Is it any surprise that newspaper war stories are usually one-sided and glib, considering they are written by journalists who:<p>a. have "established relations with the military",<p>b. are rated by military contractors as likely to produce "favourable" coverage<p>c. are subject to revocation of access AND blacklisting for "controversial reporting"<p>A system that is designed to promote the army's point of view and penalize those that deviate from it will end up producing exactly that.<p>The problem, and the solution, lies in the rules of embedding:<p>> <i>A Pentagon spokesman said, “Embeds are a privilege, not a right.”</i><p>> <i>If a reporter’s embed status is terminated, typically she or he is blacklisted. This program of limiting press access was challenged in court in 2013 by a freelance reporter, Wayne Anderson, who claimed to have followed his agreement but to have been terminated after publishing adverse reports about the conflict in Afghanistan. The ruling on his case upheld the military’s position that there was no constitutionally protected right to be an embedded journalist.</i><p>As long as embeds are considered a "privilege" to be doled out (or rescinded) by the army based on it's own publicity objectives, it's impossible to expect neutral journalism from such a system.
I was the public affairs chief for Regimental Combat Team 6 (USMC), with a "territory" covering half of Al Anbar Province including Fallujah & Ramadi in 2007. I met scores of journalists and had high level visibility into the Marines' handling of journalists in Iraq.<p>The first thing I want to say is that Manning is describing the Army's approach to journalism coverage. It is quite different from the Marines' approach, which as far as I could tell (and from my vantage point I was in a good position to have a clear understanding) was extremely open. I do not recall any cases of "blacklisting" or otherwise limiting access of journalists to events, leaders or units in our area of operations (AO). I did hear stories about how the Army was handling it and it was, in typical Army fashion, being handled very poorly. I realize this might sound like glib "Semper Fi" jingoism but you'll have to trust me there was a real difference. (BTW the Marine Corps isn't guiltless, I'm sure, but during my time I was pretty proud of our commitment to openness.)<p>Second, about the tally of reporters. In 2010 the coverage had wound almost completely down because frankly the American people had lost interest. Even in 2007 the number of embed requests we received declined when "peace broke out" during the Anbar "awakening". There's no reason to think that the reason the official count of embeds never rose above 12 (if that's true) because of official limitations. Instead I think it's pretty reasonable to think that is because most embeds would have been quite boring at the time, relatively speaking. It was much easier to sit inside the Green Zone in Baghdad and report from there.<p>I don't really have a punchy conclusion to put here. Basically, don't believe everything is black or white in this matter. Like everything it was/is a complicated system with a lot of moving parts, and to clump it all into some homogenous bucket is basically give up on actually understanding.
The problem extends much further than Iraq and affects all journalism. For example, the most widely read report from the New York Times on the Russia-Ukraine conflict was completely false. (<a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-york-times-propaganda-photos-on-ukraine-exposed/5378942" rel="nofollow">http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-york-times-propaganda-photo...</a>)<p>That being said, the NYT is still much more neutral in its reporting than the kremlin-funded Russia Today, which is little more than a propaganda machine, including it's US arm.<p>I've spent the last few years trying to create a Wikipedia-like system where anyone can curate and fact-check the first hand sources coming out of an event. There is incredible content coming from the people on the ground who, despite having their own opinions, are not blatantly funded by someone who is trying to twist the story to meet their narrative. It seems to be working well so far with hardcore news junkies using it (the group similar to the Wikipedia editors), but we'll have to see in a couple days at the public launch.
I hope Americans can elect a president that will pardon Manning and Snowden in day <i>one</i> of presidency. If a presidential candidate can at least promise to do that, then we'd have a pretty good sense that he or she is going to be a pretty good president regarding government transparency, media freedom, basic rights, and so on.<p>At the very least the question of pardoning them should be asked in a live televised debate, to see how the candidates stand. If none of them are willing to commit to that, then there's a very high chance US will <i>continue</i> on the dark path is currently on.
The American mainstream media is severely dysfunctional. Cable "news" networks are biased outlets for each political party to deliver their message. Even more-traditional network news outlets like NBC News have sacrificed the appearance of a separation of the reporters from the politicians they're supposed to report on by hiring family members of recent and current political figures. On NBC's current payroll are Jenna Bush Hager, and Chelsea Clinton. On CNN's payroll is Chris Cuomo - brother to the Governor of New York.<p>It seems that above all else, mainstream news craves access. Hiring the presidential daughters provides a network like NBC access to those presidential families in a way other networks may not have. Attending the annual White House Correspondents dinner provides reporters access to celebrities and a night out of dining and drinking with the people they're supposed to hold to account for their actions. And being complicit with the military's approach towards how a war should be reported ensures they retain their access to the war "story" - be it factual or massaged.<p>Recall the story from the NYTimes about the military analysts that networks always put on-air whenever a military story is being covered? If not, it's worth a read: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html?pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html?pagewan...</a><p>Real reporting is hard. And when media organizations elect to go along with how a story is presented rather than providing raw, unbiased accounts of things, it does an injustice to the public. And it's made even more difficult when an administration chooses to take an aggressive stance towards journalists regarding how they source and report their stories.<p>It's never been easier to be a reporter and disseminate information to millions. I can only hope that the public seizes that opportunity and fixes the ways that news is currently broken.
Tl;dr<p>Iraq never had more than 12 embedded journalists covering 100,000 troops, and they had to be nice or get removed.<p>Democracy needs transparency and journalism is one of the best means of ensuring this - and it was totally strangled in Iraq so that abuses by Pro-US Iraq groups got no criticism in US - and this leads to no criticism of our military and administration. This fails to be healthy.
Since I seem to be the only one awake I will comment on Chelsea's op-ed. She raises the really important point of journalists needing to be able to be able to report on what is actually going on for the American public to be able to make an informed decision. What I wonder is how we (by we I mean the greater tech community) can do to make this happen?
The Vice documentary 'This Is What Winning Looks Like' has some great reporting on Afghanistan.<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI</a>
The same can be said about 99% of journalism about government at every level, including local government and policing. There is much too little skepticism.<p>This is why citizen journalism, as rough as it often is, is successful, and why data-based journalism like fiverthirtyeight is the future of professional journalism.
Rather easy to take potshots, now that Iraq is falling apart. If this outcome was so obvious why wait until now to write an op-ed?<p>The pre-war coverage had some problems but I thought the reporting about the war, on the whole, was pretty decent. I read a lot about torture and about the lack of press freedom in Iraq.