Giulia D'Amico & Salvatore Nigro

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
- Thomas Jefferson

The aim of this paper is to explore the influence of ICTs ad media during the military campaign and the involvment of public opinion as well as the reaction of politcal leaders during conflicts, particularly through the comparison between the role played by the media during the Gulf War and the Iraqi Freedom War.

Globalization has changed many aspects of daily life, such as reading newspapers and hearing the latest news: today you can do everything and be everywhere just by a click.

Economic and social opportunities are being influenced by Internet access and the use of Information technologies plays a fundamental role .

If we think about the two Iraqi wars, we can immediatly highlight the differences between the two situations: the first , the Gulf War, saw the presence of numerous journalists from all over the world. It was a "TV war ". In 2003 something has changed. The Iraqi Freedom War has been a digital war, on one hand ICTs facilitated the global spreading of information, on the other hand ICTs created a war within the War: an internet conflict.

In 1990 the Gulf war got a full media coverage. The most important research studies confirmed the success of governments coalition, in order to strengthen the military campaign. Few journalists looked after the Arabian people. Nobody took care of Iraqi refugees.

The first Iraqi war (1990-91) was totally covered by media and the leaders' opinion was that media were focusing their attention just to the war's victory, retreating their troups and journalists from the conflict area, at the end of the war. This situation has been called "CNN effect" and introduced a different approach in the analysis of the modern International Relations. On one hand, the Gulf war can be considered as a single event, as it was the first conflict between countries, after the Cold War. On the other hand, the Curdi refugees' crisis has become the paradigm of the humanitarian assistance: for the first time the military forces were employed not for governments' strategic interests.

Despite the link among the two events was obvious, the wars have been studied with a different approch. More over, even if in both conflicts the attention was focused on the media's role, it was never underlined the importance of the connections among the wars and the mass media's role.

The Curdistan situation is one of the main issues in the debate on humanitarian assistance: International Relations are still trying to advance justifications for what happened. As we said, International Relations research studies have taken for granted that the media's role was decided indipendently by each government.

Analyzing the interactions among the local and the international level, and the role that governments and Media played, we could say that the first mistake that the leaders made, was believing that international and local level were separeted from Iraqi crisis. In olther words, they intervened to solve by military force a typical violation of territorial sovereignty. Only when the conflict was solved they understood how difficult was the Iraqi social and political situation.

Moreover, also the neighbouring countries (Iran, Turkey, Syria) were involved in the socio-cultural and religious problems and Media focused international attention on them.

Also in the Iraqi Freedom War, Media, TV and Internet played a fundamental role.

Especially Internet shared on line daily diaries written by American military during the conflict. Everyone could downloaded these pages of real life.

It has suggested that one factor may have been today's media's need for so much access to information to fill the hours of coverage. Establish the transparency of one conflict party to another is necessary.

First, the presence of arabian televisions was more effective. Just to highlight some names, as Al-Jazeera , Abu Dhabi Tv, MBC have always been present; in particular, Al-Jazeera was the "Arabian CNN" its role has been extremly relevant because it was present everywhere, even in closed areas, prohibited to Occidental media. While Al-Jazeera journalists had got particular permissions that allowed them to enter in the war zones, Occidental media were confinated inside the Secretary of Information and were not free to move into the city.

From a mediatic point of view, we could say that this war was always present in every Tvnews, TV programme, and, almost in talk shows, everyone felt confident about this subject.

Thus, the third point focuses the attention on media that plays a central role to cover the conflict: president Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld accused media of spreading bad information. Peter Arnett, NBC reporter and former CNN corrispondent, was dismissed because, during a talk show he talked about the failure of the military plan.The Government reacted very harshly and his dismission was unavoidable. Anyway, he remains in Iraq as Daily Mirror corrispondent.

Besides, many cruent pictures have been censured by american tv: it was probably made to protect the families and the public opinion. But, anyway, it is difficult to understand the reason of this action, as it is really simple downloading the same frames from Internet web-sites.

The situation that we have exposed underlines a new way of giving news. Two different situations are taking place: the first, related to Occidental media, such as CNN, that controls Al-Quaeda messages and censures extreme pictures before broadcasting them.

The second one concerns Al-Jazeera: this media works in a totally different way. The news is given as it is, without censuring or adapting it to the reaction that it could provoke.

Media's Role in War: for Better or Worse? It is not easy answering to this question made by Paula Zahn, CNN Anchor during the war in Iraq.

In particular, almost during the conflicts it is extremely difficult to understand which is the Right to Information. Surely Media's role during this difficult time should not be only a cheerleading competition, but something more.

Now a days, the media's role in a democratic society is to provide the public opinion with an informed basis upon which people can exercise their democratic rights to lobby, and express their views on what should happen to their elected representatives. This should be facilitated by on line tools;but sometimes this item changes.

In conclusion, the right to information and the right of journalists to work free "crash" with people security, protected by government and also with the right of every mother who is waitig for her son to go back home. Surely, respecting people and their security is becoming much more important than giving information.

Giulia D'Amico & Salvatore Nigro
Giulia D'Amico is cooperating as consultant on ICT for development projects for OECD and for the Italian Senatus. Before she has worked in the ICT Dept. of the Glocal Forum, an international NGO based in Rome. She is holding a MA in Business and a MS in International Management in LUISS Rome, with a final research paper on e-Government, as a new tool for local authorities , economi policy implications and implementation of some models.
Salvatore Nigro is currently the coordinator for International Partnerships of the Glocal Forum. Prior to joining the organization he worked in the Policy Planning Unit of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he collaborated in a proposal to reform the UNSC. He holds a MSc in Strategic and Military International Studies, and a MA in Political Science, LUISS Rome.
e-mail: giulia_d_amico@hotmail.com
mobile: +39 3478811556
e-mail: salvatorenigro@hotmail.com
mobile: +39 3398192339