AWOL in the Media Battle Space
Cori writes:
Quote:
... I know PAOs who are absolutely adamant that the line between IO and PA must be an absolutely bright one because otherwise PA loses its credibility, but that might be somewhat "inside baseball," I'm not sure the public will make that distinction -- all they'll know is that people in uniform are advocating a position. I don't have a good answer for that (yet), beyond keeping this to the informal channels such as YouTube, where, of course, material is seen by fewer people unless a particular video either "goes virual" or is picked up by the mainstream media.
This reminds me of the guy on the night compass march who did not want to pull his partner out of a hole he tripped into because he feared losing his azimuth. (Hey, it really happened.)
The enemy has said that half his war effort is in the media battle space and we are not engaging. If PA is worried about losing credibility, why not be worried about the country losing credibility in the war instead, because of our failure to develop a response to the enemy media campaign.
The danger of being too good ....
The real challenge faced by the strategic cameraman is that if you're too good at your job, you become a threat to the civilian media, which takes great exception to having an important piece of footage released if they didn't produce it. The operation to rescue Jessica Lynch was meticulously videographed, with footage being released less than 18 hours after the operation. However, the entire event was defamed by the media as being another "Capricorn One." The bottom line is that if the military's news releases don't fit with the media's agenda, they either don't get air time or get "spun" as being self-promoting propaganda.