Everyone agrees: the 1991 gulf war was a disaster for military-media relations. Reporters were mostly cooped up at an air base in Saudi Arabia with little to do but complain about censorship. Access to the battlefield was extremely limited, and the Pentagon lied about the success of the Patriot missiles. When it was over, reporters weren’t the only ones who were sore. The U.S. Army smashed Saddam’s Republican Guard in a great tank battle, and no press was present to report its success story. “What’s the government afraid of?” John Chancellor, the late NBC News anchor, told me at the time. “They should trust us.”
This time they do, up to a point. The military embedded correspondents on a limited basis in Afghanistan and is now ready to give the press more access than in any conflict since Vietnam. “It’s the Powell Doctrine of coverage–overwhelming force,” says Andy Rosenthal, assistant managing editor of The New York Times. “When you’re offered all of this access, you have to take it.” Because it’s hard to keep soldiers (or anyone else) from eventually talking, the press should get a much fuller picture of what it’s like to fight. The Pentagon, especially Assistant Secretary Victoria Clarke, deserves credit for devising about as good a solution to the logistics of combat coverage as the press could ask for.
Most of the ground rules that embedded reporters must sign seem reasonable, like not carrying a sidearm, not using flash photography at night and not reporting the unit’s exact position. This time, there will be no censorship of stories and TV scripts. The truth is, it’s just not practical anymore. Wireless communications has killed military censorship for good. Embedded reporters don’t tend to be troublemakers in the field, anyway. If they endanger the unit, they know they’re endangering themselves. Even live satellite coverage will be allowed (with a public-affairs officer present), making it quite possible that viewers will see people killed in real time. That should give the media ethicists something to chew on.
Yet there’s still something subtly coercive about the new policy: if you travel with a group over a period of weeks, especially one that is providing you protection from chemical or biological attack, you’re more likely to stay loyal to the people you’re with. (This will be tested, of course, if things go badly wrong.) And then there’s the question of just how much actual fighting most will witness. The Pentagon says it wants reporters in tanks and planes (though obviously not in the one- and two-seat fighters that will handle most of the action). But it’ll be the luck of the draw. Some correspondents and crews will see lots of bang-bang; others may wonder why they went to the trouble of playing half soldier–told to carry everything from a sleeping bag to two boxes of baby wipes for battlefield “showers”–only to be marooned away from the action or under a squadron commander who overprotects them.
All of which explains why NEWSWEEK and most other major news organizations have correspondents roaming the region freely as well as embedded with troops. It’s like campaign coverage; you need some reporters on the plane with the candidates and others out talking to voters. One big question is how the military will treat reporters who aren’t embedded. When Doug Struck of The Washington Post tried to investigate civilian casualties in Afghanistan, he was forced by U.S. soldiers to lie down with a gun pointed at his head.
That could happen again. Truth will forever be the first casualty of war. But maybe this time the military can stay focused on its larger aim–making sure that Saddam doesn’t get away with lies about the effects of U.S. bombing. “What better way to combat those lies than having impartial observers right there?” Lt. Col. Mike Halbig told me. Even the Arab crews from places like MBC and Al-Jazeera will at least broadcast the good pictures they get with the Americans. They’ll toss in their spin, but TV pictures–as the U.S. military has finally learned–speak louder than the words of some official behind a podium.
