The Daily Novel

When America bombed Afghanistan in 2001 and invaded Iraq (with the help of the UK) in 2003, most of the mainstream media were on hand to celebrate the “victories” in the rapid, heroic “wars”. But as those conflicts drag on and the toll of civilians and soldiers mounts to appalling levels, it is noticeable how the media have become coy about the w-word. For “war” is rarely mentioned in the coverage.

In effect, these two conflicts have become “non-war” wars. Take for instance The Guardian’s coverage of Afghanistan on Thursday September 14. A 14-paragraph page lead headed “Nato faces crisis as calls for troops goes unanswered” describes the conflict as “the biggest test facing the alliance in its 57-year history”. The “recent offensive” against the Taliban is said to be “going well” by a Nato spokesman. But nowhere is the war word mentioned. An editorial in The Guardian on the same day describes Nato as “helping bring peace and stability to Afghanistan” while the “intervention” “is deploying massive firepower and measuring its success in dead Taliban”. Intriguingly, the Taliban are said, en passant, to be fighting a “fully-fledged guerrilla war”. But nowhere is the w-word associated with the Nato forces.

On September 7, a page two report in The Sun on Afghanistan nowhere included the word “war”. In The Guardian of the same day, its report on the deaths of three British soldiers in Afghanistan mentioned “clashes” and “fighting” – but never “war”. The Observer of 3 September was typical in reporting “operations against Taliban insurgents”, a “vital and dangerous mission” and “an offensive against hideouts of Taliban insurgents” – but again the paper was strangely coy over the w-word.

Intriguingly, The Guardian of September 4 quoted prominently the views of the new head of the British army, Sir Richard Dannatt, that British soldiers “were not fighting the fourth Afghan war”. So “war” can be mentioned – but more easily in the negative. A Guardian leader on the same day (merely echoing Dannatt) commented on “full-scale combat operations” and suggested that jibes about refighting Britain’s imperial wars were just that – “jibes”.

And in the reporting of Iraq, while fears of “civil war” are increasingly in the news, the attacks by the British and Americans on local insurgents are rarely defined as “war”.

Yet while war is rarely mentioned in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan, “militaryspeak” is paradoxically everywhere in the coverage of modern Britain. Time after time, Fleet Street trots out the dull, all too predictable, unimaginative metaphors of warfare, fighting and battle. Looking at just a recent crop of mainstream newspapers there are countless examples – across all the sectors, tabloid, mid-market and “up-market” and in all areas: sport, politics, business, arts reviewing, travel writing.

Politics is everywhere represented as warfare by other means. Take for instance, the Mirror’s coverage on September 5 of the leaked Downing Street memo, outlining Tony Blair’s departure plans. It talks of the “machinations in the No. 10 bunker” over the “battle plan”. And the Blair/Brown spat is constantly represented as “warfare”. The Observer of 3 September headlined a three-page feature on the Labour leadership crisis “The Final Battle” while the standfirst spoke of the “brutal endgame” and the intro of “old-fashioned political warfare”. Similarly, the Daily Star on September 4 talked of the “war of words” between the opposing camps.

After six junior ministers quit on September 6, the “war” coverage reached hysterical heights. Under the front page splash headline “Dirty War”, The Sun highlighted the “guerrilla war” being waged within the government while political editor George Pascoe-Watson reported the Chancellor’s acolytes using “dirty bombs” to dump Blair from office. A Guardian headline referred to the Blair/Brown camps engaged in “political warfare” while reporters Will Woodward and Patrick Wintour examined attempts of Blair’s allies to quell the “civil war”. A Cabinet aide comments: “This is a military organised coup.”

Mindless military metaphors also tend to dominate coverage of newspaper circulations. For instance, on 3 September, in a piece headlined “London faces war of the free newspapers”, Mark Kleinman in the Sunday Times reported on “the opening shots of London’s latest media war” as the Metro and Lite faced new competition from City AM and Thelondonpaper. Over in the Independent on Sunday, Jane Thynne reported on the capital’s “freebie war” with all eyes on the “battle of the free newspapers”. On 28 August the Guardian reported on the “war of words” between Associated Newspapers and News International over the freebie launches.

George Orwell was always keen to stress journalists’ responsibility to preserve high standards of English. A new collection of his brilliant “As I Please” columns in Tribune (edited by Paul Anderson) is published by Politico’s next month. And in these he constantly harangued the perpetrators of bad grammar.

In “Politics and the English Language” of April 1946, Orwell called for an end to “dying metaphors”, “pretentious diction”, “meaningless words” and the jargon of political writing. He wrote: “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible…Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” He called for us all to “jeer loudly” whenever we heard or read some “worn-out and useless phrase”.

Orwell was always optimistic in his language campaigning. He argued that “the decadence of our language is probably curable” and he highlighted the way in which a few “silly words and expressions” had been discarded from the language through “the conscious action of a minority”. So is it not important now to jeer every time we see a crass, militaristic metaphor – and work as journalists in every possible way to eliminate them from our language?

• Richard Keeble is Professor of Journalism at Lincoln University and taught at City University from 1984 to 2003.