I know it is normal for countries to deflate their casualty numbers during war, but how do they do it? If for example 1000 soldiers are killed in a month, how could a government claim only 400 were killed without the public discover this to be a lie? Surley the families of the killed soldiers are promptly informed.
In: Other
State control over the media is important during a war.
If 1000 soldiers die in a week their families will be spread across the country and you can’t exactly go door to door to confirm the number of casualties. It’s not like they all come from the same community and actively talk to each other.
The key is to make the lie believable. If you said there was only 3 casualties when there was 1000 that’s harder to make people believe that. But shrinking 1000 to 500? that’s hard to confirm. Particularly when you don’t have access to the primary source of information, and the military in some countries don’t have to release their data.
Every country, even those with freedom of the press like the US, have laws to prevent the press from talking openly about national secrets.
The military carefully controls what information is passed along, and even if they provide accurate numbers of casualties etc that information is usually delayed to protect ongoing operations.
Even the press understands that publicly revealing accurate up-to-date information about an ongoing conflict will cost lives. The US press works closely with press officers in the military to get their information and some information is inevitably suppressed.
In the US it’s give and take. So long as the military provides a steady stream of reasonable information to the press, the press is usually happy. The press meanwhile can and will publish information on scandals when they get it and the military is aware of this. In a democracy this helps keep the military in check.
Countries like Russia on the other hand have deep control and influence of the State media. Every report is pain painstakingly crafted to make the government and military look good. Propaganda is an art, and the Russians are masters of it. People that reveal classified information or make the government look bad are punished and sometimes just disappear.
When the only source of information is the government, a lot of people will take whatever they say at face value.
Latest Answers