Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1358-1359)
MR A PAWSON
AND COLONEL
PAUL BROOK
12 NOVEMBER 2003
Q1358 Chairman: Gentlemen, welcome. This
is the second day's evidence we are holding on the media. I am
sure you have read the morning and afternoon sessions of 2 July.
We look forward to hearing the Ministry of Defence's perspective.
Is there anything you would like to say to kick off?
Mr Pawson: I presume that one
or two of your questions will be general questions and I will
be very happy to respond with an overview from that if you would
like.
Q1359 Chairman: When did you first start
working on preparing a media strategy for a conflict in Iraq?
Mr Pawson: The media strategy
developed over time in the light of the experience we had had
since the first Gulf War and since Kosovo. Our aim was to get
into the public domain accurate information about what was happening
on the ground in Iraq and Kuwait of course and particularly what
the Armed Forces themselves were doing. Our plan to achieve this
had a number of factors in it. First, we decided that we should
be as open as possible and only operational security was going
to be the consideration in that respect. From the reports I have
seen and the reports in the media, I think we have probably succeeded
in that. Our interest was mainly in the general public but also
in our own people, for the families, friends, colleagues, those
in the services and the reservists. It was quite important to
us that they should see what was going on accurately and at first
hand as well. Secondly, we had to try to meet the practical needs
of the media, both in terms of the information they were after
and the timeliness. We tried to meet this in a variety of ways,
both in terms of the support that we gave in theatre and in terms
of dealing with incidents and activities in theatre, rather than
it all coming back to headquarters here in London and back out
again, to try to meet the timeliness point of view. We also felt
it necessary to try to preserve to the greatest extent possible
the accuracy and authoritativeness of our own briefing, our own
reporting and our own press office. There is of course a tension
between being quick and being accurate. That tension was present
there throughout the conflict. Next, if we were to achieve our
objective we had to plan to get information out at all levels.
We started with the individual journalists, those embedded journalists
in the front line and the unilaterals. The next level up for us
in the UK was the forward press information centre with 1 Division,
so that would give a Divisional view of the situation. Then we
had the coalition environmental sub-press information centres
for maritime, the air and the land. Then of course Qatar and then
London. We felt we had covered the full spectrum of requirements
in that regard. Next, we had to decide how we were going to deal
with the 24/7 media plus the time differences as between Iraq,
London and Washington meant we had very full days. We had to get
the right resources in place. We had to be aware of the demands
that would be coming along from the 24 hour media. Finally, we
had to recognise we had to work in the coalition framework. We
had to depend on the lead party of the coalition for much of the
overview and the breadth that was in place. Not in the sense of
an objective but throughout all of this, we wanted to try to establish
good relationships with the media because we are very conscious
that in reality we were probably dependent on their goodwill and
cooperation for preserving things like operational security and
trying to get across to them the understanding of the situation
so that they could report in the right way. That was our grand
plan. The planning really got off the ground probably last September
when the discussions with the Americans and inside both Whitehall
and the Ministry of Defence ramped up.
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