Opinion Page 6 The Michigan Daily Vol. XCII, No. 21-S Ninety-two Years of Editorial Freedom E-dited and managed by studenti' at the University of M'Iichigan European stage RESIDENT REAGAN arrived in Europe yesterday amid threats from terrorist groups that his trip will be "eventful and un- forgettable." But beyond the forewarnings and the Tuesday bombings of American military bases in West Germany, the president faces a formidable task. First he must allay the fears of the European public and its leaders that his economic policies will eventually return the U.S. economy to prosperity, thus aiding Western Europe. Even more difficult is his task of convincing Europeans that he is not the hawk that he made himself out to be during his first yeai- in the White House. Europeans know that there can be no limited nuclear war in heavily-urbanized Europe. And although Reagan has toned down his vehement rhetoric toward the Soviet Union, left-leaning groups are still wary of his stance on nuclear weapons in Europe, and are affecting defense plans on the continent. Political writers have bemoaned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's "crisis situation" every year since its inception in 1949. But the current divisions within the defense pact are real and likely to grow unless the president convinces the European public thata he is sincere about arms reductions, even though his military budget suggests otherwise. Indeed, in the next week, the man many Europeans think of as merely a cowboy-actor may be strutting upon the most difficult and hostile stage of his presidency. Thursday, June 3, 1982 The Michigan Daily E-I Argentines catch op en censored accounts of the Falklands war. A P Ph Obsc~re image By Frank Viviano As the war over the Falklands moves into a second month, it raises two deeply disturbing questions: What is really going on there? And what long-term significance does it have? In a sense, the lack of a reliable answer to the first question offers an answer to the second. There is something quite striking about the fact that, in an age of instant electronic communications, we cannot see or hear the Falklands War. SINCE THE very dawn of elec- tronic age 35 years ago, its ultimate impact on society has been a matter of intense debate, focused on two contradictory scenarios. One, pictured by George Orwell in 1984, foresaw a world in which electronic media served only to isolate individuals from the truth and render them powerless. The second emerged from Marshall McLuhan's Understan- ding Media: The Extensions of Man, which predicted that the electronic age instead would give birth to a "global village," a world united by the rapid and continuous exchange of infor- mation. IF THE PAST few weeks are any guide, it is Orwell's_ dark scenario that may be taking shape. t Outside of the islands them- selves and the ministries in Lon- don and Buenos Aires, no one really does know what's going on in the Falklands. The gover- nments of Argentine and Britain alike have seen to that, establishing a virtual blackout on the flow of images and infor- mation from the battle scene. While reporters and cameramen direct their attention to ministerial press conferences and man-on-the-street interviews (what Daniel Boorstein once called "non-events", the actual struggle in the South Atlantic proceeds in a strangely silent and invisible realm, a kind of gover- nment-engineered warp in the electronic universe. Unlike U.S. involvement in Vietnam, which flooded American living rooms almost nightly with a compelling military horror show, all action in the Falklands is off-screen. THE LONG-TERM significan- ce of the Falklands War, in other words, may be its suggestion that governments have learned a potent lesson from Vietnam: Modern war must be fought in the communications dark, even by democracies. No less an authority that Maj. Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces in In- dochina 15 years ago, confirms the importance of that lesson. If he had to fight another war, Westmoreland recently said, the first thing he would do is censor the press. Indeed, he is but the latest in a long line of American officials, stretching back to Richard Nixon and including President Reagan, who have implied that the press - and television coverage in par- ticular - helped "lose" the war in Vietnam. THE ISSUE of. censorship, of course, has been raised in the context of the Falklands, most notable when the British Broad- casting Corporation was attacked by Prime Minister Thatcher for its efforts to treat the Argentine position with fairness and objec- tivity. But censorship, in the sense that it is usually understood, may not be the true crux of the matter. Despite the assault on the BBC, its analytical work goes on unim- peded. The superficial appearan- ces of a functional democracy, served by a freely critical press, hrave been maintained. The deeper problem is plain access. By tacit mutual consent, the British and their Argentine foes have simple short-circuited the global village - yanked the plug outon the form of jour- nalism to which millions look today for some semblance of tex- ture of events: their look, sound and feel. AS VIETNAM clearly demon- strated, the images that convey this texture have a power all their own, and one which operates on a level totally different from that of cool, dispassionate news analysis. Erik Barnouw, the dean of Americanbroadcast historians, has argued that the collapse of popular support for the Indochina was owed muct more to such images than it did to explicit criticisms of U.S. policy from news analysts. In fact, even when voice-over narration offered a rationale in favor of American military actions, the sheer sight of American boys burning villages - or American boys in plastic body bags - worked to counter-purpose. Hence the ominous character of the naval battles off Argen- tina's coast, with their unseen aerial dogfights and their doubly anonymous dead. It is difficult to avoid concluding that televised images of the HMS Sheffield ex- ploding into flames or of the General Belgrano sinking into a watery grave would not have in- fluenced the public opinion which makes military conflict possible. Instead, Argentines, Britons - and the larger world that their war concerns - must settle for analytical speculations and a landscape emptyof all but non- events. Viviano is an editor for the Pacific News Service.