The Military and the Media

In the pre-dawn of a morning last September a small group of reporters and photographers drawn from newspapers, press agencies, television, and radio gathered at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington ready to embark on a secret mission. Until briefed by the Pentagon officers who had summoned them on short notice, the journalists had no idea of where they were heading. A day later they were deposited in the Central Asian republic of Kazakstan to watch troops of the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, parachute onto a barren plateau neighboring the Tien Shan mountains. The operation was an exercise conducted with the military of a dozen other nations in creation of a peacekeeping and humanitarian force in Central Asia.

 The operation was also a rare training exercise for the American press. The Pentagon had used the occasion to practice activation of the National Media Pool, a long-standing arrangement with news organizations to afford coverage of the secret launching of combat operations.

After watching some 600 of his troops float down with Russian MIG fighters flying cover above them, the U.S. commander, General John Sheehan, remarked: "It really is a different world." The general was referring to the new relationship with former cold war opponents, but he could very well have been speaking of the changed relationship between the American military and the media.

 The bitter standoff extending over more than three decades has eased considerably. There has been a relaxation in the attitude of the military toward the press, but not simply as a consequence of some Pentagon revelation. With the end of the cold war and the development of ultra-fast satellite communications, old hard-fought issues such as military insistence on prior review of copy filed from war zones have become obsolete. Reporters roaming war zones equipped with portable satellite equipment are no longer dependent on military facilities to file stories or transmit photographs. Engaged now in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, such as those in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, and Bosnia, the military have concluded that they must treat the media less as adversaries and more as partners.

These changes, which evolved in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf war, are detailed by Warren P. Strobel. Strobel, the White House correspondent of TheWashington Times, formerly covered the State Department, and was a fellow 1994-95 at the United States Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan institution created by Congress to research resolution of international conflicts. He contends:

 "The traditional wartime relationship between reporters and officials has been turned virtually on its head. Rather than controlling reporters in peace operations, military commanders and their civilian bosses desperately need them to help build public support, to explain what may be a complex and indistinct picture and even to gather useful information for them in the field. In return, they must offer access and independence that allow reporters to distance themselves from their would-be chaperones in the U.S. military."

 As the most graphic example of what he calls the "push and pull" impact of the news media, Strobel cites the 1993 operations in Somalia. The wrenching television images of starving Somali women and children were a factor in persuading President Bush to send in troops to assist in the distribution of relief supplies. Images of a dead American soldier, one of eighteen killed in a firefight, being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu as crowds of Somalis jeered, were a factor in persuading Clinton to order the withdrawal of those troops.

 While recording the considerable impact on public opinion, notably in time of crisis, Strobel argues that, contrary to what some analysts contend, media coverage is not decisive in determining government policy Ð except possibly when leaders vacillate and leave a political vacuum. He takes issue with the historian George Kennan, who in examining the Somalia experience, expressed concern that American policies will be "controlled by popular emotional impulses, and particularly ones provoked by the commercial television industry." In each peacekeeping operation where the U.S. chose intervention, Strobel says, "unique strategic, diplomatic, and military factors played a role and had little or nothing to do with the news media." Further: "The news media, especially television, do a poor job of providing early warning of ethnic conflict, famine, and other elements of post-cold war humanitarian crises."

In tracking the evolution in relations between the military and the press over the past century, Strobel makes his most significant contribution in his excellent analysis of the interaction during the peace operations. Apart from some failed efforts by General Douglas MacArthur to muzzle reporters when U.S. troops were in retreat, relations with the military in World War II were reasonably good and continued to be so during the Korean war. The severe erosion in relations developed during the Vietnam war, when journalists rebelled against manipulation and concealment of information by military and civilian government spokesmen. The military emerged from the conflict embittered and attributing defeat to media undercutting of public support.

 Strobel debunks that assumption: "Public support declined not because of the news media, and specifically images of casualties, but because the costs, duration, and outcome of the mission began to diverge from what the public had expected . . . . In both Vietnam and Somalia costs began to outweigh perceived benefits to such an extent that members of Congress, columnists, and members of the foreign policy establishment, followed by the public, began pressuring the government for a new policy."

 Nevertheless, after Vietnam the military, especially the Army, became obsessed with the need to control battlefield news reporting. When the U.S. invaded the island of Grenada in 1983, the press was completely blocked from close-in coverage of the decisive first two days. After media protests, the Pentagon appointed the Sidle Commission, which in consultation with news organizations, set up the Department of Defense National Media Defense Pool. Press frustration mounted, when in the invasion of Panama in 1989, the pools of news reporters who were to file joint dispatches were denied the promised early access.

 Control of the media tightened even more during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf war. In the aftermath, the combined news organizations complained that the flow of information had been impeded, pools did not work, stories and pictures were late or lost in military transmissions, access to soldiers in the field was interfered with by a needless system of military escorts and copy review. In subsequent negotiations news organizations and the Pentagon agreed on nine principles to assure access for open and independent coverage of combat operations. The media would not agree to a tenth principle that the military insisted it must exercise: the right of prior security review of copy.

 By Strobel's account, the military in peace operations has abided by the nine principles. In Somalia, just after midnight on December 9, 1992, when combat-ready U.S. troops in the vanguard of Operation Restore Hope landed on the beach off Mogadishu, they were met by hundreds of reporters. Marine Brig. Gen. Frank Libutti had told reporters: "I recommend all of you go down to the beach if you want a good show tonight." The ensuing scene, press camera flashes in the faces of the landing troops and reporters stumbling about among soldiers on the beach, was not flattering either to military public relations or media performance, but it was characteristic of the greater openness which was manifest also during the relief effort in Rwanda, Haiti, and Bosnia.

 The military has not mandated prior copy review in any operation. With reporters toting satellite equipment for copy transmission there are practical questions as to how censorship could be enforced. However, under the agreed principles journalists can be expelled from combat zones for violation of security ground rules.

 The Pentagon has retained the National Media Pool system on a standby basis, with the acquiescence of news organization. Pools were in position in September 1994 for an invasion of Haiti. But they were disbanded when agreement was reached with the Haitian military junta for peaceful landings and reporters independently had already reached the island. Reporting unfettered by military supervision now has become the general practice.

 In Bosnia, the American component of the NATO-led Implementation Force imposes restrictions on release of operational information affecting the security of troops, which the media traditionally have observed. When American troops first entered the country there was some bungling in press relations, due to inefficiencies, according to one foreign editor, but no evidence of the past hostility.

 Military personnel have been told in brochures and orientation sessions to be open with the media, to grant access wherever possible, and to provide facilities where needed. Reporters have been offered the option of becoming "embedded" for a time in units for direct contacts with soldiers. The usual adversarial posture of the media comes into play, of course, as in media engagement with civilian institutions, and there are occasional bureaucratic snafus on the part of the Army. But relations overall have mellowed.

The Strobel study, done in 1994-96 and meticulously annotated with source notes, is devoted largely to the actions classified by the army as "operations other than war." The author does not explore how military policies might be readapted, if the U.S. became involved in a full-blown war, perhaps in Korea or Iraq. With broader security concerns at stake, military controls over the media might very well be tightened once again. But given the latter-day indoctrination of the military officer corps and development of news communication technologies, it seems unlikely that there would be a return to the more serious abuses of the Persian Gulf war.

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