News Media
Directives
Issues / Concepts / Lessons / Handbooks
War Policy, Public Support, and the Media - William Darley. Parameters article, Summer 2005. Perhaps no element of the current conflict in Iraq engenders more emotion and acrimony within the military than debate concerning the role and influence of the news media on public opinion and national policy. Debates regarding this subject are nothing new. Since at least the Civil War, anecdotal assertions associated with media influence on American wars have caused controversy among government officials, members of the military, scholars, pundits, and members of the press as they continue to argue the media’s effects. Historically, contention over the issue of media influence has become particularly acute when the policies of the administration executing the conflict are perceived as being either too slow, or failing, to achieve their political objectives at the cost of mounting casualties. Under such circumstances, critics of the press have been predictable in accusing the media of editorial bias that undermines public support for military operations, while most reporters have been equally predictable in countering that they are just faithfully reporting what they observe. This subject probably received its most severe examination and critique in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when media influence over public opinion and policy became the subject of dozens of commissions, scholarly workshops, conferences, and countless research papers and books. Among the first, most notable, and most influential of the many post-mortem works was Peter Braestrup’s meticulously documented book, The Big Story, an examination of the linkages and relationships of political decisionmaking as influenced by media reporting during and immediately after North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive in 1968. So traumatic was this train of exhaustive examinations that the question of media bias and its influence on policy and public opinion during the Vietnam War.The Media and Medievalism - Robert Kaplan. Policy Review article, December 2004 & January 2005. Like the priests of ancient Egypt, the rhetoricians of ancient Greece and Rome, and the theologians of medieval Europe, the media represent a class of bright and ambitious people whose social and economic stature gives them the influence to undermine political authority. Like those prior groups, the media have authentic political power — terrifically magnified by technology — without the bureaucratic accountability that often accompanies it, so that they are never culpable for what they advocate. If, for example, what a particular commentator has recommended turns out badly, the permanent megaphone he wields over the crowd allows him to explain away his position — if not in one article or television appearance, then over several — before changing the subject amid the roaring onrush of new events. Presidents, even if voters ignore their blunders, are at least responsible to history; journalists rarely are. This freedom is key to their irresponsible power.
Reporters on the Battlefield: The Embedded Press System in Historical Context - Christopher Paul and James Kim. Rand study, 2004. Focusing on the embedded press system deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom, this book attempts to answer the following questions: How effective was the embedded press system in meeting the needs of the three main constituencies-the press, the military, and the citizens of the United States? What policy history led to the innovation of an embedded press system? Where are press-military relations likely to go in the future?
Embedding Success Into the Military-Media Relationship - Commander Jose Rodriguez, USNR. US Army War College Strategic Research Project, 2004. The lessons learned and commentaries regarding the Defense Department’s media embedded reporter policy and resulting coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) are still being written. It is clear that the wider use of embedded reporters provided the world an unprecedented view of combat and of the warfighters. This state-of-the-art view brought the public real-time images, sounds and soldiering via gyroscopic satellite vehicles, videophones, cell phones, and night vision photography. However, what exactly has this 21st century coverage provided the American public and the world? Has it provided a comprehensive, balanced, and true perspective of the prosecution of war and its effects, a higher level of journalism, or just merely “info-tainment”1? Or could it be the media utilizing its new technology in an attempt to fill the 24-hour news cycle and feed the public’s hunger for knowledge about the war? These questions will continue to be debated by the fourth estate, academia, the military and the public.
The Media as an Instrument of War - Kenneth Payne. Parameters article, Spring 2005. The media, in the modern era, are indisputably an instrument of war. This is because winning modern wars is as much dependent on carrying domestic and international public opinion as it is on defeating the enemy on the battlefield. And it remains true regardless of the aspirations of many journalists to give an impartial and balanced assessment of conflict. The experience of the US military in the post-Cold War world demonstrates that victory on the battlefield is seldom as simple as defeating the enemy by force of arms. From Somalia and Haiti through Kosovo and Afghanistan, success has been defined in political, rather than military, terms. Today’s military commanders stand to gain more than ever before from controlling the media and shaping their output. The laws and conventions of war, however, do not adequately reflect the critical role that the media play in shaping the political outcome of conflicts. International humanitarian law requires that media members are afforded the rights of civilians; the question is whether this is sustainable when the exigencies of warfighting suggest that controlling the media is essential.
The News Media and the “Clash of Civilizations” - Philip Seib. Parameters article, Winter 2004 - 2005. The “call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered,” reported The New York Times in April 2004. The Times story quoted a Muslim cleric in Britain touting the “culture of martyrdom,” an imam in Switzerland urging his followers to “impose the will of Islam on the godless society of the West,” and another radical Islamist leader in Britain predicting that “our Muslim brothers from abroad will come one day and conquer here, and then we will live under Islam in dignity.” For those who believe that a clash of civilizations—particularly between Islam and the non-Islamic West—is under way or at least approaching, the provocative comments in the Times article were evidence that “the clash” is not merely a figment of an overheated political imagination. Ever since Samuel Huntington presented his theory about such a clash in a Foreign Affairs article in 1993, debate has continued about whether his ideas are substantive or simplistic. For the news media, this debate is important because it helps shape their approach to covering the world.
Mass Media: The Ether Pervading the Clausewitzian Trinity - Major Trina Kracke, USA. US Army School of Advanced Military Studies monograph, 2004. The media influence ongoing and future military operations by functioning as a sort of filter (or “ether”) within the Clausewitzian Trinity, which coalesces the military, the people (public), and the government (policy makers). The relationship between the military and the media can be characterized as symbiotic: the media thrive on the fodder of information the military provides during times of war, and the military must use the media as a conduit in order to reach the public, which subsequently influences policy makers in a democratic system through the democratic process. This monograph explores the media’s interaction with these three entities, representative of the Clausewitzian Trinity, beginning with developing an appreciation of the media, from an academic perspective. Critical literature provides two contrasting schools of thought concerning the media-government relationship, subsequent derivation of foreign (and military) policies, and who influences whom. This monograph explores Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “Propaganda Model” from their Manufacturing Consent and maps it against the theory of “CNN Effect”. These two academic models attempt to answer the question: does the government influence media output or does media output influence the government. Both arguments center on the core of the media’s notion of objectivity and its consequences for the resultant news coverage.
Media's Coverage Has Distorted World's View of Iraqi Reality - Lieutenant Colonel Tim Ryan, USA. World Tribune article, January 2005. LTC Tim Ryan is Commander, Task Force 2-12 Cavalry, First Cavalry Division in Iraq. He led troops into battle in Fallujah late last year and is now involved in security operations for the upcoming elections. He wrote the following during "down time" after the Fallujah operation. All right, I've had enough. I am tired of reading distorted and grossly exaggerated stories from major news organizations about the "failures" in the war in Iraq. "The most trusted name in news" and a long list of others continue to misrepresent the scale of events in Iraq. Print and video journalists are covering only a fraction of the events in Iraq and, more often than not, the events they cover are only negative.
The Green Book - UK Ministry of Defence. This handbook has been produced in consultation with editors and press and broadcasting organisations as a general guide to the procedures that the Ministry of Defence (MOD) proposes to adopt in dealing with the media in times of emergency, tension, conflict, or war and to assist with planning. It covers the practical arrangements for enabling media representatives to report events both at home and in the theatre of operations, including the MOD's plans for representative numbers of correspondents to accompany British Forces in the front line. It also briefly outlines the policy that will facilitate and restrict the activities of journalists during operations. In short, the handbook sets out what editors can expect from the Ministry of Defence and what the MOD seeks from the media. It is the result of a dialogue between the MOD and the media which began after the Falklands Conflict and which takes account of the lessons learnt in the Gulf War and other operations.
The CNN Effect: Strategic Enabler or Operational Risk? - Lieutenant Colonel Margaret Belknap, USA. US Army War College Strategy Research Project, 2001. The advent of real times news coverage has led to immediate public awareness and scrutiny of strategic decisions and military operations as they unfold. Is this a net positive or negative gain for strategic leaders and warfighters. The military welcomes the awareness but is leery of the scrutiny. The information age fourth estate's vast resources offer commanders exceptional opportunities. Yet, the media gets mixed reviews from the military. Many in the military view the intrusion of the media as a potential operational risk and, perhaps, a career risk. But, the military needs the media to keep Americans informed and engaged in order to garner public support for their operations. At best, the CNN effect seems to be viewed as a double-edged sword, bath as a strategic enabler and a potential operational risk.
Winning CNN Wars - Frank Stetch. Parameters article, Autumn 1994. The unique experience of real-time feedback at war's outbreak from the opponent's national capital offers a useful place to start thinking about conflict in the global TV age. Radio, invented near the turn of the 19th century, led to new arsenals of electronic weaponry that radically changed military operations three decades later. Radio technology spawned new approaches to strategy (propaganda, strategic bombing), operations (navigation, electronic warfare), and tactics (mobile communications and improved command and control). Television, invented in the 1920s, began a similar cycle of innovation and adaptation in military operations in the 1970s, leading to the weaponry of the 1990s and beyond. TV and video are poised to change warfare as extensively and dramatically in the 21st century as radio changed conflict in this century, for policymakers as well as for combatants. To think of video as exclusively the province of the media would be as shortsighted today as thinking in 1930 that radio was merely for news broadcasts. The effects of TV, video, and global communications on conflict management in the 21st century will extend far beyond the relationships of TV news and the military. CNN war provides the first and clearest signs, however, of the implications of global TV for national policymaking and military operations.
