Media: Big guns prepare for the mother of all ratings battles

Theatres of war provide the ultimate platforms for news organisations, and nothing quite puts a war correspondent centre-stage as being cast as the liberator at the head of the troops. John Simpson, the BBC's world affairs editor, could hardly contain himself after he swept into Kabul ahead of Northern Alliance forces in the conflict in Afghanistan 16 months ago.

"It was only BBC people who liberated this city," he told his BBC colleague Sue MacGregor, on Radio 4's Today programme. "I can't tell you what a joy it was. I felt very proud indeed to be part of an organisation that could push forward ahead of the rest."

The race to Baghdad is about to begin.

Simpson's comments – greeted with surprise by rivals who arrived in Kabul at a similar time – give an indication of the increasingly fierce competition among news organisations in the field of battle. Such rivalry will reach a new level of intensity in the Gulf. During weeks of diplomatic wrangling and UN searches for Iraqi weaponry, editors have been planning their own campaign. Reporters have been prepared for chemical and biological warfare, bureaux have been set up across the Middle East and millions of pounds have been allocated from budgets.

Jeremy Thompson, who will anchor coverage for Sky News, one of three British rolling television news channels, said: "There's going to be a great deal of rivalry. It will be the first war that people will watch just about 24 hours a day."

Despite all the claims by news chiefs that their principal aim is accurate and trustworthy reporting with insightful analysis and clear presentation, they are all looking for the definitive scoop.

Simpson's march into Kabul echoed the muddied arrival in the Falkland Islands' capital, Port Stanley, 19 years earlier of the Evening Standard's Max Hastings, who made his name by yomping across the islands with the Paras.

In the 1991 Gulf War, CNN earned its global reputation by being in Baghdad at the outset of the conflict with Peter Arnett transmitting coverage of the allied bombing raids from within the Iraqi capital as they happened.

But the developments in television technology during the past 12 years have the potential to make such memorable footage seem as dated as a Pathe newsreel. An entire broadcasting unit, based on a satellite telephone and a laptop, can now be packed into a container the size of a suitcase.

Adrian van Klaveren, head of newsgathering at the BBC, said: "You can do things from anywhere and that changes things remarkably from previous conflicts like the Falklands when it could take days for [material] to become available"

Mr van Klaveren accepted that the BBC – which now has the rolling News 24 channel unlike in the 1991 Gulf War – has the edge over its rivals in terms of "the scale of the machine we are able to deploy". He said the corporation would be sending about 175 journalists and crew to the Gulf, in addition to the 50 or so staff already working from BBC offices in the region. "We have a bureau in Cairo, we don't need to create one. We have a bureau in Turkey. That gives us big advantages," he said. The BBC aimed, Mr van Klaveren said, to provide viewers with a "rounded picture of what's happening", reporting the story "fully, fairly and accurately".

But he said star reporters including Simpson and Fergal Keane were "absolutely at the top of their profession" and acknowledged that landing stories such as the entry into Kabul gave the organisation extraordinary kudos. "It was the envy of our rivals around the world," he said. "What we want to do is to be fast and right. The two things are essential."

The BBC's rivals, outgunned in terms of resources, depend on what they see as their greater flexibility to break stories. ITV is to switch News at Ten to the BBC's old 9pm slot for the duration of the likely war. It will be backed by the ITV News Channel, another arrival since the 1991 Gulf War and, by the admission of one of its rivals, a "100 per cent improved" operation.

Dominic Crossley-Holland, head of the new channel, said there was "no tougher challenge or responsibility for a rolling news channel than covering a war". He has announced a heavyweight team of presenters including Jonathan Dimbleby, Alastair Stewart and Angela Rippon.

Martin Sewell, deputy editor of Channel 4 News, which has announced a special weekday lunchtime bulletin to cover the probable conflict, said unrivalled contacts with independent producers in the Middle East would give the channel access to exclusive material.

Nick Pollard, head of Sky News, said the challenge was to "try and be able to report from places that aren't easy to get to, where we are not minded by one side or the other, but interesting things are happening". But despite the enthusiasm of television news chiefs for the hard-to-get story, the likelihood is that journalists in the region will be far less mobile than they would want.

The threat of chemical or biological warfare attacks on allied troops has increased, and by extension, the media working by them.

The recent conflict in Afghanistan, where eight journalists were killed, showed reporters carry no immunity. Amid these concerns, hundreds of British media personnel have had an unprecedented level of safety training, largely at the insistence of the Ministry of Defence.

Reporters who had already been on commercial courses for dealing with Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) attacks were advised to go for more rigorous testing. They have also been told to equip themselves with more than 40 items, ranging from an Arctic temperature sleeping bag to a water purifier, which they will have to lug with them, in addition to their heavy NBC kit, tents, satellite telephones and laptops. These reporters have been told to prepare for a two-month stay in the Gulf.

'Only'? 'As many as'? A plain man's guide to the weasel words of war

By Guy Keleny

A lot of nonsense is talked about the supposedly euphemistic language used by the military. The terms "collateral damage" and "friendly fire" are endlessly attacked as propagandistic attempts to play down the horrors of war. In fact they are straightforward technical terms. Nobody criticises a doctor for saying "the patient suffered a haemorrhage from the femoral artery," rather than "Blood was spurting out of his leg all over the floor!" Soldiers too must be allowed their terms of art. Collateral damage is an unintended by-product of our actions. And everything on the battlefield is either "enemy" or "friendly": enemy troops, friendly troops; enemy aircraft, friendly aircraft; and so on.

Nonetheless, the general reader needs to be alert to find a path through the fog of war: not because the combatant governments will lie, but because they will not necessarily tell the whole truth. For example, a British newsreel from the Second World War reports on a convoy to Malta. The voyage was tough, but at the end, viewers were assured, "all but four" of the merchant ships got through. Well, that sounds all right; you imagine a convoy of 20 or 30 ships at least. But the newsreel does not say how many set out. The answer was six.

In war propaganda, context is all, and the deceptions, if any, are likely to depend not on what is said but on what is left out. Probably the best clues are words designed to make figures sound big or small. "Only" and "as many as" and "up to" should ring alarm bells. If, for instance, you are told that British forces have taken as many as 5,000 Iraqi prisoners, that is meant to sound quite a lot. But Britain has three front-line brigades in the Iraqi theatre, each comprising about 3,000 men. If one brigade has taken 5,000 prisoners in one day, that may be quite good going. If the entire British contingent has taken only 5,000 prisoners in a week that looks bad.

The two crucial indices of allied success in this war are the number of Iraqi prisoners and the number of allied dead. Nobody doubts that the American and British forces will prevail. The only doubt is whether they will prevail quickly and cheaply enough for the voters. Perhaps the allies will simply motor into Baghdad to the cheers of the crowd. But if there is fighting and it is going well you will see and hear a steady stream of reports – almost daily – of Iraqis surrendering in their tens of thousands and allied soldiers being killed in mere dozens. If you are not hearing that, then maybe the serious fighting has not started yet, or things are going awry and we are not yet being told.