vol.1, No.2, 1996

15: Jeffrey Walsh (ed.),The Gulf War Did Not Happen: Politics, Culture and Warfare Post-Vietnam, (Arena, 1995), pg.143

Some common words found in the essay are:
Gulf War, President Bush, Schedule Notices, Falklands War, United Kingdom, Grenada Panama, Iraq January, Persian Gulf, Media Gulf, Iraqi Authorities, gulf war, falklands war, united kingdom, military media, crimea falklands, task force, british media, war media, american media, ed gulf war, et al, gulf war assessed, storm mass media, desert storm mass, gosal conflict falklands,
Approximate Word count = 3177
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)