Under those circumstances, it hadn't taken the Solarian media very long to switch to what Grantville, at least, had always regarded as a revoltingly pro-Peep stance. Even the least anti-Solly Manticoran had to concede that there'd been a definite bias against the Star Kingdom, and quite a few of them would have agreed with Grantville that there was an orchestrated anti-Manticore lobby within the Solarian press corps. Yet Cromarty had stuck to his policy of openness and agreed to modify it only on a case-by-case basis and only in the face of pressing operational requirements.
That didn't mean Cromarty had been blind to the realities of news coverage in the Solarian League. Indeed, in many ways he'd been just as bitter about slanted Solarian newsfaxes as Grantville himself. But Cromarty's policy had reflected his concern with the Alliance's media. He'd accepted that the Star Kingdom was going to get hammered in the League's reportage, whatever it did, and under his premiership, the Star Kingdom's PR had concentrated primarily on making sure that a contrarian view was also presented and the accurate information from both sides was at least available to Solarians in general. Manticore hadn't exactly tried to understate StateSec's brutality in the information it fed the League through its own conduits. Nor, for that matter, had Manticoran journalists and commentators been at all shy about pointing out the fact that whereas the Star Kingdom did not censor reporters, the People's Republic did . . . and that Solarian correspondents assigned to Haven never mentioned it because doing so would get them expelled from the People's Republic.
Which, in many ways, had only made the self-appointed masters and mistresses of the Solarian Establishment even more bitterly anti-Manticore. They'd resented the Star Kingdom's and its surrogates' efforts to debunk their more outrageous misrepresentations, and the constant reminders that they uncritically repeated the Committee of Public Safety's propaganda rather than condemn PubIn's censorship had infuriated them . . . especially since they knew it was true. The fact that the Havenite propaganda had suited their own dislike of Manticore so much better than the truth, combined with their vindictive fury that anyone would dare to challenge their version of reality, had produced inevitable consequences, of course. Given the way their version of events played to stereotypical Solarian biases, the Star Kingdom's efforts had all been uphill, especially in light of the powerful vested interests in both the League's bureaucracy and its economic establishment with their own strong motives for blackening Manticore's image.
And then, of course, along had come the High Ridge Government, which couldn't have been more effective at reinforcing the most negative possible Solarian view of the Star Kingdom if it had been purposely designed for it. The demise of the People's Republic; the resurrection of the old Havenite Constitution; the resucitation of a functioning Havenite democracy; the High Ridge refusal to negotiate seriously (or to reduce the "wartime emergency" increases in transit fees on Solarian shipping); and the fact that neither High Ridge nor his Foreign Secretary, Elaine Descroix, had seen any need to "pander" to Solarian public opinion had produced predictably catastrophic results where the Solarian media's coverage of the Star Kingdom was concerned. Which was why one of Grantville's first priorities as Prime Minister had been to authorize heavy investments in rebuilding the PR organization High Ridge and Descroix had allowed to atrophy.
Unfortunately, the sudden fresh outbreak of fighting between the Republic and the Star Kingdom had made his rebuilding task much more difficult. And, he was forced to admit, the way in which the Star Kingdom had divided the Silesian Confederacy with the Andermani Empire, had given its Solarian press critics altogether too much fresh grist for its "Manticore As the Evil Empire" mill. Which had undoubtedly been a factor in the thinking of whoever had set out to destabilize the annexation of the Talbott Quadrant in the first place.
"Your Majesty," he said carefully, "I understand what you're saying, and I don't disagree with you. But Honor's point about not making the League's leadership feel we're trying to back it into a corner has a lot of merit. And, frankly, you know about the beating we've been taking in the Solarian media ever since Operation Thunderbolt." He paused, then snorted. "Excuse me, ever since that idiot High Ridge formed a government, I mean."
"I realize that, Willie." Elizabeth's tone was, in its way, as careful as Grantville's. Unlike her current Prime Minister, she'd always been firmly in agreement with the Duke of Cromarty's media policies. "And I don't disagree with Honor or with the point you and I both know you're making. But be that as it may, I'm still convinced that we need to avoid any appearance that we're trying to keep bad news hidden from our own people. In fact, I'm even more inclined to feel that way in the wake of the Battle of Manticore than I was before it. And I'm also firmly of the opinion that if we sit on this too long, we're likely to suggest to a bunch as arrogant as the Sollies that we're afraid to 'out them' for their actions. Not only that, but we give those bastards at Education and Information more time to decide how they're going to spin the news when it finally breaks."
Grantville had started to open his mouth. Now he closed it again, and nodded, almost against his will. The Solarian League's Department of Education and Information had very little to do with education and a very great deal to do with "information" these days. The bureaucratic structure which actually ran Education and Information (along with the rest of the League) had turned it into an extremely effective propaganda ministry.
"Those are both very valid points, your Majesty," he admitted. "I'd still really prefer to sit on this at least until the Sollies have had time to receive our note and respond to it. And at the same time, I think, we need to do some preliminary spadework of our own. I think we need to spend some time deciding exactly how we'll respond if the news leaks before we're ready to officially release it—the last thing we need is to get caught off balance, without having done our homework, when or if that happens—and also of deciding how we want to break it on our own terms, if that seems like the best policy. So could I suggest a compromise? We hold the news for the moment, but we quietly contact some of our own newspeople. We brief them in on what's happening in Talbott on a confidential basis in return for their agreement to sit on the story until we release it. And to sweeten the pot, as it were, we offer them official access in Spindle. We send their reporters out to talk to Khumalo, Medusa—even Mike, after she gets back—on the record, and we promise them as much freedom of access to all our information as operational security allows."
Elizabeth thought about it for several seconds, and then it was her turn to nod.
"All right," she said. "I think that makes sense. And it's not as if our own newsies aren't already accustomed to putting holds on specific stories because of those operational security concerns of yours. I don't want to hold this one any longer than we have to, though, Willie. The reason our newspeople respect the holds we do request is because they know we haven't abused the practice."
"I understand, Your Majesty," Grantville said, and glanced at Langtry. "How soon do you think you can have a draft of our note, Tony?"
"I can have a first draft by this afternoon. I imagine we'll want to kick it around between your office and mine—and Her Majesty, of course—through several iterations before we finally turn it loose."