Points 2 and 4 are particularly good -- and important. Point 5 is perhaps even more important and is also embarrassing . Continuity of effort is more critical than unity of command. So why do we routinely violate both principles... :mad:
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Points 2 and 4 are particularly good -- and important. Point 5 is perhaps even more important and is also embarrassing . Continuity of effort is more critical than unity of command. So why do we routinely violate both principles... :mad:
Memory
"The King is Dead!"
pause
Reality
"Long Live the King!"
NEXT!
Perhaps they had a "Generation Kill" moment.
This may be a stretch, but Gen Kill (by Rolling Stone writer Evan Wright), in both book and DVD format, has achieved a fair level of notoriety for its gritty realism and pull no punches dialog. Perhaps “Team America” saw themselves in that same light, with an HBO mini-series in their future. That would certainly explain their candid behavior. :eek:
Of course, if my half-assed theory is even remotely close to being true, then the Team totally missed the difference. It is the right and privileged of the Marine snuffy to bitch and moan about everything, particularly the chain of command. Also, GenKill came out well after the fact and typically a lance corporal's incisive observations about the predilections and faults of his company or battalion leadership is rarely reported or acted upon.
Stay frosty gents. :D
Most people commenting on this episode have said that Gen. McChrystal has been in the Army too long for him to have been naive about how the game is played. The Vietnam War certainly gave an entire generation of military men strong opinions about the news media. The thought occurs to me that most of McChrystal's time has been spent in the Special Operations community; the special access programs he spent much of his career in may have shielded him from aspects of command to which other officers are more accustomed. His handling of the Germans after the fuel tanker incident some months ago didn't show much awareness of the sensitivities involved in multinational coalition operations.
In case anyone missed it, RS journalist Hastings on the Colbert Report.
Interview doesn't start until 2/3 into the video.
Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis has been chosen as the new head of the U.S. Central Command, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Thursday.
CNN
Open Letter to General Stanley McChrystal 7 July 2010
U.S. Army
Dear General McChrystal,
Sir, I wish to express my apologies for the great injustice you have just endured at the hands of our leaders, without regard for your selfless service to our nation. The Rolling Stone article “Runaway General” by Michael Hastings and its consequences are truly an injustice. It is embarrassing to me as an American that anyone would take anything in this article as credible. I am deeply troubled, as I am sure you are, at the low moral and intellectual state of our media and general public, and that our national leaders acted so rashly on such a misleading and slanted story.
The title of this article is absolute slander. And the supposed analysis under the title cannot be taken seriously. It is hogwash to say that you or any other soldier thinks the real enemy is in the Whitehouse. I found no evidence in this article that you or anyone in your command disagrees with our American system of civilian control of the military. Nothing in there even hinted at insubordination or contempt for civilian leadership. On the contrary, the article shows that you were there to implement what had been directed from the Whitehouse. I have served for 24 years in the military, and I have never once met anyone in uniform that does not support this idea and the legitimacy of the president as the commander-in-chief and the civilian status of the office of the Secretary of Defense. This concept has been indoctrinated in our military personnel, socialized in our culture, and institutionalized in our military and government organizations. I certainly do not see any evidence to the contrary in your words in this article.
There is no rigor and little integrity in the article. The quotes contradict the writer’s reporting and analysis of the context. The author appears to be fixated on foul language and superficial brutishness which he projects onto the people he is writing about. His dependence on foul language shows an absence of crisp and clear language, thought, and analysis, and he uses it to endear himself to his audience and offers foul language as “proof” he understands the troops or soldiering. Hastings seems enamored by foxhole humor and seems to think that that is all there is to our military. He seems not to understand that in the American military the chain of command is not weakened by a soldier’s independent thinking.
This compilation of snide remarks is not a profile; it is character assassination, fabrication through slanted and foul language. Likely, his intent was to drive a wedge between our senior leaders in order to undermine our national will and war effort. The author just wants to paint a picture of conflict and of failure in Afghanistan. I don’t believe this is an accurate portrayal of you or your staff or the situation in Afghanistan. And the author’s characterization of your staff as “killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators, and outright maniacs” is horrible and slanderous. Moreover, I take issue with his characterization of these servicemen as having “pride” in “their disdain for authority.” The author can only be saying this to create a riff between the military and our civilian authority over it.
This is journalism at its worst. Hastings’ article is inaccurate because he invents contexts for the quotations he cites. All of the really nasty quotes come from unidentified sources. In such biased and manipulating journalism, no one can tell what is true and what is not. He doesn’t hide his contempt for the military and everything about the military. His discussion of COIN and your involvement with it is slanted, inaccurate, and self-contradictory. By reading this paragraph, one cannot tell if Hastings sees you as the initiator of the COIN strategy or as a mere implementer of it. Despite all of this negativity and inadequate journalism, what we actually see of you is an honorable and capable person.
Nothing in the article shows you as a “runaway.” All of the evidence shows you as a true-grit patriot who is less concerned about political correctness than accomplishing the mission and taking care of our troops. We should have more people like you in public service, not fewer. To your credit, you are concerned with civilian casualties, you explain the paradoxes of counterinsurgency to our young troops, and you go on patrol with them. Even with of all the dangers and sacrifices, you are intent on reducing all casualties, military and civilian. I am impressed. I find myself even more convinced that you were the right commander for our efforts in Afghanistan. Despite the fog and confusion in this article, you come across as a good leader. You were wronged by this absolutely lame pretense at journalism.
I find it very disheartening that no one has criticized the article or challenged its validity. Accepting any article unquestioningly is irresponsible. Further, I am alarmed at how quickly inaccurate reporting of the article’s content and its implications spread across our national media. It is ironic that one of our great leaders was relieved on the basis of someone else’s poor journalism. Only slowly did any accuracy about the article appear, that you did not say the critical quotes, and that possibly the damning title and subtitle were not even written by the author. Our news media is guilty of spreading false rumors and inaccurate information, purporting them to be fact or truth. Had they not read the article? Why didn’t anyone say, “this can’t be true, this is clearly and purposefully biased.” The bandwagoning of reporters and op-ed writers is appalling, each supporting the other’s misinformation. Half-truths and innuendos are dangerous in a society that does not question the media, does not seek the truth, does not look for alternate points of view, and just cares to reinforce its own prejudice.
We are in a really bad spot when our journalists are not in the business of providing information and context, but are in the business of character assassination and political subversion. Newscasters were duped, the whole country was duped. It is deeply troubling for me as an American that our leaders acted so quickly before any thorough analysis of the article was presented. I am worried that other serious matters of national security will be handled in a similar haphazard fashion. The real issue is that this fiction created a mob mentality and you bore the brunt of its momentum. The repercussions of this skewed article indicate there is something very wrong in our government and in our society.
Further, I am surprised that your chain of command did not support you in the face of this attack on your character and integrity. How dismaying that this article should be the basis for firing someone! I don’t know how anyone could look at these past two weeks without becoming a cynic or suspecting ulterior motives behind your dismissal. Such a stunning turn of events will surely be a setback and a disgrace for our country. I realize this has been a devastating blow to you personally. You have my deepest sympathy and support.
Sincerely,
James A. Gavrilis
American Citizen
Well said, James, and things that need to be said loudly and publicly...regardless of any of our personal opinions on the Afghan campaign, the method by which GEN McCrystal was pulled down is something that should be applied to no soldier, sailor, airperson or Marine, regardless of rank or appointment - certainly not as long as such a thing a due process exists within our militaries and nations.
I believe that 'journalists' of the ilk of Hastings and Michael Yon who also claims credit for the General's downfall need to a. have a good hard look at themselves and any perception they may have of themselves as professionals, and b. the media as a professional also needs to take a good hard look at itself and justify why it is the only profession that will not adopt a code of conduct for its members. They are all very quick to bleat when they think that they are being maligned or slighted (e.g. Yon's bleating about being disembedded) but appear incapable of considering the impact their own actions and words may have upon those they target.
In a campaign where information has become another battlespace, the fourth estate has scored a major blow for our enemies...
The media is a trade not a profession as evidenced by this article and civ-mil backlash. The media does not police its own.:(
Well, Christ, as a member of the despised media, I have a suggestion, that is as applicable to the member of the local utilities board to the general in charge of Afghanistan: Don't say it to a reporter if you don't want to read it later. Saves a lot of back-and-fill later. Why is this so hard?
Now please continue your regularly scheduled back-and-fill.
40below (shouldn't that be 40above given our current temperatures :D), I don't disagree with you per se, but I do have a question for you on professional ethics: doesn't "off the record" mean that the reporter agrees not to publish it? How are reporters disciplined if they use off the record situations and material and place it on the record in their articles (outside of being personally blackballed)?
It should be pointed out that Rolling Stone is not part of the much-maligned "Mainstream Media" with its own acronym, MSM. A reporter working a beat would probably not have tried this bait-and-switch trick on one of his usual sources because once burned that person or organization would refuse to be a source any longer. On the other hand, writers doing a single feature story on a topic often have little invested in cultivating a relationship with the source--therefore they can do a poison pen job and feel as though they have nothing to lose. However, once they gain the reputation of doing that sort of thing they won't be trusted.
did it on purpose to recapture the initiative and momentum.... time to tag out...Then you have the Woohoo Petraeus comic..."WHy are we excited dont know but we are".... I blame MTV next month we can start celebrity rehab or MCc might get his own network reality tv show...genius
The basic rule: It's not OTR unless I say it is, and that has to be reconfirmed in every situation because sometimes the subject says stuff that invalidates the agreement. So really, nothing is OTR. My favorite comes from when I was a young pup, I was interviewing a candidate for city council, we did the civilized thing, he wanted to go off the record at the end to shoot the #### about his opponents (he asked if we could go OTR, and I said nothing, reporters are wary about such requests but he took it as a yes) and immediately launched into a racist spiel about how the incumbent was a Jew and you know what those people are like, they rule the world, don't get him started on the HoloHoax and yaddayadda. So I was faced with the situation where I could ignore it or tell the readers the truth, that the guy was no gentleman but a pig-ignorant a-hole who read the Protocols in the bathroom every day and did you want him representing you, and my conscience would allow me to do no different. And I'm one of those reporters with ethics and stuff, but I tore this guy a new one in the next day's paper without hesitation.
I don't have a lot to say about McChrystal except as a military reporter, I do not understand why he and his staff would ever speak to RS in the first place, except in a two-hour tactical thing some Tuesday afternoon in Kabul, and don't take the guy to Paris and get drunk with him. There is simply no upside there, they're not Army Times or Danger Room.
I'm not slamming the freelancer, he had a job to do and I note none of the general's staff actually denied saying what they were quoted as saying when the quotes were submitted prior to pub, but the commanders I deal with are smart, and letting someone like that embed with your HQ staff is like throwing a forward pass in football - five things can happen and four of them are bad. Why do it?
Let me just preface this with saying that I thought the Hastings article was pretty poor journalism and the way he described COIN doctrine betrayed a serious lack of exposure to the military. I can deal with a hit-piece bashing COIN, but when someone writes a hit-piece bashing COIN and does not mention the likes of Gian Gentile or Andrew Bacevich I think that shows pretty shoddy research...
That said, people seem to quickly forget how positively the media covered Gen McChrystal before this unfortunate fiasco. Everyone loves to hate on the 'dreaded MSM' while forgetting that Newsweek dubbed Gen McChrystal a "Jedi commander" and hagiographies lauding him for his spartan eating habits and exercise routines appeared in the pages of the NY Times. Gen Petraeus is, for all intents and purposes, largely untouchable by the media and is usually described with adjectives like 'brilliant' and 'genius.' Even Rolling Stone--once a counterculture icon--featured a remarkably sensitive portrayal of a Marine infantry platoon that may have ruffled some feathers but was a damn good piece of journalism.
I don't buy into the 'us-versus-them' dynamic that I see articulated way too often by my peers in uniform. I see nuanced, careful, and sympathetic articles about the military in the MSM quite frequently. Read CJ Chivers regularly and tell me that the NY Times is 'biased against the troops' with a straight face. Do they sometimes get it wrong? Sure, like anybody else. Does the MSM publish articles that are unfair, or biased? Sure, I'm not disputing that. But I do not see this widespread anti-miltary sentiment that is so frequently alluded to by those that assert that the media is wronging the troops on a daily basis.
Anyway, at the end of the day, it's sort of a moot point. Interacting with the media--whether one likes it or not--is a necessity in the world we live in. I think we'll get a lot further institutionally by acknowledging their presence is neither good nor bad, it's just there, like a piece of terrain or the weather. It is up to us to interact with the media in a manner that produces positive outcomes for the mission. And I think part of that means never getting trashed in Paris with a reporter...
I largely concur with this. I have no view on McChrystal, other than saying the things he said showed very poor judgement. I cannot see how that can be argued. Again, WHY would an General be talking to "Rolling Stone?" There is simply no grounds on which that decision can be passed off as sensible.
Moreover there is simply no such thing as "Off The Record."
It is meaningless, unenforceable, and not relevant. When someone tells you something is OTR, it just means "Please do not put this in your article." Journalists are well within their rights to lie and then ignore any such request.
Anyone who has ever worked in the media or dealt with the media knows this.
My take on all of this is that if the President did not want to take out General McChrystal prior to the article, he would not have taken him out after it.
I would not attribute too much "credit" to this one author, and this one piece, nor agonize too much over the ethics of such journalism.
I've been wrapped around this axle since my post here, having extrapolated off from now discredited Politico reporting. Please allow me jump on one factoid in your post that I'm otherwise very much aboard.
See this article for what facts / quotes were actually checked. The "silence is consent" reasoning doesn't warrant as much mileage as it may appear, and as I once gave it.
Well, the fact-checking questions may not have verified that the quotes were correct but I still have yet to read an article where anyone who was present accuses Hastings of fabricating quotes or even embellishing quotes. Sean Naylor wrote a piece about the article alleging that the most damaging quotes came from low-level individuals rather than senior staff, as the Rolling Stone article suggests, but nobody disputes that the quotes themselves were wrong: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/0...ystal_071210w/
There is much hand-wringing over Hastings being 'unfair' to include quotes that were meant to be OTR. I think, as has been made clear on this thread, these staff members were naive at best to think that anything they said would be OTR.
Which, I think, pretty much sums it up, except for one thing. These guys were trash talking their chain of command and their counterparts in other organizations. Doing that privately, with peers, is a soldier's inalienable right. These guys did it with an outsider. The most charitable way to describe that is lousy leadership. (And I even agree with their judgments.)
Yeah, that goes to the heart of it. Soldiers bitch, and there are few things of more beauty than one going off on a rip where he accuses everyone from god down to his MWO of being part of a malevolent plan to make his life hell, but the guy's in Kevlar and lugging a pack in 40 degree heat. I've never reported that; I've said worse. My editors would not be pleased if they knew what I was saying about them while kitted out in body armour and bouncing around in an RG-31 or nearly being flown into a mountain on a Herc while they were in an air-conditioned office. (But I'd still say it to their face.)
An office full of REMFs spouting off about their commanders and political superiors - repeatedly and to a reporter - is first off astonishingly dumb and secondly, tells me they don't care if it gets reported. I mean this went on for a MONTH.
All I have to say about this is that there's a thing in communications called message discipline. These officers are not naive, uneducated individuals, they are not 20-year-old privates lugging 120lbs of gear in the field, I would be astonished to see that behaviour in the smallest rural council or professional office let alone US command in Afghanistan. I honestly do not understand it. Was there no paffo around to suggest somebody ought to stop talking now or to hold an emergency briefing about how everybody needs to STFU about 10 minutes ago?
I absolutely do not blame the reporter. I've been in theatre, and the officers, from task force commanders on down knew exactly what they were saying, stayed on message and as a result, they didn't get fired. They stayed in their lanes, they were pros, and I have a feeling if a junior captain under that command had felt the urge to expound on government policy or the PM's parentage to me, he would be on the next plane home. This wasn't a gotcha sprung by the reporter on the general and his staff, if anything it was the opposite. I feel for that reporter looking at the mess in his notebook and wondering what he was gonna do with THIS.
You just reminded me of this article that I did in my day job a while ago (apologize for the lengthy C&P, all the links are dead.) Emphasis(es) mine as they are germane to our discussion.
Cheers
Media message
By IAN ELLIOT
Capt. Jim Rees squared his shoulders yesterday morning and faced off against an opponent more implacable and cunning than the terrorists threatening the G11 summit that Canadian Forces were guarding yesterday.
The media.
In a conference room at the Directorate of Land Synthetic Environments, where he and more than 50 other mid-level officers were undergoing one of the most gruelling three-month training periods of their careers, Rees faced a bank of cameras, lights and reporters ostensibly representing outlets ranging from the local Halifax newspaper to CNN.
With his colleagues left to deal with easy stuff like bomb scares, violent demonstrations and local residents angry at traffic tie-ups caused by dignitaries, he dealt with the rumours, speculation and controversies that the media could turn into that day's news.
"Are you allowed to shoot the protesters if they get out of control?" asks one reporter, the real-life Jane Hawtin role-playing as a reporter for a national newspaper.
The actual and former reporters hired by the company to design and staff the fake summit also float the deceptively deadly queries beloved by the working press, such as questions prefaced with, "How do you feel ... " or questions about whether frontline troops view the Sea King helicopters as flying coffins or something worse than that.
The directing staff running the exercise evaluate Rees or watch computer screens elsewhere in the building as stories out of the news conference are published minutes later on realistic-looking news websites, just as they would be when it comes to the real thing.
"We are trying to make this training as realistic as possible," explains Maj. Greg Poehlmann, a real-life public affairs officer for the military who offered Rees feedback on his performance at the end of the session.
The Canadian Forces likes to talk about the complicated modern battlespace, populated not just by the enemy but by civilians, aid workers, refugees, NATO allies and other federal agencies, and the media is increasingly part of that environment.
No longer are training exercises "Army-pure," pushing troops and equipment around a simulated red-versus-blue battlefield where problems are of only two kinds -- those a tank can drive over and those it can't.
The exercise is one of four done annually by the Canadian Land Force Command and Staff College at Fort Frontenac, sometimes referred to as Kingston's Prison for Captains, owing to its high stone walls and the fact its residents are sent there for months at a stretch. It is the finishing school for Canada's mid-grade officers.
They are being trained for command beyond the military trade in which they specialize, and whether that's a domestic deployment like this week's -- simulating the economic summit that will be held in Canada immediately after the 2010 Olym - pics -- or their upcoming Afghan istan exercise, handling the media is part of the job.
"It's not the way that it used to be," agreed Col. Jamie Cade, commander of the college, "but the students that we're getting in here are sophisticated about the media, they've been on deployed operations before and they're comfortable with dealing with the media.
"The media is part of the military's operating environment today."
These days even the Taliban puts out its own version of news releases to sway public opinion, and dealing with the flood of information is part of any major operation for the Canadian Forces.
"It's been interesting," said Capt. Peter Ruggiero, a logistics officer based in Germany who is on the course.
"The course forces you to go from the company and platoon level you're used to to thinking about to the levels of of battalions and brigades, so you're going from thinking at the level of a few hundred soldiers to groups of 5,000 soldiers."
The weeklong exercise, just one of several scenarios that will be run during the course, is accurate down to the number of F- 18s in the air, warships off the coast and protesters identified by security agencies such as the RCMP who have vowed to disrupt the summit.
Students are graded on all aspects of their performance and how they respond when things deviate from plan.
Their performance on the course can have a huge impact on their careers and while the directing staff don't make a point of washing classes out wholesale, it's said that not even Gen. George Patton would walk out of the course with an A.
"You have to go beyond your speciality and work with the other elements of the combat arms to think about the bigger picture," said Capt. Josee Allard, a logistics officer who is posted with American forces in Ohio.
"For instance, I've really learned how important intelligence is to a successful operation."
It would have been inconceivable to see the military staging such media sessions as part of operational training even 20 years ago, when it operated on the doctrine that silence is rarely misquoted and treated the press with the same mistrust with which the press treated it.
Even in operations such as Bosnia, there were no imbedded reporters along for the ride, and with no Internet, what was written in the local papers did not matter the way it does today, when a commander's off-the-cuff remarks can be dominating the national news cycle within hours.
"Things are a lot different these days," said Al Morrow of Calien, the private firm that runs the exercises and strives to make them as realistic as possible, bringing in not just real reporters but former police officers, civil servants and other retired professionals to play roles.
"This is the computer age, the information age, and anything you can do to increase the complexity and the realism of these exercises will benefit the students."
That was even apparent at the lunch break at the base mess, where the TVs were tuned to CBC Newsworld and the story topping the program was the replacement of Brig.-Gen. Jonathan Vance as commander of Canadian Forces in Kandahar by Brig.-Gen. Daniel Menard.
He was being interviewed by a CBC reporter beside a mud wall in Kandahar, putting into practice what he was trained on here a relatively short time ago.
"Hey look, it's Menard," called out one of the reporters.
"Remember him? He was on one of the last exercises we did here."
I think the important question that no one seems to be asking is what benefit was this article to the readers, and thus essential why was it printed? It seems to me that journalism's current failure is not so much a lack of ethics (there are certainly ethical journalists) as it is a lack of understanding of what qualifies as quality reporting and worthwhile story telling.
McChrystal and his staff made unfortunate comments, but largely innocent in nature. Who has not maligned their bosses or coworkers after all, or used a some what of color slur in refereeing to some one or something that annoyed them. Furthermore just because McChyrstal voiced some disdain for the current administration in no way suggests he was not going to follow his orders. The biggest mistake was not the comments (as has already been pointed out) but that they were made to a reporter. Which brings me back to my previous point, many (NOT ALL) journalists seem to lack an understanding of what qualifies as quality reporting and worthwhile story telling.
What did telling this story accomplish? Did it reveal some startling truths about the conduct of the war that must be heard by the citizens of the US? Did it uncover some dark secrets (besides that McChrystal likes to drink Bud Light Lime)? No, it did not accomplish anything of value; it turned a few off color comments into the end of, by all accounts, a fantastic soldier’s career. The article accomplished nothing else; it was journalistic drivel, not worth the paper it was printed on.
Was this article really the most valuable information Michael Hastings gleaned from a month spent with McChrystal? I wish I could have spent a month shadowing McChrystal, the incites one could gain from such an opportunity are invaluable, shadowing anyone as successful, regardless of what they do for a living, should reveal far more then what basically amounts to interoffice gossip. Mr. Hastings learned nothing of more value to communicate to his readers? How many journalists would have reported the exact same story I wonder? Too many I think.
We don't have the right to talk smack about our superiors, gov't officials, etc., etc., etc.. We gave it up when we pulled on the uniform. Wolf has it about right in the post a coupla hours ago. Many of the civilian commentators just don't get that part.
As I recall the elements of proof for disrespect, presence of the offended person is not required and the truth of the offensive statement is irrelevant. Yes, your platoon leader is a jerk, but you still aren't allowed to verbalize it.
One of the ironies I find in these various dust-ups involving disrespect is that many of the offenders and THEIR defenders would court martial a private in a heartbeat if he called them a "dumb MF."
This 'justification' of why everyone should tread carefully around the media is exactly why there needs to be a recognized code of conduct for the media - indeed one might argue that once upon a time, an unwritten one not only existed but was respected by most people, on both sides of the discussion. Then, the media decided that they were the only ones who could save us from ourselves and in doing so, sacrificed any claim to professionalism that they once had.
Yes, I know that it is typically only the smaller proportion of irresponsible media that we tend to note and not the larger proportion who do just get on with their jobs - but even that larger proportion has a case to answer in not policing (or really even attempting to) police their own...lawyers, accountants, doctors and other professionals all not only have codes of conduct but bodies that hold their members accountable...so do tradespeople like plumbers, carpenters and electricians (just to head of the profession versus trade argument)...
Can you imagine a lawyer, as part of doing normal business, casually discarding lawyer-client privilege, or a doctor giving the Hippocratic Oath a miss because it wasn't convenient at the time...? This thread isn't so much about GEN McCrystal - he may or may not have brought this upon his own head - but, as per the initial post, the irresponsibility of the media in the way they have covered this story...
There is a code of conduct for the media in Afgh that comes in the form of an embed agreement, at least for those of us north of the border www.cefcom.forces.gc.ca/pa-ap/cfmep-pjifc/cfmep-jtfa-eng.pdf, but we're not lawyers or even plumbers. There are no professional standards to get into journalism, there is no governing body. Whether that's good or bad depends on how you feel about what you read. I think I know where you stand.
There seems to be consensus that Rolling Stone is not the sort of publication that COMISAF and his staff should allocate much time to. Was there a suggestion somewhere that the interview was granted on the basis that the magazine is considered 'trendy' and would reach an important audience?
However, if RS is thought to be an inappropriate vehicle for such a serious topic as war perhaps we should reflect on the use of RS on SWJ's own homepage...?
I found the refernce to RS to be slightly ironic, but perhaps I missed the point.
This is a publication that printed an article entitled "Heavy Metal Mercenary."
It isn't The Atlantic, The New Yorker or Esquire. Although the last has also ended careers...
...he would undoubtedly remind us that officers giving media interviews are a policy instrument, a conduct of politics (and war) by other means.
It would seem that the General forgot that.
Just remember we're in the age of Generation Kill, which has far more influence than Fick's book, although the latter was much better. Us old farts don't realize how much war has changed (or maybe hasn't since young men became Hoplites or steppe warriors, but the psyops are more sophisticated.) I can't fault McChrystal for speaking to RS because it has a desirable audience - and the kids who are the soldiers of tomorrow are not reading the New Yorker or the Atlantic - but my god, stay on message. THAT he can be blamed for.
On military-press relations, guys may want to track down the book Big Story on how the Tet offensive was covered by the media in 1968. The author Peter Braestup was a Marine in the Korean War who was the Washington Post Saigon bureau chief in 1968 when the offensive took place. The Post's foreign editor at the time had been an Army infantry officer and Japanese linguist who served in China during World War II. Neither of those guys was anti-military; in fact the Post was the last major paper in the U.S. to turn against the war on its editorial page. The book is out of print but it can be found in abridged and unabridged versions; the unabriged version was published in limited numbers so I'd recommend the abridged version. The book is an interesting study in how different people perceive the same events.
My late dad was a reporter for the Post from 1956 until 1986. My interest in the military and service was to a great extent inspired by his time in the Army in 1943-1946. When this subject of military-press relations comes up I have mixed feelings--generally it's best avoid discussions on the subject with those who have outspoken opinions about it. From my admittedly biased perspective journalists are not as a category sleazy people who wake up every day premeditating ways of how they can do institutions and people dirty.
I doubt that a code of conduct would have a major effect on how the media conducts its affairs--I also doubt that such a code would make the military, other institutions or individual persons any happier about how they are covered than they are now. Probably the only time the press would be "team players" would be during existential wars when national survival is at stake. By definition wars are s****y affairs so the optional ones will usually get more skeptical coverage than the World War II type of conflict when the entire nation is mobilized.
Hi 40below,
So de facto deception is okay (i.e. letting the person assume that they are OTR)? That, BTW, is not a "trap"; I'm just trying to figure out what ground rules you are operating under.
I appreciated both the story and the moral of the story :wry:. I also suspect that the relative difference in social function between Anthropologists and Journalists accounts for the different stance on OTR: I would assume you were OTR unless you said differently or you were saying something in a public space. BTW, we have the same dilemma with OTR material when we encounter similar information.
I've been in this miserable business for 22 years. People don't go OTR to share useful information; they do it to influence you, to vent, to express prejudices and opinions that they would never want their name attached to.
I have never been OTR in 20 years. I may not report stuff - and there's a lot of stuff sitting in a lot of notebooks that will die with me, believe me - but I make it clear to my subjects that you don't say it to me (or around me if you understand there's a reporter in the room) if you don't want to read it.* If I have a notebook in my hand, we are on the record. My boss has told me numerous times, "I'm not paying you to make friends."
Does it work? I've never been sued and I have never once had an issue with someone claiming that what wound up in print should not have been there, and I deal with folks with stars on their shoulders who, in my experience, are more thin-skinned about what's reported on them than high school cheerleaders.
*I don't speak for the rest of the press.
But there is in NZ and that's why if you want the job done and done right, you always fork out a little more and go to a registered master tradesman (and check that he is in fact registered)...
It should be the same with the media...once upon a time there were certain 'brands' that had the aura of responsibility and then there were the tabloids...now it's damn hard to tell the difference (possibly because they're all owned by the same few mega-corps?). Now you have to pretty much know each reporter personally before you trust them with anything but the time of day...I've had quite a bit to do with the media here and there are only a very few that I would trust to be relatively open with (and still within bounds of organisational ethos and messages).
In the end it all still comes down to responsibility and while it is so easy to pile all the crap on to GEN McCrystal, the true responsibility really does lie with Michael Hastings and Rolling Stone...what have they really achieved for the national good, for the war effort (if you accept that perhaps there is a war on) or the general advance of civilisation by pulling a good man down...Sweet FA, I'd say...
Here's what Col. Dandridge Mike Malone said about press coverage of the Tet offensive in 1968. I first heard this in about 1982 in a folksy tape recording Col. Malone made on the Vietnam War and the Army at the time. Copies of the tape made the rounds in the Army in the early '80s and groups of officers and NCOs were sometimes assembled to listen to it.
A text version of the tape with some added material is available on the following link:Quote:
. . . and captured NVA with Time magazine articles . . . and the splendid victory of Tet, with hundreds of NVA lying scattered in heaps and wide rows outside Kontum, where the deadly gunships had caught them coming, uncharacteristically, across open rice paddies in broad daylight (" . . . they was all doped up and goin' to a party . . . musta been . . . crazy little bastards . . .") . . . and the victory strangely, puzzlingly, lost, somehow, somewhere, up in the air waves of the ten thousand miles between Kontum and home . . .
http://one-six-one.fifthinfantrydivision.com/mikem.htm
I have served in the military for 12 years now and this is one of the most public displays of discord to date. Of course, it goes without saying that the words reported in the RS article are in violation of everything that the structure of civil military relations requires. Perhaps the larger question is why did everyone that surrounded him allow this situation to occur. Why was this reporter, with his less than favorable outlook on the wars, allowed unhindered to GEN McCrystal? Who was screening these folks; who was advising GEN McCrystal on access times and forums? It seems that there were many failures along the road to this story being published and the actual words used were just the culmination of blunders.
I happen to be reading Atkinson's In The Company Of Soldiers, in which he embedded directly with Petraeus and the 101st (it's a good read and one I picked up due to the general's new job and his access to the mission was simply astonishing), and he has a few telling passages in which he talks about publishing things that the general did not like, or that revealed differences in command about how the war should be fought, and that the general was frosty for 24 hours and then got over it.
It's also a pretty good primer on the embed process - in one TOC, Atkinson is allowed to set up his laptop out of the dust and is cheerfully told by the officer in charge that he's welcome to be there but if he publishes one word about anything he sees or hears there, he will be going straight to jail. Another telling passage is after Sgt. Akbar's fragging of his fellow soldiers in Iraq. The assessment the next day is the media coverage is negative, but the officers note what do you expect? It's a negative situation.
That said, Petraeus conducts himself like a pro, as does his staff. I'm sure he had his own thoughts about how Bush was prosecuting the war but he kept them to himself.
Is there not a danger in looking at the media as a 'type', when in fact there are a range of beasts within the species? Some will be reliable, honest and trustworthy with information they receive or detect that people in uniform around them would prefer they did not have. Others cannot be trusted as far as they can be thrown. And there are a lot in between...
My main point, which I failed to make clear, is that I feel (sorry Dave) it is a shame SWJ persists with a reference on its home page to being in Rolling Stone as some sort of badge of honour, when RS's credentials are somewhat at variance with those of SWJ. :cool:
That's a valid point that will be absolutely ignored by everyone here who uses the word 'media' not as a descriptive but as an epithet.
All I'll add to that is some of the most ignorant, arrogant, worthless people I have ever met in my life have been soldiers; and some of the most intelligent, thoughtful, dialed-in people I have ever met in my life have been soldiers. That's why I have a hard time crafting posts that use the word 'soldier' as meaning all good or all bad.
though I may have come close by suggesting that except for a very few, most media types show an amazing naivete about many things and a generally poor knowledge of anything military or combat related. In the case of many, distaste seemingly also enters the picture. I do frequently use the word in ignorant in relation to them. None of that, BTW, is epithetical -- it is a lament for the certain decline and seeming demise of an extremely important craft.
It's painful not least because my paternal grandfather was a newspaper journalist all his life. I think he'd be horrified by what passes in far too many instances today.
The Entertainment industry has much to answer for...
Yeah, I suspect your grandfather and I would get along just fine. Trust me, I look at what comes out of Afgh, and I am appalled, more than you are because I'm also a newspaper editor, and I can see stuff you can't. Least I can tell the difference between a C7 and a C-17, but being a military reporter means nothing when embeds are being handed out as attaboys for favourite columnists or 22-year-old new hires, who then go back to covering city hall or writing lifestyle columns.
I used to think paffos had the easiest job in the army until I met the kind of retards they have to deal with.
I agree that the media is, by and large, relatively ignorant about the military and national security. Certainly they struggle to use acronyms and jargon correctly, in a way that often causes us to cringe (I can't count how many times I've read about an officer 'enlisting'--and no, they weren't prior service). I think that is a product both of the elite civil-military gap and the complexity of defense reporting. There are some who most certainly 'get it'-- Tom Ricks, Dana Priest, CJ Chivers (a former Marine), George Packer--whether one agrees with everything they write or not.
Beyond that, however, I'm not sure if I would say most" of them are naive. For example, I would argue that frequently the best reporting and analysis about Afghanistan comes from journalists, not our intel community (insert pithy comment about quality of intel community here). In fact, the Flynn CNAS paper outright states that:I realize there are many bigger issues at play that factor into the intel/newspaper issue. However, with respect to actual frontline reporting, some in the media consistently produce impressively sophisticated reports and analysis despite the danger, limited resources, and lack of access to classified material.Quote:
Some battalion S-2 officers say they acquire more information that is helpful by reading U.S. newspapers than through reviewing regional command intelligence summaries.
I spent a year in Baghdad recently and worked closely with the media - mostly national level types, but sometimes with regional and local journalists.
I was surprised and impressed by the intelligence...and believe it or not...the conscientiousness of national level journalists. They well understood military organization, operations, and protocol nuances. They also closely followed political, economic and cultural issues -- both domestic and Iraqi -- and held complex views of progress and success. These journalists often knew more about the variables affecting an operation than my military colleagues because their knowledge base was deeper.
IMHO -- using "media" as epithet is unwarranted. The backstory behind news production is more Machiavellian than most debates on media acknowledge. Sure, journalists have egos and thick "lenses" that distill a story in a particular, sometimes biased way. But a bigger influencer was the voice back in New York, Atlanta, or somewhere, that pushed these guys for more drama, more conflict, more blood. I know of several "positive" stories that were filed at headquarters across the Atlantic, but never picked up for publication or airing. And why not? Because nice stuff doesn't sell. And, who's doing the buying? We are.
Let's face it. Few of us would have read Hasting's RS story if it weren't for the drama. That's the reality journalists operate in - part economics, part human imperfection, part audience bloodlust for excitement. It's not a comforting thought, but it's true. And McChrystal, et al, paid a steep price for not paying attention to that.
They deserve --and I give 'em -- Attaboys.
All of them, however, are trapped by a system that given the 24 hour news cycle is highly competitive and which TV-wise is dominated by the Entertainment industry to whom straight news is not an item of interest. Regrettably and perhaps wrongly, the TV crowd drives the Train dragging print media down with them...
That said, I do not question the need for news and media -- I just wish it did its job a little better. In fairness, I also wish the US Army did its job a little better... :wry: