Campbell airs frustration at Iraqi strength in media war

Britain and America face a "huge uphill battle" in the propaganda war against Saddam Hussein, Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's director of communications and strategy, said yesterday.

In a rare interview, Mr Campbell told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that regimes like President Saddam's had a "huge inbuilt advantage" in the battle to win public support. "Democracies, we are expected to explain, we cannot tell lies in the way that dictatorships tell lies all the time, both about themselves and about us," he said. "And I think that gives them – I am not suggesting, by the way, that we should be telling lies – but it gives them an advantage in the way this thing is prosecuted."

His comments reflect the growing frustration inside the Government at the way in which the British and foreign media is reporting the war. In particular, ministers have accused the BBC of giving equivalent weight to statements from the Iraqi regime to those from the US and Britain.

Mr Campbell said: "Saddam Hussein can go up and do a broadcast, and how many of our media then stand up and say what an amazing propaganda coup that was. They exploit in their eyes the weaknesses of our democracy ... of our media systems ... and I think sometimes our media allows them to do that."

Mr Campbell argued that the media had "changed the nature of conflict". Recalling the military campaigns in Kosovo and Afghanistan, he said that while there was no doubt of the military outcome in Iraq, sustaining public opinion was not certain. "The only doubt [in Kosovo] was actually whether we could sustain public opinion [sufficiently] to make sure that the democratically elected governments that make up Nato would see through the mission," he said.

He criticised al-Jazeera, the Arab television station based in Qatar, for broadcasting claims that British troops executed Iraqi prisoners of war.

The interview, broadcast yesterday, was recorded last Wednesday. The following day, Mr Blair said two British soldiers had been executed by Iraqi forces and their bodies shown on al-Jazeera. The claims were denied by the family of one of the soldiers, who said they were told by the Army that the men died in combat.