Military, media have often-rocky relationship
David Folkenflik
The Baltimore Sun
December 24, 2003
According to a transcript, a news conference held earlier this month unfolded in the following manner.
U.S. military official: "This is Saddam as he was being given his medical examination today."
Audience consisting of reporters: CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
U.S. military official: "Saddam's medical examination proved that he had no injuries and he is in good health."
Audience: SHOUTS, translated as "DEATH TO SADDAM!"
Those cheering were members of the Iraqi press - not U.S. reporters. Nonetheless the event provided U.S. military officials the rare experience of being bravo-ed in a news conference.
That sort of rapport generally doesn't exist between the U.S. military and the U.S. press. The relationship between the two long has been adversarial, with the military withholding information while citing national security interests (understandably so) and the media trying to uncover information while citing First Amendment principles (often rightly so).
In the past year, the "embed" system, which integrated reporters into military combat units, allowed for an unusual degree of immediate and uncensored coverage. Journalists understood that those who imperiled the security of troops with their reports would be expelled. A modicum of trust grew on both sides.
But as combat gave way to enforcing a dangerous peace, relations between the U.S. military and the media became increasingly sticky.
In November, Stuart Wilk, vice president and managing editor of the Dallas Morning News, wrote a letter of protest to chief Pentagon public affairs official Lawrence Di Rita.
Reporters have been threatened by troops, wrote Wilk, who also is president of the Associated Press Managing Editors, a professional organization that represents editors at 1,700 newspapers. Digital camera disks and videotape have been confiscated from photojournalists. Some reporters have been shot at by U.S.-led troops.
Sandy Johnson, Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, also wrote a letter of protest to the Pentagon that was signed by executives from 30 media companies. The AP reported that some U.S. journalists in Iraq were detained by troops when trying to tape the aftermath of various guerrilla attacks. The episodes raise questions about intimidation, she wrote.
The Defense Department refused reporters entry last month to the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba unless they agreed not to ask questions about on-site investigations or operations. Still another professional group, Military Reporters and Editors, objected to the rule, saying it was unconstitutional. That ban appears to have been eased. But reporters (and cameras) continue to be turned away from the Dover, Del., Air Force base where the coffins of service members killed in Iraq pass on their way to burial at U.S. cemeteries.
In each instance, the Pentagon says, senior military commanders are attempting to balance the media's need for access with security concerns, including ensuring that sensitive information does not get passed to accused enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay.
At Dover, says Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman under Di Rita, a decision was made not to make grieving families travel simply to satisfy the media's desire to observe the transfer of the coffins.
But Whitman said those troops who confiscated journalistic materials in Iraq acted improperly. "We readily acknowledge there have been some isolated incidents out there," he says. And top Pentagon brass have reiterated military guidelines that ban confiscations, an action that underscores their commitment to allowing the media to report the news, he says.
In separate interviews, Johnson and Wilk largely praise Pentagon officials for their recent responsiveness to complaints. Those incidents seem to have subsided, Johnson says. Tensions "are not at a fever pitch," says Kathryn Kross, Washington bureau chief for CNN. "In each case, we're dealing with a jillion different moving parts." Still, she added, "Journalists believe we should be able to record events as they transpire."
The "embed" system served to lower barriers between media and military, both sides agree. "Our assessment is that if we get the media to the action [out of the hotels in Baghdad and away from the news conferences] that you will generally report accurately and will not significantly hinder mission accomplishment," Lt. Col. George Krivo, a U.S. military spokesman who has just returned from Baghdad, writes in an e-mail interview. But some specific media reports of the success or extent of guerrilla attacks, he writes, were exaggerated or unfounded, driven by agendas from editors in London, Paris, Qatar or New York City.
"The accuracy of the coverage improved greatly as the number of embeds increased," Krivo writes. "Even then, some in the [Coalition Provisional Authority] argued the coverage was overly 'negative' and out of context." The Coalition Provisional Authority is the occupying government set up by the U.S. and allies to run Iraq.
Earlier this fall, President Bush granted interviews to regional news organizations, such as Hearst-Argyle Television and Tribune Broadcasting (a corporate sibling to The Sun). Many news editors saw the move as an effort to circumvent the major newspapers and television networks. Bush, however, characterized the decision as a move to provide accurate information to the American public.
"There's a sense that people in America aren't getting the truth," Bush said in October. "I'm mindful of the filter through which some news travels. And sometimes you just have to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people." Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has also directly criticized the media, saying coverage dwells on fatalities and bombings rather than the successes he believes the military has achieved in Iraq.
The provisional authority in Iraq also is creating a satellite service dubbed "Baghdad C-SPAN" by Dorrance Smith, a former ABC News producer, who is a consultant on the project.
The channel is to carry the pronouncements of military and political figures for Iraqi consumption, almost as a primer in how a democracy functions, Whitman says. The segments will also be broadcast on the Pentagon's internal television system in the United States via an unencrypted satellite feed, says Army Maj. Joe Yoswa, another Defense Department spokesman. But the material will be available to all outlets, which some media observers view as a domestic propaganda effort to make an end-run around the major news networks and publications.
Over time, Pentagon officials say, the station may develop interviews and news reports. Those, too, would be available to both Iraqi and U.S. media outlets. As local news stations often prove to be less rigorous in their journalistic scrutiny than their network counterparts, American viewers could see reports about the military by the military - not exactly an objective take on the news.
"When the government starts disseminating its 'message' to the United States with minimum filtering - that is, without independent news judgment, without editing, without commentary, and without verification - we're definitely not talking about journalism," writes Jack Shafer, editor at large and media critic for the online magazine Slate. (Shafer also believes the effort will, in his words, "crash and burn.")
Whitman, the Pentagon spokesman, discounts criticism that the Iraq news service amounts to a propaganda push. "Anyone with a satellite dish who wanted to bring it down can," he says. "I always believe more information is good. If someone finds it useful, then good."
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