MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Media Falklands War Coverage

As United Kingdom media coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Falklands War gathers momentum, the Guardian newspaper has published the latest supplement on various aspects of the conflict and how it has affected Argentina and the Falkland Islands since. Twenty pages of articles and pictures depict a somewhat unbalanced and unflattering scenario.

In its introduction, the Guardian says : "The Falklands War rehabilitated Britain's reputation as a military nation and handed Margaret Thatcher another eight years in power. But, two decades on, are we any closer to understanding why hundreds of lives were lost for an island group the Foreign Office had been trying so hard to give away? And do we realise the full horror experienced by those who fought in it?".

Islanders' "dangerous, comic resistance"

The supplement includes a nostalgic account by the Guardian's reporter with the Task Force, Gareth Parry, who has been back for the first time since; a more thoughtful article by the newspaper's Falklands specialist, John Ezard, who has visited the islands several times; and an extract from Islander Graham Bound's new book "Falkland Islanders at War" describing what the Guardian calls the "dangerous and comic ways in which the Islanders resisted the occupation".

In an unbalanced allocation of space, several pages dwell superficially and at length on how the media reported the conflict to the people back in Britain with the headline: "The worst reported war since the Crimean". It highlights the exploits of the Evening Standard's Max Hastings and carries 15 pictures of the Sun newspaper's wartime front pages, hardly any of the fighting nor of the Falklands today, the main one being a desolate scene of the road from Stanley to Mount Pleasant, which, it says, "has killed more Islanders than the war".

"Waste palpable and terribly sad"

Another whole page is devoted to the so-called "football war" between England and Argentina, and there is a short comment by Argentine footballer Ossie Ardiles, who had been playing in the English League.

A few Argentines give their views but, surprisingly, very few of the military on either side, and only one of senior rank, artillery Lieutenant Colonel Martin Balza, who subsequently became Argentina's Army Chief of Staff.

Equally, surprisingly, only one politician is quoted, former Defence Secretary, Sir John Nott, plugging his soon to be published autobiography "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow". And no Argentine politicians nor diplomats from either side, and no Falklands Councillors.

The Guardian report