Media and Machine

The relationship between advances in communications and developments in warfare are well documented. The link is supposed to be at its strongest during a state of emergency, a time when the state heavily regulates media outlets for the purposes of ‘national security’ and the necessities of military operations demand innovations in transmission, collection, decoding and interpretation of information, but the link remains tight even during periods of peace. In fact the relationship is so strong that it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate military operations from the everyday practices of the media and entertainment industries locked as they are in a cycle of imitation (Der Derian, 2001). Two events in particular, one anecdotal the other factual, serve to demonstrate the close historical ties between the military and the media. The first event takes place in 1898 and is, as Armand Mattelart (1994) reports it, ‘the first great press campaign aimed at inciting a government to intervene militarily on foreign soil’ (17). In this instance, William Randolph Hearst was able to force the hand of President William McKinley and bring about the invasion of Cuba based on the surge of public opinion Hearst had created via the use of his media empire. Legend has it that when Frederic Remington, who Hearst had dispatched to photograph the crisis in Cuba, telegraphed him saying: ‘Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. Wish to return’, Hearst replied: ‘Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll provide the war’ (in Mattelart, 1994: 18).¹ The second event took place in 1928, the date of the second ever television transmission by engineers at General Electric. This event is not only significant due to the new world of communications that it heralds, it is also significant given that the content of the broadcast was a simulated missile attack on New York City, thus announcing the perpetual fascination that the medium of television would have with war, conflict and violence. As James Der Derian notes, the transmission seems to presage the video footage of smart-weapons and the revolution in military affairs (RMA) first revealed in Gulf War I, and we should add, even more eerily it seems to foretell the media spectacle we now call ‘9/11’.