Why: "Spin-Heavy U.S. Briefings Frustrate News Media"
Why satphones are now banned in the front?
Here is why: The media blitz part of t Plan A backfired!
The 'embbeded" were there to record Iraqis embracing the invaders, in this case 'liberators'.
The huge press conference center in Qatar was there for receiving torrents of good news during the briefings.
But it didn't work. There are no good news or very few since the troops are pinned down and can only retreat.
Satphones are banned because they can be used by the 'embedded' to by pass censorship and the hirarchical command they are subject to.
Imagine this uniformed government employees who are in the forces more because of a cushy job -since no one would be crazy to attack the US- than military fervor, now knowing they are facing an enemy they weren't trained to deal with.
They will go frustrated by the day. This is a My Lai kind of situation waiting to happen!! If you don't know in the Vietnamese village of My Lai even the chickens didn't survive and were killed too.
pbs.org
Spin-Heavy U.S. Briefings Frustrate News Media"
Sun March 30, 2003 04:06 AM ET
By Jeff Franks and Paul Holmes
DOHA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One U.S. television network has already voted with its feet and reduced its staff.
Many journalists at the main U.S. headquarters for the Iraq war say they get plenty of spin but little news.
A reporter for New York magazine, frustrated at the lack of light being shed on the war, asked this question last week to applause from colleagues:
"Why should we stay? What's the value to us for what we learn at this million-dollar press center?"
Journalists from Britain, Washington's chief ally in the war, feel so starved of information in Qatar that they have put up a sign quoting this remark at a briefing by British forces commander Air Marshall Brian Burridge:
"We don't do detail."
U.S. broadcasters CNN, NBC and CBS all said they sent relatively small teams to As Sayliya Camp, the U.S. Central Command forward headquarters on the bleak outskirts of Doha's capital, Qatar, and had no plans to scale back.
Fox was not available for comment and ABC said it did not discuss staff levels. One network executive, however, said privately that it had withdrawn around a dozen people.
During the 1991 Gulf War, the executive said, most of the news on how the conflict with Iraq was going for U.S.-led forces came from the main briefing center and U.S. commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf.
"Now with all the embedded journalists (attached to U.S. and British units) the briefings are much more reactive to the main news of the day," the executive told Reuters
And some recent briefings have either been ignored by television networks or liberally cut away from in favor of more compelling news than the sight of U.S. officers saying little more than that the controversial invasion is "on plan."
An official from another network put it like this: "They are playing catch-up sometimes and that somehow reduces the value."
Around 600 journalists, known by the Pentagon as "embeds," are attached to U.S. and British military units and often report on frontline developments long before Doha, Washington or London know what is going on.
More than 700 journalists are accredited in Doha. Many are becoming openly contemptuous of the daily proceedings that U.S. General Tommy Franks, in one of only two appearances since the war began, called a "platform for truth."
Franks has left most of the briefings to subordinates who often say they have to be light on specifics so as not to divulge military detail to the Iraqis.
"He's running a war," one of his aides said, commenting on the commander's absence. So too was the ever present Schwarzkopf in 1991.
POLITICAL SPIN?
U.S. media say the problems run deeper than fear of leaking military dispositions or tactics to the Iraqis. A major problem is "political spin."
In recent days, matching the rhetoric from a White House trying to rally public support for the war, there have been increasingly shrill denunciations of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and reported atrocities by his supporters.
"At daily news conferences and private briefings, senior Centcom officials have been more determined to paint Iraqi forces in the darkest possible hues than to shed light on the difficult progress of the military campaign," journalist Alan Sipress reported from Doha in Saturday's Washington Post.
Many reporters attribute this focus to the man in charge of the media center, Jim Wilkinson. He is a former spokesman for the U.S. National Republican Congressional Committee and a political appointee brought in by the Bush administration.
They also compare it with the 11-week NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The allies there went to considerable efforts to separate military from political statements. A civilian and a uniformed officer each gave a daily brief on developments and stuck to his own side of the fence.
In Doha, held on a slick $200,000 set designed by a Hollywood consultant, each briefing so far has begun with a bullish statement about the state of the war and videos depicting precision bombing by the U.S.-led forces.
Questions on reports from the battlefield by senior U.S. officers of concerns about stretched supply lines, troop numbers and Iraqi resistance have either gone unanswered or been contradicted in Doha by more junior officers, the Washington Post article said.
So what was the answer when New York magazine's Michael Wolff unloaded his frustrations on Thursday with his question to U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks?
Brooks said briefings in Doha provided just a piece of the information, with others coming from journalists in Iraq and from the Pentagon. "If you're looking for the entire mosaic, then you should be here," he said.
It was Wolff's choice, Brooks said, whether to stay or go. (Additional reporting by John Chalmers and Douglas Hamilton in Doha) |
