Article

War and media : constancy and convulsion

Arnaud Mercier

• International review of the Red Cross, Vol. 87, no. 860, December 2005, p. 649-659

English

To consider the relationship between war and the media is to look at the way in which the media are involved in conflict, either as targets (war on the media) or as an auxiliary (war thanks to the media). On the basis of this distinction, four major developments may be cited that today combine to make war above all a media spectacle: photography, which opened the door to manipulation through stage-management; live technologies, which raise the question of journalists' critical distance vis-à-vis the material they broadcast and which can facilitate the process of using them; pressure on the media and media globalization, which have led to a change in the way the political and military authorities go about making propaganda; and, finally, the fact that censorship has increasingly come into disrepute, which has prompted the authorities to think of novel ways of controlling journalists.

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• International review of the Red Cross / ICRC
• International review of the Red Cross [Vol. 87, no. 860, December 2005] / ICRC