Britain’s media is failing to report the true extent of UK support to Israel amid the genocide in Gaza.
This is not the exception in Britain’s wars, but the rule. When Declassified revealed three years ago that the UK military had a secret team operating in Yemen, no British media outlet picked up the story.
Neither are the UK press or broadcasters showing how the government has been avoiding peace prospects in Ukraine.
One reason the UK media fail to report independently is that they are regularly willing participants in Whitehall’s ‘media operations’, especially in wars.
A major episode that sheds light on this is the 1991 Gulf war, on which some government files have now been declassified.
‘Themes need urgent amplification’
Iraq’s brutal tyrant Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, claiming it as a province under Baghdad’s control and brutally repressing its small population.
The US and UK began a massive military build-up, deploying their forces to Saudi Arabia to prepare to oust Iraq from Kuwait.
Alongside this military planning went extensive media operations.
Soon after the invasion, prime minister Margaret Thatcher told her ministers to begin a “counter-propaganda” campaign against Iraq.
“The main targets for a propaganda effort should be the Iraqi people, other Arabs sympathetic to Iraq and the wider Muslim world”, wrote Simon Gass, adviser to foreign secretary Douglas Hurd.
Key themes would be that the crisis “is wholly Saddam Hussein’s fault because of the illegal and unjustified annexation of Kuwait” and “Saddam Hussein’s brutality”.
“All these themes need urgent amplification. Propaganda material will need to be disseminated”, Gass wrote.
The following month, Stephen Wall, Hurd’s private secretary, noted the campaign should promote three key arguments.
These were: to maintain sanctions against Iraq; to avoid “Arab/compromise solutions” on a negotiated settlement to the crisis; and “justifying presence [sic] of Western forces in the Gulf”.
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Propaganda success
The allied bombardment of Iraq that took place from January 1991 – known as Operation Desert Storm – was ferocious. Intense bombing struck electricity, water, health care and industrial facilities, killing tens of thousands of people.
Yet the UK media covered the war in ways that would surely have delighted Whitehall planners. An academic study noted “a very successful campaign of mass persuasion by politicians, the media and others in favour of military action”.
In particular, Saddam Hussein was portrayed as similar to Adolf Hitler and the war as against him personally rather than against the people of Iraq.
The media pushed for war and were largely against negotiations, and then proceeded to support the devastating mass bombing campaign as it unfolded.
Des Freedman, professor of media at Goldsmiths, told us: “News coverage of the 1991 Gulf War was heavily stage-managed with a cast of military spin doctors, PR consultants and compliant journalists.
“UK media largely lapped up the narrative that this was a just war against an evil dictator, precisely as Whitehall had hoped. Headlines reproduced military boasts of precision bombing and cruise missiles that could turn left at traffic lights and minimised the terrible impact for civilians.”
He added: “Coverage was sanitised not simply because of pressure from the military but also because of editorial decisions taken to ‘protect’ readers and viewers from the catastrophic impact of the Allied attacks.”
New world order
When Douglas Hurd placed an article in the Mail in January 1991, he was allowed to write: “No one wants war” and to claim that “ a new world order of peace, trust and security” might begin if the UK took further military action.
It was obvious nonsense. In private, officials knew what was coming. Charles Powell noted on 22 October that “we envisage massive destruction of military and strategic targets in Iraq by air action”.
US defence secretary Richard Cheney told Thatcher in a meeting on 15 October that plans for military bombardment “did not exclude attacking targets which could effect [sic] the civilian population like dams and power stations”.
The interests of the Iraqi people appear little in the available files, as far as I could see, and were rarely the concern of mainstream media coverage either, in 1991 as now in 2024.
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‘Positive information campaign’
To promote their ‘positive information campaign’, as it was called, officials undertook activities such as “the supply of material to the press”, distributing videos to television broadcasters, and producing radio material to place with foreign broadcasters.
Also important was “placing in the press in target areas articles signed by ministers and articles commissioned through the COI” – the Central Office of Information (a government communications agency that was closed in 2011). Another aspect was “placing on TV stations in target areas specially prepared TV material”.
“We continue to place material about the government’s policy with radio stations in the Gulf area”, Wall noted in October. “The local media in the UAE and Egypt, among others, have made wide use of our output”, the Foreign Office observed.
By October 1990, as the military build-up increased, government information officers produced three television programmes about the occupation of Kuwait. “The whole series is being shown on the main evening news in Egypt and has been widely used elsewhere”, a Foreign Office report noted.
British targets
In his August 1990 letter on the UK’s “propaganda effort”, Gass wrote that “the British press can best be targeted through briefings to reliable Middle East experts. A list is being drawn up”.
This was in a section referring to “overt” activities. The next paragraph is then censored, and is likely entitled “covert”.
The UK files are heavily weeded and do not cover the actions of the UK intelligence services, which remain censored. It is impossible to know what covert media operations were undertaken and what if any false information UK planners put into the public domain.
Ahead of the bombing campaign, Douglas Hurd agreed to “brief senior journalists on the Gulf”, and identified six, each to be given a half hour session. These included the editors of the Times, Daily Telegraph and Economist.
By this time, the Foreign Office’s Information Department was noting it had produced two videos about the “array of weapons being assembled in the Gulf region” and Iraq’s destruction of Kuwait.
It hoped these would be “useful for briefing contacts in the British media” and that overseas distribution had been done to over 60 countries.
A particular domestic target is noted in the files. “British Muslims remain very susceptible to arguments for a compromise solution [to the conflict]; they are concerned that hostilities will divide their loyalties to Britain and the wider Muslim community”, a Foreign Office report in October 1990 had noted.
Three months later, government information officers were fixing meetings with “Middle East and other Moslem correspondents in London and editors of newspapers serving the Moslem communities in the UK [sic]”.
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‘Arab audiences can be reached through the BBC’
In Whitehall’s campaign, the BBC would play a crucial role. “Wider Arab audiences can be reached through the BBC, the Arabic press and the British press”, Gass wrote. He added that “we are already in close touch with the BBC and have set up weekly briefing sessions with them”.
“The Arabic service are helpfully finding Arab and Islamic voices to put the case against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. We can help them do this.”
Ministers were adamant the BBC should tow the government’s line. Soon after Iraq’s invasion, the BBC World Service reported two expatriates saying their impressions were that UK and US diplomats had left Kuwait after Iraq’s invasion or were on leave.
Thatcher was “incensed” by the BBC’s report and instructed foreign minister William Waldegrave to “take it up at the highest level with the BBC and insist upon a public apology”.
Thus the foreign minister “spoke in strong terms” to senior BBC executives David Witherow and John Tusa saying these claims were “utterly fallacious and that before publicising them the BBC should have checked with the Foreign Office”.
The note of this conversation, by Waldegrave’s private secretary, Dominic Asquith, observed that “Mr Tusa agreed that a refutation would appear in the 4pm World Service news report today. This has indeed happened”.
By September 1990, one aspect of the UK’s “overseas propaganda operations” noted by officials was “additional BBC World Service output”. The Arabic Service had been extended by one and a half hours a day and the World Service was carrying regular reports on British citizens in Kuwait.
