The clash over South Ossetia has brought the role of media in military conflicts into the limelight again. Russia obviously learned that media strategy is a critical part of 21st century war strategy and employed its best English speakers for commentary at the forefront of their military campaign. On the other side, Georgian spokespeople spoke of Western media as "the only leverage we still have" -- a line that is so desperate that it makes your blood freeze. But it's true: While the US administration and the European Union appeared to be lame ducks in this conflict, CNN and other Western media were on the ground and actually influenced the news they reported.
This interference did not occur for the first time, of course, but seldom before had it been so visible. In fact, the concept of "embedded reporting" reached unprecedented dimensions. Unlike in the first Gulf War or the Iraq war, this time the reporters were embedded on both sides and gave both parties ample news space to make their case. Reporters were getting rides in Russian tanks (on NPR: "Sorry, I am asked to get in now") or were patrolling with Georgian soldiers where they became unwilling representatives of the US government (from a New York Times article: "Don’t ask us questions. Ask your president!").
The communication chain worked both ways, obviously, with the media not only reporting but also indirectly mediating between the two sides and the West. How much of that embeddedness was used for unfiltered propaganda is hard to judge, but overall, it seems as if reporters were able to rebut some of the war parties' key claims, for example Russia's assertion that more than 2,000 South Ossetians were killed in an alleged Georgian aggression (the media referred to a Human Rights Watch report that counted only 44). It is frightening to imagine what would have happened without media presence as a mass on its own on the ground. But then again, we would have never known.
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