Inside Story: What covering the Falklands meant for leading veterans of the media corps

Brian Hanrahan

Though he had been with the BBC for 10 years, Brian Hanrahan was fairly new to reporting when he found himself on HMS Hermes bound for the Falklands, aged 32. He earned his place in Falklands folklore with the line, "I counted them all out and I counted them all back," referring to British Harrier jump jets on an air raid. He wasn't permitted to broadcast how many planes took part, and the comment has been immortalised as a classic example of evading reporting restrictions under pressure.

Hanrahan recalls landing in the waters of San Carlos when "it seemed like half the Argentine air force was trying to blow us up". He says that he didn't take in at the time just how much impact he and the other journalists were making back home. "There were so few people reporting, we were disproportionately well-known."

Hanrahan spent the 1980s covering Asia from Hong Kong and the Gorbachev era from Moscow. He witnessed the massacre of Tiananmen Square and Communism fall across Europe. Now 58 and the BBC's diplomatic editor, he returned to the Falklands recently to make some anniversary programmes, and found that the islands had finally recovered from the impact of the war a quarter of a century ago.

"You can't fight a war around a town without causing a lot of damage, but finally the place seems to have grown back and every sign of war has been erased, apart from the minefields."

Michael Nicholson

ITN correspondent Michael Nicholson almost literally missed the Falklands boat. He was on holiday in the Lake District when a message got through and an aircraft flew him to Southampton just in time to join the task force heading for the islands.

At 45, Nicholson was more experienced than most of his colleagues, having already covered the Biafran and Cambodian wars, and Vietnam. "But this was the first war, other than Northern Ireland, where I was among my own people."

There was no way for Nicholson to send his film back to the UK, so he and Brian Hanrahan were regularly flown over to the merchant ships to broadcast their "phono" packages. "Virtually no television pictures of the Falklands War were transmitted until after it was over.

"I think the story that people remember me by is the reporting of the Sir Galahad disaster. I had never seen a ship on fire that close before, or that kind of bravery."

Nicholson won the Bafta Richard Dimbleby Award for his coverage of the Falklands and has been named RTS Journalist of the Year three times. During a 25-year career at ITN he covered 15 conflicts, more than any other British journalist, and was awarded the OBE. In 1992 he rescued a little girl from Sarajevo and adopted her with his wife. He currently reports for Tonight with Trevor McDonald on ITV.

Robert Fox

Along with Brian Hanrahan, Fox, now 61, was one of two BBC men in the Falklands. After stints in Northern Ireland and Italy, he left on an assignment for radio that he thought was going to be a waste of time. "I was there with the Parachute Regiment, but Max [Hastings] and I were the only ones who realised the arrangements were a load of crap, and we tried to move around as much as we could. The tale of the embeds - of whom I was one - got a bad press, but was not as bad as painted. Tremendous trust was established between individual hacks and the soldiers. I learnt a lot. It was an education few reporters can get to today with the tyranny of 24-hour news." Fox ended up at the front at the Battle of Goose Green, a two-day struggle in which 17 British and 55 Argentinian soldiers were killed. On his return he published two books I Counted Them All Out with Brian Hanrahan, and Eyewitness Falklands.

After a stint in the Middle East, Fox left the BBC in 1987 to join The Daily Telegraph as defence and then chief foreign correspondent. He is now the Evening Standard's defence correspondent and a freelance defence specialist.

Martin Cleaver

Martin Cleaver was responsible for some of the most memorable photographs of the Falklands War, none more so than this one of HMS Antelope being blown up. He himself prefers to go unphotographed.

Now 50, he was working for the Press Association in 1982. He and Tom Smith of the Daily Express were the only two press photographers on the islands. This was his first major war.

"The military had total control over everything," he recalls. "It was very frustrating and we had a lot of battles to get access to things we wanted. We knew things were happening, but we couldn't get to them under our own steam.

"Mechanical cameras and endless rolls of film are heavy and difficult to transport. You had to carry your kit as well so I was probably carrying as much as the soldiers themselves. Initially, unexposed rolls of film were shipped back and there was certainly a shortage of images for the first few weeks. We got more organised when the landings started. We got access to some polar transmitters and set up some makeshift darkrooms on the ships."

Everyone on the Falklands missions received a South Atlantic Medal but Cleaver was also awarded an MBE. "It did make my name well known in the industry," he says, "and it gave the Press Association a huge boost as well." He joined Associated Press in 1988 as a photographer, moved to the picture desk in 1994, and is now the agency's picture editor.

Max Hastings

It was with his dispatches from the Falklands for the Evening Standard that Max Hastings's name was made. Hastings, now 61, came from a military background and had already written eight books when he found himself "embedded" with the Parachute Regiment. He immediately set about finding ways of giving his military minders the slip.

His most celebrated ruse was to don his Territorial Army uniform and walk into Port Stanley alongside British troops at the moment of the capital's liberation. When the soldiers received orders to stop, Hastings kept going, and the glory was his. He then pulled off an interview with the commanding officer of the Argentine forces. His reporting won him both the Journalist of the Year and What the Papers Say Reporter of the Year.

Hastings reported from 60 countries and 11 wars for the Standard and the BBC before spending 10 years as editor and editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph. He returned to the Standard as editor from 1996 to 2001, picking up a knighthood in 2002. He now writes for The Daily Mail and The Guardian, and has continued to write books.

Hastings recently reflected that "the war's most significant consequences were to provoke the Argentine people to topple their bungling dictators, and to establish Mrs Thatcher as a towering force in British life." A quarter of a century after the conflict, he says it's time to move on. "I've said everything I could possibly want to say about it."

John Witherow

John Witherow, the editor of The Sunday Times for the past 13 years, says he was "rather naive" when he set sail to report on the war for The Times. "There was a feeling of incredulity that this could happen so quickly, and we expected it to be settled diplomatically. By the time we reached Ascension Island, though, we did think there would be a war."

When they got ashore they weren't equipped for land war. "We were traipsing around with our suitcases looking for somewhere to stay. We ended up in a sheep-shearing shed." Witherow, now 55, says it was Max Hastings's war. "He had a military background and ferocious cunning. He made us all look inept. It was an object lesson in journalism."

At least Witherow could speak Spanish, having worked for Reuters in Madrid. "I could interview the prisoners. When the Brits herded them into the airport before sending them back they were a pretty bedraggled lot. There was such a race and class divide between the Argentinians that they sent the most impoverished, dark-skinned soldiers to fight. It was shocking - these poor kids fighting a professional army." Witherow was near HMS Sir Galahad when it was hit and had a "this is it" moment when planes then bore down on his ship. He also spent a night lost in a minefield.

Witherow spent six months at The Boston Globe before moving to The Sunday Times in 1984. Stints as defence and diplomatic correspondent preceded his appointment as editor in 1994.