The First Amendment allows the press to freely criticize the American government. Citizens of the United States often take for granted that the press is independent of the government. Arnold S. Wolfe argues, “Information from diverse and antagonistic sources is crucial for a democracy.” As a result, the military and the media are often seen as competing (and sometimes hostile) institutions because of their contrasting objectives.
The media emerged as critics of U.S. foreign policy in the 1960s, especially in regards to U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Korea. The Vietnam War was the first war where television played an important role. Journalists reported the Vietnam War in terms that often contradicted the official declarations of the current administration. Reporters had the power to generate public opposition to the war. According to Jonathan Merman, journalists created opposition by writing “stories that encouraged Americans to question the wisdom and credibility of the federal government.”
Don Kirk, a foreign correspondent in Vietnam and Korea during the wars, said “It was almost fashionable to be critical of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. A majority of correspondence was critical.” This was partly due to the fervent anti-war passions that characterize the Vietnam era.
In order to combat the media’s negative coverage of U.S. military efforts, the government would limit wartime reporting through sequesters, deception, escorts, “televised spectacles”, news blackout, limited embedding or gag orders. These efforts were coupled with government’s ability to censor information based on issues of operational security or the success of the military mission.
In the wake of defeat in Vietnam, military officials gathered searched for the reasons for their defeat. Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Douglas J. Goebel writes, “Many [military officials] concluded that the media’s coverage of the war was a factor in the outcome of the war.”
After Vietnam, the government has tried to curb negative coverage of U.S. military efforts. The Department of Defense (DoD) concluded that in order to win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the media must report positively on the war efforts. Consequently, the military has encouraged the embedding of journalists. As a result, the military is able to influence the kinds of stories published. Wartime coverage has become more positive post-Vietnam. Don Kirk said, “I don’t sense the same level of criticism.”
The shift in wartime coverage may be somewhat attributed to the Bush administration’s decision to implement the “Embedded Reporter Program” in May of 2003. The program allowed journalists to cover real-time, frontline combat by being placed within individual military units. The program was implemented based on the premise that press reports of success and progress strengthen public support for foreign policy. The Bush administration and the DoD believed that embedded journalists would be more sympathetic (and therefore more likely) to publish positive stories about the military, the soldiers and their efforts.
“We would publish press releases to generate publicity and the media would sometimes pick them up," LTC Whiteside said. "We would take them around and show them places so they could find their story. Sometimes, we would run operations just for the media and show them all the good we’re doing.” Ultimately, the media has become the mechanism in which the military communicates to the public its objectives and successes.
W. Lance Bennett said, “Journalists and political officials [are] engaged in a process of symbiosis or mutual dependence, in which each side used the other to promote particular organizational (press or government) goals.”
Andrew P. Cortell writes, “The embed program used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq represents a shift in U.S. military-media relations.” Instead of the military unilaterally determining and limiting the media’s role in wartime coverage (as was the case in Vietnam), they’re instead working with the media which has resulted in cooperation.
Embedded journalists have thus provided positive portrayals of the troops in their individual units and have found it difficult to offer an overarching picture of the military campaign. “The DoD judged its media strategy to be a success with respect to operational security, objective reporting, and public support,” wrote Cortell.
Though the relationship between the U.S. military and the media has improved considerably since the Vietnam-era, it is still not perfect. Cortell argues, “New technologies have… complicated the relationship between the military and the media.”
The military’s capacity to limit access of the media may be effective only for those members of the media who are willing to be restrained. James Reston believed that “it was no longer possible for a free country to fight even a limited war in a world of modern communication, with reporters and television cameras on the battlefield.”
Information regarding the military’s efforts is becoming increasingly available because of the journalist’s access to new technologies. Journalists are now able to file their stories directly from the field. Technological advances could result in breaches of military secrets to compromises in U.S. military forces’ image with domestic and foreign audiences. “The new technologies can pose problems for operational security and could compromise the casualty notification system but there’s an implicit trust between the soldiers and the reporters,” said Whiteside.
Though, there are military officials that are still concerned with the media’s coverage of war. The military is afraid that reporters only want ‘bang-bang’ stories of battle which is contradictory to the military’s belief that war coverage should focus on political, economic and diplomatic progress. “The media wants the scandal. Not the good that we’re doing,” said Whiteside. “The media tends to be more negative; it’s the nature of journalism or maybe it’s just the nature of humans.”
According to a McCormick Tribune Foundation conference series that analyzed the current military-media relationship, “The military feel aggrieved that their successes are not given more coverage by the media.”
Though, many journalists believe that it is their job to tell the truth and let the public decide on the success or failure of the war. During the conference series, many journalists believed that it was the “role of the media to be watchdogs and not take sides.”
References:
Cortell, Andrew P., Robert M Eisinger and Scott L. Althaus. “Why Embed?: Explaining the Bush Administration’s Decision to Embed Reporters in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq”. American Behavioral Scientist. 2009: vol. 52: p. 657-677.
Goebel, Douglas J., LTC USAF. “Military-Media Relations: The future media environment and its influence on military operations”. Air War College, Air University. April 1995.
Mermin, Jonathan. Debating war and peace: Media coverage of U.S. intervention in post-Vietnam era. 1999. New Jersey: Princeton Review.
“The Military-Media Relationship 2005 – How the armed forces, journalists and the public view coverage of military conflict”. McCormick Tribune Conference Series: Executive Summary. McCormick Tribune Foundation.
Wolfe, Arnold S., Jeromy Swanson and Stacy Wrona. “What the American people deserve from American journalism during wartime: A First Amendment view abetted by semiotic analysis”. Journalism Studies. 2008: vol. 9, no. 1. 38-56.
No comments:
Post a Comment