Today's quote: A lesson in how to handle the military-media relationship

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Tuesday, May 18, 2010 - 9:53 AM Share

While reading the memoirs of Maj. Gen. Sir Francis de Guingand, chief of staff to that jerk Montgomery during World War II, I was struck by this aside as he recounted one of his monthly dinners with British war correspondents:

As always, I was perfectly frank with them. It is no use being anything else with intelligent war correspondents -- a fact often forgotten by some commanders."

At the dinner in question, in late 1944, he discussed with them the growing friction between Montgomery and the senior American generals, Eisenhower and Bradley. So much for the U.S. military theory that you should never go off the record.

Speaking of the media and the military, take a look at Reach 364's interview from Hell. He's a U.S. Air Force pilot who decided that, in the interest of world peace, he should go to Jordan and study Arabic and the Middle East. He was paid for his interest with a hellish TV interview in which he was asked, among other things, whether he would shoot a Jordanian classmate.

UPDATE: Reach 364 writes in to clarify, "I DID NOT consent to do a TV interview. This interrogation came during an ordinary classroom discussion, when the teacher decided it would be a good idea to do a practice interview. This was 'practice' for a TV show he wanted me to participate in, but I of course declined."

military photo

EXPLORE:MEDIA, MILITARY

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TYRTAIOS

3:55 PM ET

May 18, 2010

A Quote From Yesterday : )

“I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast." - William Tecumseh Sherman

JSINAIKO

4:39 PM ET

May 18, 2010

Guingand, Monty + THE MEDIA

Ironically, Guingand saved Monty's job by flying to SHEAF and apologizing for Monty and making it clear that Monty knew (under duress of course) who is boss was.

From what I can tell the media/military kerfuffle, notwithstanding Sherman's opinions in 1864 or 65 didn't really get ugly till Vietnam. Reporters like Sy Hersh, along with many others knew they were being lied to; the facts they saw out in the field just didn't match up with the line they were fed by MACV spokesmen, not to say Westy himself.

In Vietnam, just as in Korea and WW II, reporters had total freedom - at their own risk of course - to go anywhere they wanted. That worked fine when Guingand's press policy was adhered to - as it was by almost everyone in WW II and Korea. It was a conscripted force, there was (even to some degree in Korea) support by the vast majority of the population, and frankness, whether on or off the record was an obvious policy. It should be added that the press respected the military's need for security and in many cases secrecy because the knew they weren't being lied to. Once the press realized - circa 1965 - that the military press operation in Vietnam wasn't being frank with them, in fact often delivering outright lies the pact ended with bad results for the military.

The military did a good job in 1990 - 91 and again in 2003 of co-opting the press using various method such as "embedding" but again, once things started going pear-shaped reporters such as Tom got out into the field to gather their own facts. Guingand's and the American policy in the 1940s seems to more intelligent and correct way to go about it all. Nobody has to like the media, but as someone once said, it's a mistake to go after people who buy ink by the barrel (or these days, pixels and bandwidth).

CMEYERGO

2:55 AM ET

May 19, 2010

Too bad we don't have reporters

The same corporations who run our wars send their reporters to cover them. There are no "intelligent" reporters allowed. Those they allow are just rich kids with no military background who want to get richer by selling books, so they need the access provided by Generals. Need an example? Tom Ricks is good. Tom Clancy and Steven Ambrose are others.

COW COOKIE

3:57 AM ET

May 19, 2010

Aside from the broad generalizations ...

You do know that Tom Clancy and Stephen Ambrose are a novelist and historian, right? And if they're so beholden to the generals, why is there so much critical coverage of the war — some would say even too much critical coverage? Reporters were out in front of the military in understanding the consequence of the looting early during the invasion and recognizing the emergence of a sectarian civil war. They were arguably overly critical about the prospects of the Surge (although I'd argue that the Surge still hasn't achieved its strategic aims).

If you want to pick on the media, fine. There are certainly reasons to do so. But being beholden to corporations and generals is not one of them.

The larger problem is not that there is a lack of intelligent reporters or that they have no military background. It's that modern warfare is a synthesis of culture, economics and combat and that few reporters - or people, in general - have mastered each of those spheres.

Reporters tend to have either subject-area expertise or geographic expertise, but not both - especially in the early stages of any war. The Arabic experts don't always understand the military processes, and the military experts don't always understand the local politics. No one understands the economics except the few arcane specialists intrepid enough to venture into a war zone.

I've seen reporters I greatly respect on their own beat have gaping holes on a subject that they suddenly find relevant to their own reporting. I once found myself rubbing my temples as one of the most qualified Arabist I've met blew half a question-and-answer session struggling to understand basic military concepts.

But it's also important to remember that this is a human trait, not a journalistic one. The military, the State Department and every other organization has these holes because no single person can know everything - especially in a field as ephemeral as current events. The key is to look at the media in aggregate - each reporter using his or her own expertise to add one more piece of knowledge about what's happening on the ground. That's essentially the way every large body of human knowledge is created - whether science, engineering or, yes, even journalism. It's not perfect. But it's all we've got.

SOLDIERSDIARY

5:22 AM ET

May 19, 2010

Cow's comments

Good comments Cow...I would add this; when reporters ensconce themselves into a unit for reporting two things tend to happen; first, they see the story at the tactical level, that is they see only the combat and the actions that that squad/platoon/company sees. In tht manner, sometimes the big picture can get lost when the focus of the news report is a new school being built, or a unit taking one or two casualties...a story yes, but more often than not it dies not capture the big picture. Second, they develop a bias for that type of unit or for what they are doing (e.g. Robert Kaplan). That is to say whatever it is that unit is doing, that is the answer to what everyone should be doing. Of course this all assumes there was no intent to pick and choose a certain story ahead of time before getting in with the unit.