Oh, Public Relations! (Part II)

So, to continue my entry on public relations and the government, I want to talk about PR and the Iraq War. I did a paper on this topic, so I've researched it pretty extensively.

Background
Basically, during the Vietnam War, journalists were more or less given free reign. This all changed after the war because a perception began to arise that it was the media's fault that the US lost Vietnam.

“Ever since the Vietnam War, U.S. military journals have been stuffed with antimedia cant designed to prove that the press — not the Pentagon, not the U.S. government, not the nature of revolutionary struggle, not, as Dean Rusk once put it, “the tenacity” of the North Vietnamese— lost the war.”(Taken by storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign policy in the Gulf War)
During the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon began to exercise strong control over the flow of information coming out of Iraq and Kuwait. Media coverage became subjected to military control, especially in the case of “pool reporting,” in which reporters must travel in groups under military supervision and share information. Essentially, pool reporting ensures that all media outlets report the same news in the same manner. It leaves little or no opportunity for reporters to find and cultivate their own sources and stories. Most of the information that reporters had access to were handed down directly from military and government officials during briefings. In August 1990, as tensions in the Persian Gulf escalated, Navy Capt. Ron Wildermuth created a public affairs policy, entitled “Annex Foxtrot. Wildermuth set up new public affairs policies that would become standard practice during the Persian Gulf War.
“The movement of troops, weapons and material was to become the largest since the humiliating -- and televised -- Vietnam War defeat. And in the officer's mind, one point bore repetition ‘News media representatives,’ he wrote, ‘will be escorted at all times. Repeat, at all times.’ ” (New York Times article; AFTER THE WAR; Long Series of Military Decisions Led to Gulf War News Censorship. )
By the way, when I tried to get my hands on this document for this paper using a Freedom of Information Act request, the DoD told me that they either couldn't find it or that it doesn't exist. I've read about this document in many of my source. I'm hard-pressed to believe that it doesn't exist.


That's a quick and dirty summary of what the relationship between the media and the military was like leading up to Iraq.

How? So, how does the Pentagon manipulate the media?

• According to Josh Rushing, who is a former Marine public affairs officer and currently a reporter for al-Jazeera English, the government uses the soldiers to sell the war. The media is so awash with "support our troops" ideology. A reporter may have no problem questioning some White House press office flak, but they're somewhat less harsh on the military.
  

• Silencing the soldiers. The military can control the media by taking control of its own personnel. Anthony Swofford, who was a Marine during the first Persian Gulf War, mentions this in Jarhead:
  As we begin arguing about the gag order, Staff Sergeant Siek arrives. He says, “You do as your told. You signed the contract. You have no rights, you can’t speak out against your country. We call that treason. You can be shot for it. Goddamnit, we’re not playing around. Training is over. I’m sick of hearing your complaints. Tell your complaints to Saddam Hussein. See if he cares.

Colby Buzzell, who wrote My War: Killing Time in Iraq and served during the current war, said the same thing in his book: "Before Wenger, Palmer and Evans spoke with the media, a high-ranking Army public-affairs officer (lieutenant colonel) pulled them to the side and briefed them on what they could and could not say. All three told me that the lieutenant colonel stressed to them to tell the media that the insurgents fired first...then he told them to flat-out lie when he said:-Do not mention the fact that the Iraqi police fled from the mosque and the police station, how they didn’t even put up a fight, but instead tell the media that they fought well and did an excellent job”

• Another form of "silencing the soldiers" is rarely giving the media the opportunity to speak to anyone but the highest-ranking officers.This can be clearly seen by studying articles about a major even in Iraq, the bombing of an Iraqi parliament building within the “Green Zone” in April 2007. The only military personnel quoted in Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle articles are a Navy Lieutenant and General David Petraeus. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times quote no military personnel whatsoever. Even The Guardian, an English newspaper, only quotes an American Lieutenant Colonel and a Major General in reference to this event. I asked Colby Buzzell about this during an interview. He told me: They're [officers] easier to interview - from what I saw and experienced. The journalists almost always asked the public affairs officers and high ranking officers questions rather than lower enlisted personnel. I have no idea why they do that, but they do."
  An Army specialist, who recently served time in Iraq and worked in public affairs, told me this: "The media rarely quotes anyone but the highest ranking officers because the highest ranking officers are usually the only sources authorized to speak on behalf of the military. Public affairs offices fulfill requests according to soldier archetypes, not by-name requests. So when a reporter from the Salem Statesman-Journal, for instance, requests to speak to a soldier from Oregon, the public affairs office will usually select a first sergeant or a field-grade officer from Oregon to speak to the media because higher-ranking soldiers usually have a better idea of how to project the image the Army wishes to project.” (I'm choosing not to name him here because, as far as I know, I only had his permission to identify him in my research paper. Seeing as he is still active duty, I'd prefer not jeopardize his career.)
• The Pentagon stipulates that reporters aren't allowed to travel without military supervision. In previous conflicts that Americans have been involved in, the press has usually reported on rebel groups and traveled with them at some point in order to obtain a complete story. However, this is not the case in the current Iraq War and this type of reporting, which is usually common, is hardly, if ever, put into practice.
  
• Not to mention that, freelance reporters are unable to become embedded reporters, unless they work for a specific news organization. This puts the reporter in a position of being dependent upon the military for their mere livelihood. If the reporter is too critical, he or she may face losing their embedded position and therefore face losing their job and livelihood , as well as harming the chances of his or her respective news organization for placing another embedded reporter in the future. A freelance reporter, working only for him or herself, would not face this type of problem. The degree of independence that freelance reporters have would allow them to control the content of their own work, without having to answer to a larger organization.
  

What does it all mean?
There is no other realm of our society — including other government activities— in which the media faces as much stringent restriction as when trying to report on military action. The current relationship between the military and the media is tenuous, at best and at worst, it is a manipulative power struggle. It is both a troubled and intimate relationship.
The Pentagon’s harsh, rigid restrictions of the media have created a climate where the media has no choice to depend upon the military in order to get any sort of story, forcing the media into a journalist Stockholm Syndrome of sorts. Now, since the media must depend on the military as the sole or main source for stories, the military is able to use the media as a tool in order to portray the war in a self-interested manner. The media is serving the military as mouthpiece by regurgitating back to the public what comes out of the Public Affairs office.

This enlightening development in politics, government and the media is brought to you by a little media/public opinion-manipulating tool called public relations. Long live the PR war!