The Media Aren't the Enemy in Iraq

[SWJED]

10 January LA Times commentary - The Media Aren't the Enemy in Iraq by Max Boot.

... Administration spokesmen and many soldiers have been saying for years that things aren't so bad in Iraq. "If you just watched what's happening every time there's a bomb going off in Baghdad, you'd think the whole country's aflame," Donald Rumsfeld declared for the umpteenth time just before leaving office. "But you fly over it, and that's just simply not the case." ....

James Q. Wilson, a longtime professor at Harvard, UCLA and Pepperdine, published a scathing essay in the autumn issue of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal in which he complained that "positive stories about progress in Iraq were just a small fraction of all the broadcasts." He went on to draw an analogy with the Tet offensive in 1968, which the press widely reported as an American failure even though it was a military defeat for North Vietnam...

Actually, it's not at all clear that the Vietnam War was lost in the media. Reporters were initially gung-ho about the war; they went into opposition only after it became clear that the military and the Johnson administration had no plan for victory.

In any case, the Tet analogy is dubious, because it is hard to find any signs of U.S. progress in the Iraq conflict comparable to the devastation the Viet Cong suffered in 1968...

[Rob Thornton]

Funny thing happened the other day, a reporter came out with a GO. She was a nice enough sort - English working for a French news agency. She took notes as the GO talked to our team, then took more notes as the GO talked to the IA BDE CDR and IA BN CDR. On the way out she asked if we lived here with our counterparts. I told her we did and she lamented that more time could not have been spent discussing it. I gave her my email and invited her to send some questions we could look over.

In about 2 days I get an email that asks me questions about Baghdad and how I thought troops here would perform there. She even offered to quote me a US training officer from here. I wrote her a nice note back explaining that Baghdad was not my patch, but I'd be happy o tell her about how the IA perform here, and the risks they take, and what its like to live here. I also explained that I don't much care to be quoted as anything but my name - to me that seems more like somthing a politician or a journalist would do.

It was pretty clear to me that her interests were about selling her story. It had little to do with reporting the news. They may not be the enemy, but they're not on anybody's team but their own - there is no honor amongst thieves. If you have the chance to use the media/press as a tool toward an IO end, then bang away; but I'd be wary of them otherwise. They are 2nd on my not so favorite occupation list - followed closely by an ever increasing list of war profiteering contractors.

[Steve Blair]

The media has always been interested in making a "splash," from the Spanish-American War on (and most likely before that). They may not be the enemy, but I'd sure as hell not list them as disinterested observers.

To his credit, Boot goes on to list a fair number of reputable correspondents, among them Ricks and Naylor. But I would tend to question how much their analysis is lost in the flurry of bandwagon reporting and "features" that dominate the MSM. And the blogsphere has its own agendas as well, but at least the majority of them make those agendas pretty clear. MSM still insists that it's "impartial," whatever that may mean these days.

[Tom Odom]

As a spook on the ground I generally operated on the premise there was nothing positive that could come out of media contacts. i did, however, make certain exceptions when the reporter was willing to stick around for more than a 15 second sound bite. I actively promoted UNAMIR Radio access with my Rwandan military counterparts and the results were generally positive. I talked in depth with Philip Gourevitch as he did the research for his book as well as Reuters stringer who routinely worked the area.

My 15 seconds of unwanted fame came with a series of articles about me in the Wash Post over a dog; in that case, the media never talked to me. And a French friend also told me that I was on Belgian television as an "advisor and planner" for the Iwawa Island clreaing op in late 95.

All of that aside, I still contend that we have to treat the media as the battlefield as we do any other factor addressed in METT-T. We cannot change the hills but we do have to consider their effects on our operations, good and bad, You have to do the same with the media.

Best
Tom

[120mm]

For the golfers among us:

The media is part of the course. Whining about them doesn't advance "the game" one iota.

While I detest them in my heart, I think I'd rather have them close then allow them to operate at a distance.

[Culpeper]

This goes without stating but basic rule of thumb is that the media is a detriment in a democratic society fighting a counterinsurgency war. It comes with the playing field. Nevertheless, in other wars the U.S.A. has fought, such things as the Sedition Act of 1918 were very useful for censoring the press. This is where I think the Patriot Act doesn't go far enough. Under the radar sedition needs to stop and it should start within Washington D.C. Given enough rope, any politician, on any given day, in front of any given media, will hang himself or herself. The problem is is there isn't a rope to be found within The Beltway. Go figure. Nevertheless, Condoleezza Rice would have received great press had she simply told Barbara Boxer, "Why don't you just go piss on a rope?" Well, I guess she did in her own more professional way. There is more than one way to skin a cat. Wonderful thing; a free press.

Rice criticizes Boxer's comment

"In retrospect, gee, I thought single women had come further than that, that the only question is are you making good decisions because you have kids," Rice said in an interview Friday on Fox News