Peter Busch

The Future of War Reporting

New information technologies and the rise of social media are changing the relationship between media and warfare. Scholars and observers of this relationship have advanced many interpretations of these changes, yet, Peter Busch argues, none has offered a satisfactory approach to contemporary war reporting. Rather than focus on traditional concepts of truth and objectivity, Busch encourages war correspondents to embrace personal, involved, subjective journalism. Only by becoming close to the story can journalists successfully convey the nature of warfare.

The Changing Media

Accessible, inexpensive and real-time global communication networks have enabled more individuals to participate in political discourse. The new communication space also provides ample room for extremist voices who spread messages of hatred and violence. New and social media therefore pose challenges to governments and security services. This chapter explores the relationship between terrorism, media and threat perception. It problematises the role of government communication in reaction to acts of political violence. Moreover, the strengths and weaknesses of social-media-facilitated networks are discussed. Finally, suggestions are made on how officials might deal with threat communication in the new media world.

Television through the eyes of ordinary soldiers

One of the central features of the ground-breaking BBC documentary series The Great War was the inclusion of eyewitness testimony. The material recorded for the series has been constantly reused in BBC radio and television documentaries and in academic writing. However, the selection of witnesses in 1964 and the role they played in the documentary have received scant attention. Relying on documents available at the BBC Written Archives Centre and the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, this article addresses the selection of eyewitnesses. It shows that more than a quarter of the veterans appearing in the series can best be described as elite voices. This qualifies the widely held belief that the documentary gave voice to ‘ordinary’ people. Moreover, veterans’ testimonies were not spontaneous, ‘off-the-cuff’ tales as recent First World War centenary coverage has suggested. They were often based on published autobiographies or similar written accounts. Finally, it is argued that the veterans were ‘moral literary witnesses’ whose storytelling was crucial in determining the tone of the series. Their accounts undermined the revisionist narrative advanced by the series’ principal writers.