Summary: NATO’s Media Services
NATO Experiences gained on Media Issues from the Kosovo Operation - Lessons Learned
Wolfgang Schober
Jamie Shea, head of media services at the Office of Information and Press (OIP) lists six lessons learned from NATO’s public relations during the Kosovo conflict: In times of crises, perfection in handling the media is unrealistic. Confusion and insecurity are dominating features of a crisis or armed conflict, respectively, which would explain the alliance’s internal difficulties to provide uptodate information. In addition, NATO’s media services met with recipients who subjectively rated Operation Allied Force, with a total duration time of 78 days, as long conflict. NATO and the media simply had different interests. While the alliance wanted to present the public with general and easytounderstand messages, the journalists were interested in details, background information, and inside reports.
NATO is required to strengthen its press and media organization as soon as active involvement in a conflict can be anticipated. The personnel strength of the OIP is designed for peace time media services, and therefore it had taken about a month to set up a Media Operation Center.
SHAPE needs to improve its capability of forwarding military information during a crisis. The slow military information flow to the OIP had led to severe criticism on part of some press representatives and weakened NATO’s credibility.
Also, the knowledge about the enemy, during a crisis or conflict, needs to be improved. The fact, that there was no profound estimate of the situation on the politicaldiplomatic level, was of decisive disadvantage for NATO and thwarted faster countermeasures, to weaken the impact of Yugoslav propaganda in Western media. A further dilemma may be seen in the fact, that the enemy had free and unhampered access to Western media, which did not work for NATO the other way round.
In the age of television, pictures are decisive for reporting. The lack of uptodate picture material aggravated the alliance’s situation to justify its actions, while the Yugoslav side was very skillful in using film material suitable for propaganda purposes.
The media have to be supplied permanently with uptodate information. This is the only way to ensure that media representatives will depend on the inhouse press center instead of searching for statements some place else, that may possibly be critical. However, NATO had failed to recognize the skeptical attitude prevailing in some of its member states, and was too slow in taking active PR measures.
Summarizing, Shea states that, despite the difficulties pointed out, the alliance was able to get its message - reimplementation of human rights, end to ethnic cleansing, and peace enforcement - across to the people. Eventually NATO’s information services had also convinced the enemy, forcing him to give in, and at the end of the day, had also obtained credibility with the victims of the crisis.
The OIP’s equivalent at SHAPE was the Public Information Office (PIO) which arrived at a more critical assessment of its role in the Kosovo conflict than the OIP did. Alone the commander’s (SACEUR) availability for the press and the possibility of gaining access to him, did not receive great ratings. Likewise, the failure to keep to the approved PR plan met with criticism. What the PIO criticized most, however, was the creation of an Information Operations Center (IOC), which had led to mixing propaganda with public information. The reduction of group visits at SHAPE and at NATO’s HQ during the air campaign, prevented the alliance from conducting direct talks with highranking visitors.
The OIP gave undivided praise to the briefing team, however, which had formed due to the real pressure of crisis PR and ensured excellent preparation of the military spokesman. It is therefore not understandable why later on this team was subordinated to the IOC. The IOC, as an additional level in the hierarchy, had slowed down the information flow of the PIO and was counterproductive to the concept of an open media policy. In addition, the IOC made the possibility of gaining access to the commander unnecessarily difficult.
Media services and Information Operation have to be separated. Journalists accept, that media departments have to argue pro domo, but will by no means appreciate being confronted with a PR department which, on the basis of its structure, reveals a manipulative intent. Such a department would discredit itself and therewith the entire institution.
In their conclusions and recommendations for the future the OIP and the PIO agree that first of all, the unsatisfactory personnel situation has to be resolved, giving preference to people who know the media system, rather than to those with military expertise. Furthermore, the alliance’s internal information flow needs to get faster and more secure by introducing encrypted links. The classification of intelligence material should be reconsidered, and the varying copyright regulations, which had led to a tremendous loss of time when publishing picture material for instance, have to be revised. Finally, personnel fluctuations in the media services are to be minimized.
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