The disastrous mistakes made by the Ministry of Defense and the editors of the newspapers makes this war very interesting for an analysis of British field of war journalism.
In my paper I will show in which ways British war correspondents were obstructed in their coverage through censorship and technical restraints by examining news articles from UK media sources in reference to Robert Harris's book "Gotcha!: The Media, the Government and the Falklands Crisis". Furthermore, I will explain why in this war the newspapers went to war not only with Argentina, but also each other.
On April 3rd, 1982, the first ships of the task force fleet, HMS Invincible and HMS Hermes, left Portsmouth with 14 reporters on board, including a BBC cameraman, a sound recorder and a photographer. "The big ships sail to war", reported The Times about the sailing of the biggest naval unit, which had ever left the naval port Portsmouth in peacetimes. Four days later the troopship Canberra followed Invincible and Hermes with further thirteen reporters on board. Before embarking, they all had promised "to submit for censorship all books, articles or other material concerning the task force during the period of operations" (Harris 26). The reasons for this censorship were strictly military ones. The journalists were told that they could report everything else and that "there would be no way the material would be censored for things like style or taste" (Harris 26). To ensure that every correspondent followed the rules, the military had five minders with the fleet. Their day to day task was to "take the reporters copy, check it to ensure that it did not breach any of the guidelines laid down by the Ministry, have it cleared by an officer on board ship and then arrange for its transmission back to London" (Harris 28). During the empty week before the task force entered into actual operations and reached Ascension Island, there had been a lot of quarrels between media, minders and Navy.
