This article makes it sound like there are a lot of reporters wish they could have taken the adversarial position that BBC took during the Iraq liberation.
Military, media meet off battlefield to debate war coverage
By John Cook
Tribune staff reporter
August 18, 2003
Journalists who covered the war in Iraq and the generals who prosecuted it met in suburban Chicago last week in an unusual, informal gathering to debate the successes and failures of the media's reporting on the conflict and how the war changed the relationship between reporters and the military.
The discussion -- which was organized by the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation and held Thursday and Friday at Cantigny Park in Wheaton -- revealed deep divisions among journalists over whether the coverage of the war was slanted in this country to promote the U.S. military's objectives, and whether the images broadcast from the combat zone to American homes were, in the words of one participant, "sanitized" to avoid confronting viewers with the realities of war.
All parties were in agreement on one point: The Pentagon's decision to "embed" reporters with combat units represents, for better or for worse, a sea change in combat reporting.
"Having gone this far," said Janet Leissner, vice president and Washington bureau chief of CBS News, "I don't think coverage will ever revert to the way it was before."
Among those present at the conference were more than 40 reporters, media executives, and military officials, including correspondent Walt Rodgers and anchor Lou Dobbs of CNN and correspondents John Donvan and John McWethy of ABC. Representatives of the military included Brig. Gen. Richard Natonski, commanding general of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Iraq, and Bryan Whitman, deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.
The McCormick Tribune Foundation -- established in 1955 after the death of longtime Tribune publisher and editor Col. Robert R. McCormick -- has sponsored the Cantigny Military and Media conference every other year since 1992 in an attempt to foster cooperation and temper the traditionally hostile relationship between the Pentagon and the reporters who cover it.
Whitman summed up that relationship, and garnered laughs from the assembled reporters, by quoting Gen. William T. Sherman's remark upon hearing that the Confederate Army had shot two reporters: "Great. Now we'll have news from hell by noon."
This year's conference was a particularly fertile ground for discussion, occurring as it did on the heels of the first war in history to be broadcast live into American living rooms. The conference consisted of panel discussions followed by smaller group discussions. The foundation allowed media access to the conference only on the condition that the identity of any speaker other than the panelists be withheld.
Many journalists present expressed concern that by embedding reporters with military units, the Pentagon was able to ensure that coverage of the war favored the American perspective.
"The embedded process proved to be more beneficial to the government than to the media," said George Wilson, defense correspondent for the National Journal and longtime military reporter for The Washington Post, who traveled with an artillery unit in Iraq. "The rah-rah coverage of the units we were embedded with eclipsed a lot of larger questions."
That coverage, several journalists said, was a function of the camaraderie that emerged between military units and the reporters covering them. It became complicated, some said, to report uncompromisingly on the actions of your unit.
"Once you bond with these guys, once reporters have come to like these guys, they're not going to report how horrible anybody can be in war," said one broadcast network correspondent who covered the war as a "unilateral," or unembedded reporter. "How they were laughing as they shot people."
Others faulted the program because it succeeded in keeping journalists "on the dogsled," as one participant put it, and away from places the Pentagon didn't want them to be.
"[Not being embedded] gave me the flexibility to do my job, a flexibility the embedded reporters didn't have," said Jonathan Landay, national security correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers. "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the American people that what happened in northern Iraq after the war was a little `untidiness.' What I saw, and what I reported, was a tsunami of murder, looting, arson and ethnic cleansing."
The military officials present considered the embedding process for the most part to be a success, which made many reporters uneasy.
Rumsfeld rules
"The news media has covered wars for centuries without being a companion force to the military," said a Pentagon correspondent for a cable news network. "I think the embeds were there for one reason -- Don Rumsfeld wanted them there. And he put them there for one reason -- because it would further administration goals and objectives. As a reporter, I don't mind being used, but I want to know I'm being used."
"Does the media understand what it's gotten into with the embed process?" the correspondent continued. "I don't think we've really thought about this. We're in the embed afterglow here."
CNN's Walt Rodgers, who was embedded with the Army's 7th Cavalry, surprised many participants by announcing that Rumsfeld pushed the embedding program through despite deep suspicion from the White House.
"The president of the United States thought embedding was, quote, a crazy idea, end quote," Rodgers said. "And I know personally that the vice president did not want it to happen. [Former Assistant Defense Secretary for Public Affairs] Tori Clarke and Rumsfeld pushed it through over the objections of their superiors."
"The decision was made by Secretary Rumsfeld, in conjunction with his senior staff and military advisers," said Jeanie Mamo, a White House spokeswoman who, when contacted later by phone, declined to comment further.
Furthering Pentagon's goals
The military officials present were candid that the embedding program was developed as a way to further the Pentagon's military goals in conducting the war.
"Information was going to play a major role in combat operations," said Whitman. "We wanted totake the offensive to achieve information dominance and to counter Iraqi lies." Whitman also said military planners were aware that "robust" coverage of ground operations could have a positive effect on domestic and international support for the war.
"We brought the military service members into the homes of Americans, and they became spokespersons for the U.S. military," said Col. Rick Thomas, chief of public affairs for the 3rd U.S. Army. "Every aunt and uncle in America had a niece or nephew that looked just like that person on TV."
Rodgers, citing a recent article in Foreign Affairs by Joseph Nye, dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, described the Pentagon's use of the press in Iraq as "the weaponization of reporters."
At the same time, military officials were highly critical of the practice of allowing unilateral reporters to wander combat zones at will. (Some reporters objected to the term; "so-called unilaterals used to just be called reporters," said one.)
"We did have a problem with unilaterals," said Brig. Gen. E.J. Sinclair, who served as assistant division commander for the army's 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. Sinclair said his soldiers "shot up" a white pickup truck driven by a German reporter, because they couldn't distinguish it from hostile forces.
"The unilaterals, sometimes, I felt were leeches," said a Marine commander. "They'd roll up and take [food] and water and run off."
Whereas embedded reporters were bound by ground rules that prevented them from reporting certain information that could jeopardize military objectives, unilaterals were free to report what they saw. Combined with their freedom to move around and talk to various forces in the field, that made some military commanders uneasy.
"A unilateral could roam from division to division," said one Army public affairs officer, "and get a better perspective than an embed" on what exactly was going to happen next, perhaps putting troops in danger if they report it.
Frequent rescues
The military commanders also complained that, without the protection of U.S. forces, unilaterals frequently needed to be rescued from dangerous situations, which put American service members at risk.
Many reporters expressed dismay that disturbing images of war -- "dead kids," as one put it -- did not make it onto the air in America, and they almost universally praised the work of Al Jazeera, which, along with much of the international press, regularly aired gruesome images from the battlefield. "If we show any U.S. casualties," said a broadcast network correspondent, "the Pentagon goes berserk, because they think about the families first. But if we had shown them, it would have had a profound impact on public attitudes toward the war."
"Are you whitewashing what the public sees?" said one television executive. "The answer is yes, you are. We were making unilateral decisions about what the American public would see and what we wouldn't allow them to see."
Rodgers said CNN management decided to avoid disturbing images because of viewer complaints.
"I was doing live shots in front of a burning T-72 [tank]," he said, "and there were bodies hanging off of it. And I was told by management, `Don't show those dead bodies again. We've had too many viewers calling in and saying we don't want to see any dead bodies.'"
Rodgers said he complied, but he still favors showing the American public the realities of what goes on in a combat zone.
"I think people should see that that's not just a dead Iraqi out there," he said. "It's a dead father, a dead husband, a dead brother."
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