My experiences with journalists.

In 2003 my battalion had Trent Gegax of newsweek embedded with us. Trent showed up at Carson and waited outthe Turkey thing with us. We also had a photojournalist from the Rocky Mountain News. Trent rarely left the battalion TOC in April and early May of 2003. In fact he published a really unflattering article on us, that got him thrown out of the battalion. Trent wrote an article that used alot of humor that soldiers had been using since the Turky plan got screwed up. Trent took the comments said as humor, and wrote a story utilizing them as "straight talk". The article could have been great if he wrote it as a piece demonstarting the good sense of humor that soldiers have, but he didn't, and he got alot of things wrong in the article. In 2005 when I was an advisor, you couldn't get anybody other military journalists to go out with us. During the January 2005 election, I ended up on the CBS morning show without ever realizing that I had been interviewed by CBS. A couple of Arab journalists wandered into my Iraqi units AO, the Iraqis told them to leave, the journalists/camera crew said no, and my unit then said they were going to kill them (hence, why I stepped in). The Arab crew said they were from Reuters, asked the Iraqi commander for an interview, he said no, I said sure, and low and behold it ran on CBS. As 2005 went on, more and more advisors from the active componet started show up. We used to joke about having to de-CNN the newbies because they were convinced they were going to take an IED as soon as they went out the gate. In 2006, during the media panel we had for my CGSC class, we asked the journalists why didn't they have more people covering Iraq if it was such an important story (answer cost and risk). What was their process for vetting local stringers (ans: why would we need to do that). Why do we always see the footage of one of the few bad things that happened in Iraq as opposed to the many good things (ans: We have a limited amount of time in a broadcast, so we have to use stuff that will capture the viewers attention). Do you guys view yourselves as Americans first or journalists/where/what is your loyalty (ans: we are the fourth estate, providing truth to the people, we view ourselves as Americans, but our responsibility is to the truth, not the country). Why do you guys not go on more operations with us (too dangerous, look at Bob Woodruf). If the Iraqi Security Forces are such a big story why don't you guys go on any operations with them (ans: way too dangerous). Now, the military PAO memeber of the panel owned to up to some serious mistakes that military and CPA made in 2004. The other thing brought up by all with no good answer is that things said in speeches by major figures can and do wind up being broadcast worldwide, even though the speech might have only been intended for a small niche domestic political audience. The take away that we had was that if you really wanted good reporting, you had to read smaller local papers that covered units because of the local slant, especially when National Guard units get called up. National level stuff just isn't very effective, and has too many competing agendas for time/space and ratings/circulation and most importantly money.