Friday, February 27, 2004 · Last updated 8:41 p.m. PT
Pentagon to offer direct news service
By JIM KRANE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait -- The U.S. military will launch its own
news service in Iraq and Afghanistan to send military video, text
and photos directly to the Internet or news outlets.
The $6.3 million project, expected to begin operating in April, is
one of the largest military public affairs projects in recent memory,
and is intended to allow small media outlets in the United States
and elsewhere to bypass what the Pentagon views as an
increasingly combative press corps.
U.S. officials have complained that Iraq-based media focuses on
catastrophic events such as car bombs and soldiers' deaths, while
giving short shrift to U.S. rebuilding efforts.
The American public "currently gets a pretty slanted picture," said
Army Capt. Randall Baucom, a spokesman for the Kuwait-based
U.S.-led Coalition Land Forces Command. "We want them to get
an opportunity to see the facts as they exist, instead of getting
information from people who aren't on the scene."
The project, called Digital Video and Imagery Distribution System
or DVIDS, will also give the Pentagon more control of the
coverage when calamities do happen.
Army camera teams will be able to use their access to battle zones
or military bases to film the aftermath of rebel attacks on U.S.
troops - or U.S. raids on insurgent targets - and then offer free pictures to news outlets within two
hours.
At times civilian media are kept away from such events.
"We have an unfair advantage," Baucom said. "We're going to be able to get closer to the incident
and provide better spokespeople to give the right information. The important thing is that we provide
the public with accurate information."
But media analysts argued that the military has a vested interest in making sure its viewpoint is
heard.
"The Army wants to get their view across and they are using a technique as old as any public
relations manuever ever devised," said Aly Colon, an ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, the
journalism research and education center in St. Petersburg, Fla.
"I would view the Army's decison, in the same way that I would view OPEC creating a
communications system to help the American public understand what it means when prices go up,"
he said.
"This is the kind of news that people get in countries where the government controls the media. Why
would anybody here want to buy into it?" Mac McKerral, president of the Society of Professional
Journalists, told The Associated Press.
The Army is in the midst of contracting to outfit five Mobile Public Affairs Detachments with a
suitcase-sized reporting kit containing digital video and still cameras, a laptop computer and a Norsat
NewsLink 3200 satellite broadcast terminal. Four teams will be based in Iraq and one in
Afghanistan.
Much of the effort is aimed at packaging and shipping locally focused stories to small and
medium-sized newspapers and TV stations in the United States, said Army Col. Rick Thomas, who
heads the effort.
Most small U.S. media outlets can't afford to send a reporter to Iraq to cover a local military unit,
Thomas said. Since the ongoing troop rotation involves several Army National Guard and Reserve
units from communities across the United States, there are small media outlets who might never get
news of their neighbors' work in Iraq.
"The vast majority are dependent on other news organizations to get their products," Thomas said.
"We think we can give them some more focused copy. We can shoot video of someone from, say,
Tupelo, Miss., and they've got what looks like a very good hometown piece."
The military brass was surprised and impressed with the speed and immediacy of the coverage of
journalists embedded with U.S. combat units during the war, and wanted to develop the same
capabilities, Thomas said.
Television crews demonstrated their equipment for Army public affairs teams, and Thomas said his
staff compiled a list of equipment needed to cover breaking news.
The Army already has dozens of its own reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan writing for internal
newsletters and magazines. Thomas said he hopes civilian media can reuse the same stories, or at
least the Army's photos and video.
The military's reporters will transmit their stories and video to servers at Third Army headquarters in
Atlanta, and allow access to them over a password-protected Internet site, Baucom said. Accredited
news organizations will be allowed to register for free access, he said.
Thomas said the military also plans to use the equipment for internal video, such as beaming pictures
from an aircraft's gun camera to a Pentagon briefing.
The DVIDS units will also make it easier to get positive stories published, Thomas said.
"There are numerous good news stories that aren't told that do provide a better balance on the overall
successes we achieved in Iraq," he said. "We'll be able to provide the option for those types of
stories. They're not going to lead in a major daily newspaper, but they'll play well in smaller daily
papers and especially weekly papers." |
