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October 23, 2006
Bloggers, Embeds, and OPSEC, Oh My!
When it comes to the war on terror, many contentious issues continue to divide us. Most Americans, however, are united on one question: we're losing the battle for hearts and minds here at home. But ask about the reasons for the erosion in public support for the war and that fragile consensus dissolves quickly. Why is the information war being lost? Who is to blame? The press? The administration? The military?
The Left will tell you our free press have successfully exposed the seamy underbelly of an illegal and morally bankrupt war which never should have been fought. The Right maintains wartime coverage is skewed and unfair; that we're not getting the whole story. How can we make intelligent decisions based on an incomplete and inaccurate picture of reality?
Who can we trust? On this issue, even the media don't speak with one voice. In the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, network anchors huffily chided embedded reporters who (they believed) had gotten too chummy with the troops. Were they 'sleeping with the enemy', crossing a forbidden line between objective reporting and government propaganda? That depends on who you ask:
During Operation Iraqi Freedom, embedding journalists with combat units was a resounding success. For a few months, our troops received positive, fair-minded coverage from men and women who had experienced combat at their sides. But the program was a long-term failure for reasons that had nothing to do with our soldiers and everything to do with media bias.From the standpoint of non-embedded, big-name journalists, the wartime program was a disaster. While celebrity and semi-celebrity journalists remained safe in luxury hotels, assuming they could build their stories from daily headquarters briefings as they had done during Operation Desert Storm, the airtime and the column space went instead to the embeds, who were reporting vivid life-and-death stories from the battlefield. The journalists who risked their lives with our troops advanced their careers. The stay-behinds resented it.
The reaction set in quickly. Embedded journalists were accused of “sleeping with the enemy,” or being seduced by the military. Of course, there just might be something seductive about having your backside kept alive by the skill and valor of our armed forces. In an Orwellian twist, reporters who didn’t want to risk life and limb, or even discomfort, were able to enforce the view that it was impossible to report accurately about the military if you spent time with the military. The prevailing view now is that journalists should keep their distance. Thus, in Iraq, reporters cluster in a few heavily guarded hotels and compounds in Baghdad, relying on Iraqi stringers with their own agendas and giving more credence to terrorist claims and rumors than to our military.
During my last trip to Iraq, a little more than 30 of the hundreds of U.S. and international journalists in Iraq were embedded with our forces. That low number included all the members of television and radio crews, so the actual number of reporters with the troops was probably fewer than 20. Few of those were “name” reporters working for major media outlets.
In the perverse world of the media, we have journalists pretending to cover a war but declining to see firsthand what our military is eager to show them. In the past, reporters complained that the military denied them access. Now, when offered unprecedented access to everyone from generals down to lance corporals on dismounted combat patrols, the media demur, although they’ll show up for a safe briefing in the Green Zone, where reporters can snipe at the briefing officer.
Michael Yon, reporting for the Weekly Standard, blames the military:
In a counterinsurgency, the media battlespace is critical. When it comes to mustering public opinion, rallying support, and forcing opponents to shift tactics and timetables to better suit the home team, our terrorist enemies are destroying us. Al Qaeda's media arm is called al Sahab: the cloud. It feels more like a hurricane. While our enemies have "journalists" crawling all over battlefields to chronicle their successes and our failures, we have an "embed" media system that is so ineptly managed that earlier this fall there were only 9 reporters embedded with 150,000 American troops in Iraq. There were about 770 during the initial invasion.Many blame the media for the estrangement, but part of the blame rests squarely on the chip-laden shoulders of key military officers and on the often clueless Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad, which doesn't manage the media so much as manhandle them. Most military public affairs officers are professionals dedicated to their jobs, but it takes only a few well-placed incompetents to cripple our ability to match and trump al Sahab. By enabling incompetence, the Pentagon has allowed the problem to fester to the point of censorship.
Yon minces no words in his indictment of PAO:
I don't use the word lightly. Censorship is a hand grenade of an accusation, and a writer should be serious before pulling the pin. Indeed, some war-zone censorship for reasons of operational security is obviously desirable and important. No one can complain when Delta Force will not permit an embed. In fact, I have turned down offers to embed with some Special Operations forces because the limitations on what I could write would not be worth the danger and expense. But we can and should complain when authorities willfully limit war reporting. We should do so whether it happens as a matter of policy, or through incompetence or bureaucratic sloth. The result is the same in any case. And once the matter has been brought to the attention of the military and the Pentagon--which I have quietly done--and still the situation is not rectified, it is time for a public accounting.The government of the United States has no right to send our people off to war and keep secret that which it has no plausible military reason to keep secret. After all, American blood and treasure is being spent. Americans should know how our soldiers are doing, and what they are doing while wearing our flag. The government has no right to withhold information or to deny access to our combat forces just because that information might anger, frighten, or disturb us.
By allowing only a trickle of news to come out of Iraq, when all involved parties know the flow could be more robust, the Pentagon is doing just that. Although the conspicuous media vacuum can be partly explained by the danger--Iraq is arguably more dangerous for journalists than Vietnam or even World War II, when reporters were allowed to land on D-Day--some of the few who will risk it all are denied access for no good reason.
This information blockade is occurring at the same time that the Pentagon is outsourcing millions of dollars to public relations firms to shape the news. This half-baked effort has the unintended consequence of putting every reporter who files a positive story under scrutiny as a possible stooge. A fraction of those dollars spent on increasing transportation support might persuade more reporters to request an embed. A reasonable expectation of being able to get to units and get stories filed on time is all most reporters ask. The media people I encountered in Iraq were not looking for four-star accommodations. They knew full well what to expect from a war zone, but they cannot waste days, sometimes weeks, stranded in logistics limbo, held up for reasons that almost never have anything to do with combat.
There's little comfort in the supposition that this mess might be more the result of incompetence than policy. After all, what does it matter whether the helicopter crashed because it ran out of gas or because someone didn't tighten the bolts on a rotor? Our military enjoys supremely onesided air and weapons superiority, but this is practically irrelevant in a counterinsurgency where the centers of gravity for the battle are public opinion in Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe, and at home. The enemy trumps our jets and satellites with supremely onesided media superiority. The lowest level terror cells have their own film crews. While al Sahab hums along winning battle after propaganda battle, the bungling gatekeepers at the Combined Press Information Center (CPIC) reciprocate with ridiculous and costly obstacles that deter embedded media covering our forces, ultimately causing harm to only one side: ours. And they get away with it because in any conflict that can be portrayed as U.S. military versus media, the public reflexively sides with the military.
But is the US government actually censoring Mr. Yon's work? As he admits, that's an inflammatory word and one which ought to invoke a bit of skepticism along with the natural concern which is also its due. The real complaint is that PAO is making it difficult for him to do his job. This is a sufficient complaint in and of itself, but is also completely distinct from the kind of de facto censorship he admits may be due as much to incompetence as policy. His criticisms that the government may not be allocating resources optimally should be considered seriously, but they would also be easier to evaluate if there were some sort of official response from PAO. So would his complaints about LtCol. Johnson, covered by milblogger The Huntress here. She details stories of several embedded journalists who had problems with the PAO under LtCol. Johnson. Though I have no way to verify her accounts, the stories are disturbing, and so I have broken my usual practice (as I did in the case of Michael Yon's comment here) and included them for the sake of balance. I do this because these men risk their lives to provide the kind of coverage I complain we all too rarely receive, and thus they are owed due consideration even if in some cases their stories may be coming to us second-hand. In Michael Yon's Weekly Standard piece, he relates details of his difficulties with Lt. Col. Johnson. They deserve your close attention.
Sig Christenson of the San-Antonio News-Express (who also happens to be the president of Military Reporters and Editors, a group he helped form to better support embeds in the war zone) has strong views on the lack of embedded reporters in Iraq:
We've gone from 79 embeds with 3rd ID to 11 in the entire country. Today, you have little idea what is happening in Iraq because there are no reporters there to cover it.Here are a few ideas on how to change that:
First, create a Pentagon Office of Embedding. This office would process all embedding requests. It would issue credentials that get reporters on base and into the dining halls. Journalists could fill out all the information on a Web page, submit their photo electronically and then receive the badge in the mail. The Office of Embedding would arrange embeds with the units a reporter or photographer wanted to spend time with, and work the Air Force to arrange transportation into and out of Iraq. You could get really fancy and include all that information, and more, on a smart chip in the card.
No longer would reporters have to go from Baghdad International Airport to the Green Zone to get a CPIC identification card that allows access to bases in Iraq but not the dining halls there. That's a ridiculous waste of time, given that it can take days to get from the airport to the Green Zone, and it's a pointless risk given the limited payoff.
Second, encourage your editor to send reporters to Iraq and Afghanistan. There will be people in every newsroom ready to volunteer for this assignment. The more reporters in the war zone, the clearer the picture you'll get about what is going on.
Sig's a great writer. Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald sent me a link to his dispatches and they're a must-read. He's been to Iraq four times. This is a guy who cares, and he works for a paper that cares:
Though the risks were obvious, the San Antonio Express-News has been to the Middle East six times since 9-11. You'd need an accountant to tally exactly how much money we've spent on those reporting tours, but I'd bet you could buy a nice house with it. I've made five trips to the sandbox, four of them to Iraq, including the invasion. Sobhani and I were greeted not by flowers and cheering crowds but with frowning Iraq faces, furious brown eyes and, not so infrequently, bullets and RPGs.Editor Robert Rivard and Managing Editor Brett Thacker sent us well aware of the risks and my spending habits. They knew it was important, the biggest story around. They also knew it's amazingly local, with tentacles to every corner of the Alamo City.
It seems as if every third soldier, airman, sailor or Marine in Iraq is a Texan. The Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad is staffed by large numbers of doctors, nurses and technicians from the 59th Medical Wing at Wilford Hall Medical Center. It's been that way for two years now. The Army combat support hospitals in Iraq, including one in Baghdad, no doubt have continuous connections with Brooke Army Medical Center on Fort Sam Houston. All our medics come from Fort Sam, home of the Army Medical Department Center and School and headquarters for the Army Surgeon General.
That's just the beginning. The Army's veterinary and dental commands are here, as is the Great Plains Regional Medical Command, which oversees 10 military hospitals on various posts around the United States, including Fort Hood in Central Texas. The Air Force Security Forces Center is across town on Lackland AFB. Every enlisted airman is trained on the base, often called the "Gateway to the Air Force." Our medics and airmen training for convoy escort duty work in the field at Camp Bullis, in northwest Bexar County. The list could go on and on and on, but I think I've made the point.
We're over there because so much of the U.S. military is here. But the editors of other newspapers around the nation aren't all that far from significant military installations, and those who are not still have fairly large numbers of National Guard and Reserve soldiers, airmen and Marines in their backyards. What happens in Baghdad may be stamped "International" in a paper's electronic archive but it is truly local, and some of us in the business think that people everywhere are hungry for more news of the war.
But still, it bothers me that the San Antonio News Express has been over six times and currently the New York Times has no embedded reporter in Iraq. Likewise the Washington Post. Both are papers with many, many more resources and which are cranking out far more war coverage than the News-Express. Why do they, then, not consider it "worth their while" to underwrite embedded reporters? Where is CNN? What happened to reporters like Arwa Damon?
Who is to blame for the lack of quality media coverage in Iraq and Afghanistan? The "war within the media" wasn't just a culture war, from all accounts, and it's not simply a function of military intransigence or incompetence. There is a financial aspect, as James Lacey, who embedded with the 101st Airborne, relates:
The reason most embeds came home as soon as major combat operations ended is that it was costing a fortune to keep them in Iraq. News organizations were losing millions covering the war, but they could not decrease their coverage in the face of brutal competition. However, as soon as it was safe to pull the plug, the accountants made them do it. Just when it became critical for the military to have embeds who could tell the full story in Iraq, they vanished.
Lacey argues that it is in the military's long-term interest to help foot part of the bill for embedded reporters:
The military needs to come up with a way to foot the bill for extended media operations.There are several arguments against this. First, the military does not owe the media a stipend to cover their commercial enterprise. Many would claim the military is doing enough by giving journalists access and providing security. That is all well and good, except that it is the military that has a strong vested interest in getting out the entire story. New organizations will get enough copy to cover the news cycle from just a small office in Baghdad. If the military wants journalists to go see what is happening in the rest of the country and how soldiers are coping as they perform their missions, then it has to be ready to pony up the money to finance it. Otherwise, it is useless to complain about the lack of perspective journalists have on events because all they do is sit in offices in Baghdad. Given a choice, the journalists would all be out with the troops because that is where the accolades and Pulitzer Prizes are to be found.
The second objection is that this would give the appearance of a state-controlled media. This might be a long-term problem, but I do not see the media giving in to state control of content anytime soon. However, if we must have a solution, creating an independently administered fund that media outlets could draw on as required would fit the bill. It might be messy as each group fought over its share, but I am confident it would not take long before accommodations were made and some equilibrium achieved.
He and others, like Michael Yon and Sig Christenson, argue that the military needs to make it easier on the administrative side for news organizations and independent reporters to embed with combat units, and I agree. I'm not sure how much of the funding aspect DoD needs to take on. The media is big business. The military may or may not have a vested interest in underwriting the costs of a profit-making venture. Arguably the larger media outlets have already decided the risk and cost outweigh the benefits of producing higher-quality news reports. If the military desires more accurate reporting, it may need to "pay" for it. But doesn't this amount to blackmail? And will it even be effective in the end? Will the accounts of subsidized embeds be discounted as propaganda by jealous network anchors or newsroom editors? That's a tough question.
Let's not forget why Michael Yon went over as an independent: he wanted to maintain editorial control over his writing, a luxury employees of major newspapers rarely enjoy.
And there is another disturbing question surrounding funding. It's one thing to argue that the press ought to be allowed access to our troops. It's entirely another to argue that the military has some fundamental duty to underwrite that access with all the logistical overhead this entails: food, transport, administrative costs. One begins to wonder what share of this burden, precisely, the media is being asked to shoulder? This seems a rather one-way process and a rather dangerous precedent to set. Such initiatives, once funded, are rarely cut out of future budgets; they only grow with time.
And while I agree that much of the paperwork could possibly be centralized, there are dangers the media are ill-suited to judge. Do we really want an overstuffed bureaucracy sitting in Washington DC overruling the wishes of combatant commanders in the field? This is one danger of centralizing the embed approval process, and very likely one reason it is currently not being done that way. The press have a tendency to assume any decision made by the military is reflexively authoritarian and unreasonable, and this assumption is hardly eased by the refusal of most commands to explain their decisions. But that does not mean there are no good reasons for their actions, nor, necessarily, that the military need always explain their decisions. This is an unpleasant but true fact of life that commanders live with: sometimes they do things for valid reasons that aren't for publication.
The good side of having a free press, however, is that it does drag problems into the the light where they have to be dealt with, however slowly. Belatedly, Mr. Yon's concerns are beginning to be addressed. And this week, the association of Military Reporters and Editors will host a conference in Chicago. One of the things they'll discuss is ways to improve the embedding process.
What do you think? Should DoD underwrite all or part of the cost of embeds?
What about the lack of embedded reporters - what do you see as the causes? What do you think should be done?
I've decided to move part II on bloggers and OPSEC to a separate post.
Posted by Cassandra at October 23, 2006 05:37 AM
Comments
I would suggest keeping the embeds very limited and letting more soldiers blog. Posts could be reviewed by emails to the Intel guys and PAO's for screening. Only remove OPSEC sensitive material, otherwise let them cuss, complain, share worries and fears, and tell stories of what's good... without fear of getting slammed. As long as they don't show disrespect to elected officials or compromise security, they're the ones in the best position to tell the true stories of what we do there. I would contend that the good stories will far outweigh any negative ones. Most of our troops are proud of their service and what they do. Besides, we may grow a new generation of MSM that comes from a military background and doesn't have a liberal bias.
Personally, I don't trust much of what the embeds say, whether they are independent or affiliated with one of the MSM outlets. I do trust the boots on the ground, even if I don't always agree with them. They see the reality of the world around them or they don't last long. Let them share that reality with folks back home and the rest of the world. Just my opinion.
Posted by: Stashiu3 at October 23, 2006 11:25 AM
I have mixed feelings about blogging from in theater. I agree with you about the OPSEC concerns - if we can do it while respecting security, great. But I really wonder if that is possible. I have always wondered about it, despite many bloggers' assurances that, in their opinion, there are 'no worries'.
But I will address that in my post.
Posted by: Cassandra at October 23, 2006 12:26 PM
Well, hell, yes, we should foot the entire bill for them to embed -- because, ya know, our soldiers and Marines have all of the equipment they will ever need for force security and operational ability. We surely must spend the billions of dollars just languishing in the DoD coffers. (GOA might just take away next year what they didn't spend this year -- $600 hammer anyone?) Why shouldn't we spend that on an embed's transportation and food in (futile) hopes for a fair and unbiased report?
OH, and don't forget to include that if the reporter gets hurt or killed, then there is the inevitable lawsuit because they sent the reporter there, so therefore DoD must certainly be responsible for the injury or death.
*sigh*
Puhhleeeezzzze!
*click click click*
"There's no place like home.....there's no place like home....there's no place like home..."
(Damn, why aren't these ruby slippers working?)
*click Click CLICK*
"There's no place like home......
Posted by: Sly2017 at October 23, 2006 12:57 PM
I think the embedding program has more positives than negatives. If I were still in that business I would've loved to go cover it first-hand. For good or for bad, it's one of, if not the, defining story of our generation. Though I thought I read somewhere one reason some media outlets don't have people over there is that they can't find enough volunteers to pony up for an extended period of time.
I think milblogging is an amazing way the rest of us experience day-to-day life in theater, but I don't think it's the best solution. How many military members are actually going to complain about an issue, rightly or wrongly, for fear of reprisals/disciplinary action? Obviously there's OPSEC and all that entails, but generally the journalist owes no loyalty or deference to the chain of command.
The one soldier who publicly complained that one time to Rumsfeld about the lack of decent armor did so via an embedded reporter (who fed him the question to ask, but the soldier wasn't forced to ask it, either). Rumsfeld deserved to hear that in order to make necessary changes to better protect our forces.
Experienced journalists, at least good ones with a decent world view, can take local issues and put them in a larger context for most people to understand and get a "big picture" of how things work, how they interact, etc. Not just military issues, either. While we may get some great story about subject X from some airman at Balad Air Base, I for one would like to see how that fits into the larger scheme of things and can get that, usually, from an experienced journalist (writer and photographer equally) by weaving the airman's experiences with whatever other sources the journalist has.
In addition to some outlets not having enough people volunteering to go, media outlets see no return on their investment (it's always about the money...). Plus there's the safety issue. Though when the time comes for us to pull our forces out, I think you'll see an increased interest in embedding with units, regardless of the costs.
The DoD should pony up however much it can to bring in as much media it can, it's obviously not doing so well in the information war.
my $.02
Posted by: jpr at October 23, 2006 01:20 PM
Heh. Sly, I was just thinking..."Wow. They seem to be a bit uncomfortable that I did not opine in my usual take no prisoners Bloviatrix fashion...".
But I was trying to take a step back and not insert myself too much into the discussion.
Good thing they don't issue us military wives opinions, neh? Meanwhile I am still toning down my OPSEC post.
*sigh*
Posted by: Cassandra at October 23, 2006 02:32 PM
While I'm certain there's some degree of incompetence involved (having served in the military) my default position is media bias...but I have noticed a slight shift in that of late as well.
Posted by: camojack at October 23, 2006 06:29 PM
I am not in favor of the government funding the embeds. My reason is partly because I think the reporters need to be able to report impartially and when the military funds them I am not sure that our national MSM would accept the reporting as being impartial. My other reason is the case of the Florida reporters who were fired from the Miami Herald jobs because they were reporting for Radio Marti and paid by the government. How is the reporting by embeds any different from the reporting for the VOA or Radio Marti? If you are going to force your reporters not to be funded by the government one place, then it should also carry over to the rest of the reporting. Either the media should permit their employees to report funded by the government or they should foot the whole bill themselves. Accepting it one place and then firing the employees for accepting it in another just does not cut it with me.
I do think that the MSM should do more reporting on what is going on than they do. I keep hearing that the military should do more to get the message out there. If you read the CENTCOM releases every day you will get a picture of all that is going on. If the MSM don't report what they are currently being given by CENTCOM, just how precisely do you suggest the military get the message out there? Remember that Public Affairs soldier who brought up the fact that he had all these films of what the troops were doing in the areas he covered and he would make them available to the media? Have you seen anything on the media since then that even remotely smacks of their taking him up on his offer? Do you think the military should take over the reporting on the war and force the MSM to do it their way? That is about the only way the military will get the whole story of the US effort out there for us to see. The MSM surely won't print it or put it on the air.
The other thing that bothers me is that I have seen the figure that there are 150K troops in Iraq. I have also seen the figure that there are 50K troops actually fighting. What are the other 100K troops doing and why are we not being told about them? Seems that if we have all those volunteers over there putting their lives on the line our MSM, a free press, should at a minimum cover the basics of what is going on with all the troops. If they aren't doing that do you thing embedding the reporters funded by the military will correct that situation? So long as you have all the press offices in the Green Zone with stringers out there getting the stories for them, you will be given the terrible press coverage we are getting. The reporters see no reason they should get out there to do it themselves. They are too busy telling us they have to armor up to go get their bottled water in Baghdad.
Posted by: dick at October 23, 2006 07:44 PM
I'll look forward to the blogging post Cassandra and probably toss in my two cents there. As far as embeds go, I don't think we should fund them, much for the same reasons dick as outlined above. I'm not really a fan of even having them embedded, but perhaps better than having them roam and get blamed when they get into trouble.
Posted by: Stashiu3 at October 23, 2006 07:57 PM
*clap clap clap*
Excellent points, dick, most excellent, indeed.
Cass,
Apologies for the rant, but staring down the barrel of yet another Iraqi tour for MH has me a little more "defensive" of the troops than my usual "Cast Iron Beotch".
You didn't get your official opinion after aquiring the R.O.P.? I got mine... so did the officer trying to instruct me on it, too.
Heh.
Posted by: Sly2017 at October 24, 2006 12:28 AM
Nicely written, Cassandra. I linked to it.
Interesting comments.
Mike's piece has gone viral,the MSM has picked it up the story and it's beginning to make an impact on many levels, especially within CPIC.
The winds of change are in the air...let's hope it's not too late.
Mike will be in attendance at the Military Reporters Editors Conference you referenced where he will be part of the discussion on the embed process talk and attend the Joe Galloway awards dinner to receive an Honorable Mention for a piece he wrote for the Northwest Guardian - "Injured Commander Keeping Tabs on Unit."
Looking forward to reading OPSEC & Bloggers :>)
Posted by: Huntress at October 24, 2006 05:49 PM