Introduction
ARMED FORCES all over the world are struggling to come to grips with a new, aggressive media environment. In the first U.S.-led Iraq War, in 1991, many journalists still used typewriters, and only the large television networks could afford clunky satellite phones; today, slim cell phones are the norm for journalists, soldiers, and even civilians in most war zones. About 2.8 billion phones with built-in cameras, sound recording capabilities, and text-messaging are in use already, and 1.6 million are registered every day. (1) In the 1990s, reporters had a near-monopoly on war coverage; today, soldiers alone publish approximately 1,700 blogs on the Internet, and civilians in war zones publish a fair number of online diaries as well. (2) During General Norman Schwarzkopf’s war, CNN and the BBC were the only providers of moving images; today, Internet video-sharing sites boast footage uploaded by U.S. troops as well as insurgents and militant Islamists. The footage includes recordings of executions, improvised explosive device attacks, and snipings, and the material is available to anyone with a computer, anywhere. This media environment signals a veritable revolution in media affairs. What might its consequences be?
To get a bird’s-eye view of a development that is at first glance troubling and dangerous, this article will examine some of the German Army’s recent media challenges; discuss several trends of wider significance for those who make policy, war, and news; and put the new media’s effects into their proper contexts. It will also look at the new technology’s positive aspects and suggest how to deal with the new realities.
Taking Hits
On 25 October 2006, Bild, Germany’s most popular daily newspaper, published five photographs that shocked the Federal Republic. (3) The photos depicted German soldiers in Afghanistan posing with bleached human skulls, exhibiting them as souvenirs and hood ornaments. In a particularly egregious one, a soldier holds a cranium while making sexually explicit gestures. The pictures hit political Berlin like a bomb explosion. Chancellor Angela Merkel said the soldiers’ behavior “cannot be excused”; NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer voiced his concern; U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, traveling in Berlin, demanded clarification; and pundits called the German Army’s moral fitness into question. (4) The German Army and Germany’s federal attorney launched investigations of 23 suspects, and 6 soldiers were suspended from service. The “skull affair” had developed into one of the most embarrassing scandals the Bundeswehr (Federal Defense Force) ever had to face.
More was to come. On 13 April 2007, Der Stern, one of the country’s largest weekly papers, broke another story. (5) In July 2006, a 90-second video posted on MyVideo.de, the most popular German-language video-sharing site, had shown a German instructor with a soldier dressed in camouflage in a forest in Schleswig-Holstein. The video recorded the instructor telling the soldier to imagine hostile blacks in the Bronx in New York City while he fired his machinegun. The soldier then fired and shouted an obscenity several times in English between bursts. Der Stem’s hugely popular website, stern.de, ran an article quoting an activist officer who blamed the Bundeswehr’s “fighter cult” and increased “international operations” for the troops’ behavior. The article came with the MyVideo-application neatly embedded, ready to play with one mouse click. (6) Aired on German national television on Saturday, 15 April 2007, the video sparked over 600 newspaper reports in the English-language press alone. The German Defense Ministry described the video as “completely unacceptable.” (7) German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier condemned it while on a mission to New York City, where the Reverend Al Sharpton demanded that President George W. Bush intervene in the affair. (8) (The Virginia Tech shootings then overshadowed the story.)
Not long before this incident, on 10 March 2007, another video had appeared on the Internet. In the video, a previously unknown Iraqi insurgent group, the Arrows of Righteousness, paraded two hostages before the camera and threatened to kill them unless all German troops withdrew from Afghanistan within ten days. (9) On 6 February 2007, Arrows of Righteousness had kidnapped 61-year old Hannelore Krause, a German citizen living in Iraq, and her 20-year-old son, from their Baghdad home. After hearing the video’s demands, the German government said it would not submit to blackmail, and, on 17 March, Germany’s president took the unusual step of addressing the kidnappers in a video message of his own. (10) In reply, the Arrows of Righteousness posted a video on the Al-Hesbah forum, extending the ultimatum for withdrawal by 10 days. (11) In the video, weeping and begging the chancellor personally for help, Krause read out, “Germany was safe before it allied with America in this devilish alliance against what is called terrorism.” As this article goes to press, the Foreign Office’s “crisis staff” is still working on the case.
Rid, Thomas.
The Bundeswehr’s New Media Challenge.
Military Review, (July – August 2007), 104–9.
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