TV-radio

December 5, 2005

When is it Lawful to Attack Television and Radio Stations?
By Anthony Dworkin

Reports that President Bush may have proposed bombing the headquarters of the Arab TV station al-Jazeera in response to its coverage of the Iraqi insurgency are a reminder that wartime leaders often find the idea of attacking troublesome media organizations too tempting to resist. Attacks on broadcasting studios are a recurrent feature of modern warfare, yet the international laws of war set very strict limits on when such attacks are permitted.

On a recent visit to Ramallah, I picked my way through the blackened ruins of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation studios, demolished by Israeli explosives in January 2002. The Israeli government said they had targeted the broadcaster because its programs were inciting Palestinians to launch attacks against Israelis. Three years earlier, in one of the most controversial actions of the Kosovo war, NATO warplanes attacked the Belgrade studios of the Serbian TV station RTS, killing 16 employees who were working on the night shift. Justifying the attack, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said that RTS did not count as a true media organization because it was staffed by government employees who were paid to produce propaganda and lies.

At the height of the war against Iraq, in March 2003, American forces attacked Baghdad’s main TV station, which Saddam Hussein’s regime had used to rally the Iraqi population and transmit humiliating pictures of captured American soldiers. The response of some commentators was to ask why the United States had waited so long, rather than attacking the station as soon as the war began. Nevertheless the television channel was soon broadcasting again, suggesting that the Iraqis too had anticipated an attack and prepared alternative ways of getting their signal out.

The frequent attacks on TV and radio stations can be seen as a tribute to the importance in modern warfare of controlling the perceptions of a conflict. People often try to justify attacks on broadcasting studios by claiming that they are being used to rally the enemy population or transmit propaganda helpful to the enemy’s cause. Yet international law makes clear that such arguments do not provide a valid reason for attacking media organizations – indeed to do so for these reasons is a war crime.

The relevant rules were developed in a conscious effort to avoid a repetition of the urban bombing raids of World War II, when attacks aimed at the morale of an enemy population led to the destruction of entire cities. According to a formula laid down in the first Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, civilian targets can only be attacked when they are making a direct contribution to a country’s military efforts. (Although some countries such as the United States have not signed the first Additional Protocol, this provision is generally recognized as part of customary international law binding on all states.)

There is a clear consensus among legal experts that broadcasting propaganda or raising the public’s spirits do not count as a direct contribution to military action. By contrast, media facilities may be attacked when they are used by military commanders to transmit messages to soldiers in the field. In addition, journalists would be seen as taking part in conflict if they directly incited their listeners to participate in attacks, as the Rwandan radio station RTLM did during that country’s genocide in 1994. Two of the founders of this station, which exhorted listeners to complete the work of killing because “the graves are not yet full,” were later convicted of genocide by the Rwandan war crimes tribunal.

After the Kosovo war, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague ordered an investigation into whether NATO’s attack on Serbian television might have been a violation of the law. Investigators said that the RTS tower was part of a military command and control system, and therefore a legitimate target. Similarly, coalition leaders justified the targeting of Baghdad’s TV station during the Iraq war as an attack against the communications system of Iraq’s armed forces.

In both these cases, the suspicion remains that the legal justification given for the attacks was merely a pretext, and that the real motive was to stop the enemy transmitting its version of the war to its own citizens. In Kosovo, the comments of NATO’s own spokesman seemed inadvertently to confirm this impression.

It is impossible to imagine how an American attack against al-Jazeera during the fighting in Fallujah could have been justified according to the applicable legal standards. Indeed, bombing the company’s headquarters in Qatar would likely have been seen as an act of aggression against an American ally.

Contemporary warfare is often aimed at dislodging a “rogue” regime as much as overwhelming an enemy’s armed forces. Public opinion, within the war zone and in the wider world, can play a vital part in determining whether campaigns are successful. That makes it all the more essential to insist that laws protecting civilian broadcasters are strictly observed and enforced, even when the messages they transmit make for uncomfortable or provocative viewing.

This article appears as an oped column in the International Herald Tribune, Thursday December 15, and is also published on the newspaper's website.