Vredesmissie of Vechtmissie?

On Tuesday 18 December 2007 the cabinet has decided to extend the mission in Uruzgan with another two years. In this period, many newspapers, forums and news broadcasts were focussing on this issue. According to Dick Berlijn, the Commander in Chief at that time, the support of the public is very much depending on the way the mission is presented in images. Berlijn states that wounds, dead and gun battles are much more newsworthy then reconstruction projects. Therefore the Dutch population could get a wrong impression of the mission. The point is what does the Dutch public actually see of the mission? The subject of my thesis therefore is: To answer this question I performed a quantitative and qualitative photograph analysis on two newspapers, two illustrated periodicals and the internet site of the ministry of Defence. Furthermore I held semi-structured interviews with war journalist Arnold Karksens, the chief photograph editors of De Telegraaf, de Volkskrant, Nieuwe Revu and Elsevier and the assistant-manager Information and Communication of the ministry of Defence. My investigations reveal that this five Dutch media in general show the military operations and actions. Photographs with subjects like humanitarian aid, political activities, home front, Islamic extremism, and the Afghan people are also shown but far less frequent. Besides, these five media show more negative images then positive ones. They show a fighting mission rather than a peace keeping mission. Only the images on the internet site of the Ministry of Defence present the mission as a peace keeping mission. The ministry explains this presentation by emphasising their different role compared to the other media. They don’t consider themselves as news editors, their aim is just to inform the public about the situation in Afghanistan without any obligation to be objective. To uphold independent journalism is a task of the public media. The independent public media try to picture the military mission in Uruzgan as objective as possible. For their pictures however the five media investigated here are subjected to the following aspects:  The subject of an article  The formula and function of the medium  The scarcity of image material of the mission  The choice to use/not use material of the Ministry of Defence  To (not) have an unembedded journalist at your disposal  The preferences and ‘rules’ of the editors To my opinion it is impossible for the Dutch media to present a fully objective image of the military mission. The Dutch audience therefore should always question the newspapers, periodicals and the Ministries Website regarding the overall picture that is presented. Not everything the media present should be considered as true. This investigation further shows the different factors photo journalism depends on for the mission in Uruzgan.