Editorial: When all the facts can be too costly

On the surface, it seems extraordinary that the Bush Administration would ask American television networks to limit broadcasts of videotaped statements by Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants. In reality it is, in all likelihood, a case of old wine being served from a new bottle. National security adviser Condaleezza Rice says the al Qaeda network's statements could contain coded messages to its followers to launch new attacks against Americans. If that sounds improbable, it has a certain resonance when set alongside the lessons learned by the United States in the wars of the latter half of the 20th century.

The Vietnam War scarred Americans in many ways. But no group suffered more than the military. This was a conflict lost not on the battlefield but on the television screen and at the news-stand. For the first, and only, time during the era of modern communications, the news media had virtually unfettered access to the war zone. The brutal realities of warfare were transmitted into living rooms every evening, fatally undermining public morale and nourishing the anti-war movement.

The lesson was not lost on the British. Their war in the Falklands was tightly censored. Famously, BBC reporter Brian Hanrahan counted out Harrier jets from a British aircraft carrier before they raided Argentine positions - and counted them back in. Nothing more was available to him, so strictly was information controlled from Whitehall.

Likewise, the Americans kept the news media under the tightest of restrictions during the Gulf War. Truth, as the saying goes, became a casualty of both wars. But both conflicts were also quickly won - and without alarm being raised on the home front.

Already, the Bush Administration ensures that reports from aboard American aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea are reviewed by military censors. And there should probably be little surprise that it now wishes to eject the image of bin Laden from television screens and his words from newspapers. Immediately after the first strikes against Afghanistan, a prerecorded video featured a calm bin Laden wearing an American-style camouflage jacket and a big wristwatch. That image, let alone his strident call for a Muslim uprising, represented an unwanted show of defiance.

"At best, bin Laden's message is propaganda, calling on people to kill Americans. At worst, he could be issuing orders to his followers to initiate such attacks," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

It is unlikely that bin Laden's statements, which are translated from Arabic for American viewers and readers, could be coded messages to his followers, including "sleepers" in the US. Bin Laden's organisation surely has a more sophisticated communications network. But his statements undoubtedly have the potential to mobilise other Muslim extremists.

Thus the particular American anger at the al-Jazeera satellite station in Qatar, which originally broadcast bin Laden's statement to the Islamic world. This is the audience craved by bin Laden - and the reason the US Government is leaning on its Qatari counterpart to moderate al-Jazeera's "inflammatory" stories.

The American media could not, however, scorn the request to limit broadcasts of bin Laden's statements. Editors have an awful responsibility in such circumstances. Responsible journalism entails informing the public of what is happening in this war on terrorism. Thus, there will be pictures of the suffering children of Afghanistan, just as there were pictures of the tragic aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center.

In both countries, there are innocent casualties - and in both circumstances the blame lies with bin Laden. Informing the public must not, however, entail crossing an invisible boundary which jeopardises the lives of the media's own countrymen and women. Nor must the media allow themselves to be used by enemies whose aim is to destroy its country and its people.

For those reasons, the American media heeded the Bush Administration's request, no matter how much its senior executives might have questioned the motives or the flimsiness of the coded message notion. Sensibly, the major television networks have pledged to screen incoming feeds and apply judgment before airing them, rather than broadcasting them live. Newspapers will show a similar restraint.

They have little option. When lives are at risk, each medium will be guided by its conscience.