"War on Film"
"War on Film"
The often fraught relationship between military and media.
The advent of 24-hours news coverage and near realtime transmission of footage has left military wary of the media. Dodge Billingsley investigates how relations have developed in recent history and examines how the military can best use the media to its advantage.
http://www.webfilehost.com/?mode=viewupload&id=5584376
And of course Dodge wouldn't have any commercial interest in that would he
The key piece of the argument that is missing from both sides in all of this is MOE. I can give you MOP on flashy PPT slides all day long -- how many releases I put out, how many images were released, how much vision was fed to the networks, how many journos I supported etc. People like Dodge can do the same -- I got 60 mins on this station at prime time, my vision was syndicated globally on CNN etc.
What we can't do effectively is the MOE bit. What level of penetration did my key massages have in that product? Then if we start to get into 2nd and 3rd order effects how do I tell if my messages actually had any cognitive impact (either positively or negatively). Then to take it a step further how were those messages interpreted by the different target audiences. Then the impact on the unintended audiences etc. etc. etc.
I'm yet to find a way (short of employing a whole lot of grads to answer my dodgy survey that any ORSA in his right mind would run screaming from the room if he saw it) to do proper content analysis of media. And of course there's a big reason for this ... the whole marketing/PR industry is built around reporting MOP because they don't want to highlight any failings in their campaigns. Therefore any useful tool is only set up for hits analysis rather than content analysis.
To be honest most of the analysis of things we've done show we continue to disseminate only one of our current five key messages -- that Iraq/AFG is a dangerous place. Other than that we're pretty much sucking up to the egos of journos and that's about it.
To do this properly requires so much more in the way of funding and personnel that I'm pretty much back to my PPT with a couple of pretty pics ... people like it better.
i am right here!
I was one of only two full-time military analysts employed by a UK broadcast company. I sat, live on Sky News, for over 200's hours of live comment and broadcasting watched by 60 million folks world wide, both after 9/11 and OIF, for 42 and 28 days respectively.
I am by no means unique, but apart from being invited by the British Army to talk at a conference, and write an article for the BAR, I am amazed at all the experts on this subject who have never spent a second in a TV studio, or even know how one works or how stories are put together and become stories. Having looked at the Elephant pretty close, I believe IO is not something armies should do.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Of course TV is only one medium for getting the message out, so that's a pretty narrow viewpoint from which to base your assessment that armies shouldn't be in the IO business. A whole bunch of pretty bright people from militaries across the globe have decided over the last couple of decades of thought and practical experience that it's CRITICAL for armies to be in this business.
If you meant to say that it's extremely difficult to be good at IO and that most armies don't train their people properly for this sort of work, I'll certainly agree.
You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone
Well I don't limit this view to TV.Originally Posted by Rockbridge
IO is the nothing to do with the application of force for the breaking of will.
It is therefore nothing to do with the military. It is entirely political, and thus the realm of civil servants and elected officials.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Truer words were rarely spoken. We may
forget that but if we do it will be at significant downstream cost to the Armed Forces. I will caveat that by stating the obvious and noting that it IS imperative that said Armed Forces not contribute to the opposition's IO effort by doing dumb things...
Eets not our yob.
It's a new world out there my friend ....
The traditional view of the military as an element that only applies force to break will became obsolete years ago because it was overcome by the reality of our national security requirements. While it would be really nice if national security responsibilities could be divided up and put into little compartments like eggs in a box, that's not the real world. In order to influence population groups in areas that are too rough for civilians, the military has to do the job.
I hate to return to a discussion on definitions of IO, but what definition are you referencing when you state that IO is entirely political? As defined by US and NATO doctrine, IO is a military operation. There are certainly other related activities out there such as Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy that fall outside the military realm .... but IO is clearly defined as a military function.
If you don't agree with the accepted definition of IO as a military op, then we're not speaking the same language and I'm willing to concede that your argument may hold some validity. However, if you are arguing that the accepted definitions are wrong, then you've got an influence campaign to wage yourself if you plan to change the doctrine of several dozen countries.
Last edited by Rockbridge; 03-20-2008 at 09:36 AM.
You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone
That's the point I continually make ... in a regular Defence Force of about 50,000 I can count the number of trained, competent and experienced IO guys on one hand. When we are that small in the equation we will always end up as a IO salt shaker sprinkling "some IO" (most commanders don't even know WTF it is or isn't) on an already developed plan.
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks