The Embedding Apparatus

Aimé-Jules Bizimana

The Embedding Apparatus

Media Surveillance during the Iraq War

Translated by Evan Light

PETER LANG

New York • Bern • Frankfurt • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bizimana, Aimé-Jules, author.

[Le Dispositif embedding: surveillance et intégration des journalistes en Irak]

Title: The embedding apparatus: media surveillance
during the Iraq War / Aimé-Jules Bizimana; translated by Evan Light.

Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2017.

Series: America and global affairs; vol. 1

ISSN 2470-9689 (print) | ISSN 2470-9697 (online)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016039563 | ISBN 978-1-4331-3532-3 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4539-1910-1 (ebook pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4331-3787-7 (epub) ISBN 978-1-4331-3786-0 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: Embedded war correspondents. | Iraq War, 2003–2011—Press coverage.

Iraq War, 2003–2011—Military intelligence. | Armed Forces and mass media.

Classification: LCC PN4784.W37 B593 2017 | DDC 070.4/4995670443—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039563

DOI 10.3726/978-1-4539-1910-1

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

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Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
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About the author

Aimé-Jules Bizimana is Associate Professor of Communication Studies in the Department of Social Sciences at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO). He is also a researcher at the Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la communication, l’information et la société (CRICIS). He is the author of De Marcel Ouimet à Réné Lévesque: Les correspondants de guerre canadiens-français durant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale (2007). Dr. Bizimana’s research looks at wartime journalism practices and communication issues.

About the book

When the war in Iraq began in 2003, the issue of the special status accorded to journalists covering the military operations arose quite naturally. Promising innovation, the Pentagon’s announcement that they would integrate hundreds of journalists into combat units—what has been known as embedding—attracted the attention of the international media and other observers. How would this be different from previous interactions between the military and the media?

The Embedding Apparatus explains the functioning of the informational control apparatus at work during the Iraq War and the relationships between embedded journalists and the military in the American army’s area of operations. The concept of the apparatus guides this case study, one that brings together the experiences of almost forty participants, journalists and military personnel. The study borrows Michel Foucault’s modern surveillance mechanisms of the disciplinary apparatus and the panoptic apparatus, bringing embedded journalism into close contact with the ubiquitous and flexible surveillance that characterizes the “control society.” The author exposes a new embedding apparatus where the power relations between journalists and the military are at play, an apparatus operating within a circumscribed space where all of a journalist’s movements, reporting, behavior and communications are surveilled.

This book offers a fresh insight into this important issue and will certainly be of interest worldwide to scholars and students as well as media and military practitioners interested in this topic. Embedded journalism is studied from a new angle, one related to the broader context of surveillance in contemporary society.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Apparatuses and Surveillance

Chapter 2. The Apparatus of Enclosure

Chapter 3. The Apparatus of Visibility

Chapter 4. The Penalty Apparatus

Chapter 5. The Apparatus of Capture

Chapter 6. Conduct and Counterconduct

Chapter 7. The Informational Apparatus

Chapter 8. The Panoptic Apparatus

Conclusion

Annex 1: List of Participants

Annex 2: Public Affairs Guidance, February 10, 2003

Annex 3: News Media Ground Rules (Law Change 3, Dod Directive 5122.5), May 22, 2008

Thematic bibliography

Name Index

Thematic Index ←vii | viii→ ←viii | ix→

Acknowledgments

The outcome of this work owes to the generosity of my colleagues of the Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la communication, l’information et la société (CRICIS). My sincere gratitude goes to Gaëtan Tremblay for his advice and mentorship; thanks to my friend Oumar Kane for our permanent and fascinating discussion; thanks to France Aubin, Ndiaga Loum, and Éric George; to Christian Agbobli, Norman Landry, and François Demers. Thanks to Evan Light for the excellent translation of this work. Thanks to Michelle Salyga, Jerry Pubantz, Meagan K. Simpson and Bernadette Shade for their help at Peter Lang.

I am also thankful to Robert Comeau who always supported my research. I am also indebted to Paul Angers and Johanne Gauthier for their support. Thanks to Augustin and Dany Kamongi for their warm welcome during my data collection in Washington and Virginia. Thanks to Jean-Michel Laprise and to Pierre Bouthillier for their manuscript review. Thanks to Catherine Black for her meticulous transcription of the interviews. Thanks to Pauline Ngirumpatse for our friendship and her encouragements.

Thanks to the journalists and to the servicemen who participated in this research project and who agreed to share their experience of the media embedding program during the Iraq war. One special thank you to Alexandra←ix | x→ Angers, “Mama Anaïs,” for her indestructible support, her encouragements, her reminders that it is necessary to sleep to be able to carry on the next day and all the sacrifices to allow the completion of this project.

This research benefited from the financial support of the following institutions: The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et culture (FRQSC), Astral Media, the Fondation de l’Université du Québec à Montréal and the Décanat de la recherche de l’Université du Québec en Outaouais.←x | xi→