MEDIA COVERAGE: We are getting "today's battle in real time" but are we getting the facts? Deaglán de Bréadún reports on the media set-up at Coalition military headquarters in Doha
At the media entrance to Camp As Sayliyah outside the capital of Qatar, there is a set of pictures of wanted terrorists, among whom Osama bin Laden has pride of place. The pictures are posted on the wall just inside the door where the journalists and camera crews are admitted.
The possibility of bin Laden trying to pass himself off as a member of the press and coming to the camp in person with the intention of carrying out a terrorist attack seems unlikely, but the guards are on the look-out for him if he does.
It's not the only surreal touch at the camp, which is the "forward" headquarters of US Central Command, the backbone of the Coalition military effort in Iraq. Central Command, or "Centcom" for short, is responsible for US military "interests" in 25 countries in the Middle East and Africa. Its main headquarters is in Florida, but Iraqi operations are being directed from Camp As Sayliyah, about 20 minutes' drive from downtown Doha.
Sometimes the drive takes a little longer. US forces have been based at the camp for about three years but its existence was only made public a year ago. This may explain why taxis have so much difficulty finding the place. One driver took his customer on a minor world tour and, when the journalist saw camels and signs warning about camels crossing the highway, he knew he was lost.
Happily a friend of his came to the rescue and, when they finally arrived at the camp, the driver refused to take any money, a surprising but not unwelcome touch.
Getting into the camp is a minor obstacle course. A dog sniffs all bags and equipment and, if he scents explosives, he sits down and refuses to budge. The bags are also hand-searched, just in case, and their owners subjected to a "Rapiscan" body x-ray. Mobile phones must be switched off under pain of expulsion and anyone caught taking a photograph of the entrance is liable to a week in a Qatari jail.
However desirable and necessary, the heavyhanded security does not improve the mood of the assembled media, who have been getting progressively more discontented with the set-up at the camp, both the flow of information and the level of access to the most senior commanders.
The role of the media in modern warfare is beginning to exercise many people's minds these days, among them Michael Wolff of New York magazine. Formerly with the New York Times, his assignment at Camp As Sayliyah is not to cover the war itself but the coverage of the war, for his weekly column entitled, This Media Life.
"I kind of think of myself as someone 'embedded' with the media," he told The Irish Times. Asked for his views on media arrangements at the camp with its expensive Hollywood-designed briefing room, he says it is "probably one of the weirdest experiences I have ever had".
"It is taking several hundred reporters, putting them into a warehouse and shutting the doors," he says. "They built this impressive stage from which to tell us as little as possible." He says things were better in the first Gulf War where the Allied leader, Gen Norman Schwarzkopf gave daily news conferences: "Those briefings were the centre of the war, just no question about it, partly because Schwarzkopf's personality was so strong and also because it was him every day.
"You had a sense that this is the guy who is in charge and making all these decisions and then turning to us, the press, and telling us what he thinks, and we are questioning him."
He wonders if a decision has been taken this time that the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is the "star" in media terms and if Gen Tommy Franks has been told to stay out of the limelight. "Not one reporter here could say with any kind of certainty, are the Coalition forces winning or losing?"
Instead of information, the media were getting a series of prepared messages: "Victory is certain, weapons of mass destruction will be found, etc."
I put it to him that this might be because, as some believed, the war was not going that well: "I suspect, yes. My sense is that they were prepared for one thing, and that was to tell us about a great, and very quick, victory."
CBS news correspondent, Tom Fenton, praises the system of "embedding" journalists and camera crews with military units in the field: "They have produced absolutely devastating television, really wonderful."
He realises it also has benefits for the Coalition, from a military viewpoint: "If you share the hardships and the danger of the soldiers, you obviously have empathy if not sympathy for them. Secondarily, for the news organisations it provides brilliant copy and great photos, and today's battle in real time."
Although he did not come with many illusions, he was given to understand that the "big picture" would be available at Camp As Sayliyah. "The reality is we are not getting the big picture, we are getting almost no picture at all. We are getting little snapshots, vignettes, little clips of video, but not much else."
Polish journalist Jacek Palasinski, from the weekly Wprost, is disturbed that the rank of the officer giving press briefings is declining by the day: "The first day they sent us a four-star general, the second day a three-star, then for two days we have got a one-star and we are afraid what we will see here next week, a sergeant or a corporal?"
He believes that, perhaps for the first time, the media, embedded and otherwise, "are being treated as additional weapons". He says this explains the limited flow of information and the decision to "embed" journalists with individual units was taken to cultivate loyalty to the Coalition cause.
Whether the media operation is as calculated as Palasinski believes or whether Wolff is more accurate when he says the Coalition expected only to have to announce a rapid victory, is a matter for debate. Coalition representatives may plead military necessity for the restricted flow of information but the suspicion remains that, if the news were better, we would be hearing a great deal more.