COIN & The Media (catch all)

[Spud]

Tales of misquotes and out of context statements drive the troops to avoid the media. There are exceptions and a few have told me of specific reporters -- also few -- that were always welcome.

A recurring complaint, minor and even petty to some but serious to those making it, is that the media is pretty ignorant about things military. Improper terminology, wrong names and a host of minor misunderstood things appear in print and foster the perception that many in the media don't know much and do not care that they don't know much. That to some is an indicator of low regard and no one likes to believe they are held in low regard.

Over the past few years my experience with the lads has led me to believe that the disagreement/mistrust/disgust between our soldiers and journos has been based on the perception of professionalism. The digs are hyper-critical. They spend their lives training and perfecting their skills and operate in an environment where everyone is focussed on excellence. When mistakes occur we immediately apply critical thought processes and analyse the mistakes to see what we can learn from them so that it doesn't happen again. The organisation is focussed on excellence from the individual level up. Now picture a journo ... he/she writes well but in no way is a SME in the military field. They focus on their next deadline rather than the longer term and through their processes essentially wipe the slate clean each time an article is published. The media game is focussed on the next 24 hours so much that the past is simply that ... the past. Journo's essentially start each working day fresh with no real organisational consequence for what happened the day before (unless they commit a shocker). In essence you have two organisations that are diametrically opposed in their work ethic/value set and the consequences of those factors are all too real to one group while they are esoteric to the other.

I think Professor Phil Taylor sums it up quite well in one slide -- "The Clash of Cultures"

Importantly this doesn't mean we can't work together ... we spend a fair bit of time educating our digs about these differing values so that we can build better relationships. Breaking the parochial military view of everyone else on the battlefield is key and as soldiers get more exposure, experience and education they are not as quick to jump to values-based decisions.