The topic I’m going to talk with you about might seem a bit dated. It was really brought to the public consciousness when most of you were around 12-15 years old, so it is something that many college-aged people basically grew up with. What I’m talking about is embedded journalists. To give everyone a little perspective, when I was twelve I watched the nightly news for months as Operation Desert Shield built up steam. I was awed by photos of the line of ships, one every mile from Norfolk, Virginia to the Middle East.
When it became Desert Storm, I watched in wonderment as our journalists, our war correspondents picked apart every aspect of the operation they could get their hands on. Burned into my mind are the images of familiar faces sitting at impromptu news desks with the darkening twilight sky highlighting the flare of flack and the streams of anti-aircraft fire. I can remember the first time I saw a video of a missile flying through a window or a bomb dropping down a vent-shaft. 12 years before that some of you might remember being glued to the TV watching the Iran Hostage crisis, the Energy crisis, or maybe the Soviet’s invasion of Afghanistan.
To me those are just history in the same way that Desert Storm is to most of you. The one thing that all of these events have in common is that they were first brought to us, the viewing public, by journalists. Having previously been a US Navy Journalist for eight years, I can tell you that one of the most important aspects about the job is that you can’t accurately report on things that you can’t get access to. Now I don’t have to be the one there in the thick of it all, but I do need to be able to talk to the people that were. So access is information, and information to a journalist is life. Each generation that goes by the demand for more access has been increasing.
Back in WW2, there were a small handful of war correspondents that even wanted to get as close to the front as Hawaii, or London. The few that did were legends, like Ernie Pyle who traveled around the war torn world, lived and reported right alongside the weary dog-faced soldiers. Pyle was so loved by the service members that long after his death on Okinawa in 1945 from machinegun fire; his story is still retold even today.
Ernie’s story frames up the issue of embedded journalist very nicely and shows why I support civilian journalists traveling with the military into war zones, if they keep their eyes open and don’t allow themselves to become part of a propaganda machine.
There was a reason that most WW2 journalists didn’t want to get near the fighting, a damn good reason in fact. The front line was where people were dying at a rate of about 20 people per minute for the entire duration of the war. No sane person wants to be anywhere near that. Back then, being close to the military meant being in the line of fire, but that was because we were fighting other militaries that for the most part played by the rules.
We live in a new kind of world. Most of you grew up in it, but I remember a time before 9/11. In fact, I was stationed on USS Kitty Hawk out of Yokosuka, Japan at the time. It is important to remember your world wasn’t always like it is now. Today, our troops face terrorists, insurgents, freedom fighters, gorillas or whatever term they want to use this month. They take advantage of any target the can. Pyle’s death was nearly accidental. Today, reporters are sought out.
A news article from Berkeley states that at the beginning of the war 775 journalists were traveling with the military. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, in Iraq between 2003 and 2009, about 140 journalists were killed – 89 of them were murdered. Of all 140 only seven were embedded with US troops.
According to Sig Christenson a writer for Editor and Publisher a journal covering the newspaper industry, in 2006 the number of embedded journalists had dropped to less than a dozen. In that same year the journalist death toll in that year jumped to 32. If more reporters had been going out of the protective Green Zone under military guard, it is likely that there would have been fewer deaths.
There is no doubt that the journalistic process of observation and reporting requires objectivity. The easiest way for most journalists to accomplish this is to remain separate from the scene but that’s not to say that a real professional can’t keep his objectivity even while under fire. Some vocal opponents of embedded journalists like Gay Talese complain that “lazy” reporters are being “spoon-fed” information by the military, but according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, only 5% of reporters surveyed in Iraq would seem to agree that embedding mainly serves the Pentagon. In fact, a majority of journalists viewed embedding as another way to get to stories that they couldn't possibly find in the Green Zone. On one survey, a bureau chief wrote, “There is no problem with embedded reporting, unless it is relied on as the primary source of info on Iraq. If used as it should be – to provide another layer of understanding of what’s going on there – it is a very useful tool.”
In 2006, Julia Fox, an Indiana University Assistant Professor of Telecommunications, and Byungho Park, a doctoral candidate, released a report that compared the TV news coverage of both the Iraq invasion and the “Shock and Awe” campaign. They concluded that the general sense of objectivism was not compromised early in the war. “Perhaps, in their concern to appear more objective under their unusual circumstances, embedded reporters were more conscientious about not using the broad-ranged 'we' in their reports. These findings might even suggest that non-embedded reporters were actually less objective than embedded reporters, as only they made references to the broad-ranged 'we,' perhaps showing more support for the Shock and Awe campaign,” they said.
The next time you pick up a newspaper or turn on a TV, keep in mind that while everyone in dangerous locations like Iraq and Afghanistan is there at great risk, reporters that move with the military are keeping just as an objective view as the rest, while helping insure that they come home safe too.
To me those are just history in the same way that Desert Storm is to most of you. The one thing that all of these events have in common is that they were first brought to us, the viewing public, by journalists. Having previously been a US Navy Journalist for eight years, I can tell you that one of the most important aspects about the job is that you can’t accurately report on things that you can’t get access to. Now I don’t have to be the one there in the thick of it all, but I do need to be able to talk to the people that were. So access is information, and information to a journalist is life. Each generation that goes by the demand for more access has been increasing.
Back in WW2, there were a small handful of war correspondents that even wanted to get as close to the front as Hawaii, or London. The few that did were legends, like Ernie Pyle who traveled around the war torn world, lived and reported right alongside the weary dog-faced soldiers. Pyle was so loved by the service members that long after his death on Okinawa in 1945 from machinegun fire; his story is still retold even today.
Ernie’s story frames up the issue of embedded journalist very nicely and shows why I support civilian journalists traveling with the military into war zones, if they keep their eyes open and don’t allow themselves to become part of a propaganda machine.
There was a reason that most WW2 journalists didn’t want to get near the fighting, a damn good reason in fact. The front line was where people were dying at a rate of about 20 people per minute for the entire duration of the war. No sane person wants to be anywhere near that. Back then, being close to the military meant being in the line of fire, but that was because we were fighting other militaries that for the most part played by the rules.
We live in a new kind of world. Most of you grew up in it, but I remember a time before 9/11. In fact, I was stationed on USS Kitty Hawk out of Yokosuka, Japan at the time. It is important to remember your world wasn’t always like it is now. Today, our troops face terrorists, insurgents, freedom fighters, gorillas or whatever term they want to use this month. They take advantage of any target the can. Pyle’s death was nearly accidental. Today, reporters are sought out.
A news article from Berkeley states that at the beginning of the war 775 journalists were traveling with the military. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, in Iraq between 2003 and 2009, about 140 journalists were killed – 89 of them were murdered. Of all 140 only seven were embedded with US troops.
According to Sig Christenson a writer for Editor and Publisher a journal covering the newspaper industry, in 2006 the number of embedded journalists had dropped to less than a dozen. In that same year the journalist death toll in that year jumped to 32. If more reporters had been going out of the protective Green Zone under military guard, it is likely that there would have been fewer deaths.
There is no doubt that the journalistic process of observation and reporting requires objectivity. The easiest way for most journalists to accomplish this is to remain separate from the scene but that’s not to say that a real professional can’t keep his objectivity even while under fire. Some vocal opponents of embedded journalists like Gay Talese complain that “lazy” reporters are being “spoon-fed” information by the military, but according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, only 5% of reporters surveyed in Iraq would seem to agree that embedding mainly serves the Pentagon. In fact, a majority of journalists viewed embedding as another way to get to stories that they couldn't possibly find in the Green Zone. On one survey, a bureau chief wrote, “There is no problem with embedded reporting, unless it is relied on as the primary source of info on Iraq. If used as it should be – to provide another layer of understanding of what’s going on there – it is a very useful tool.”
In 2006, Julia Fox, an Indiana University Assistant Professor of Telecommunications, and Byungho Park, a doctoral candidate, released a report that compared the TV news coverage of both the Iraq invasion and the “Shock and Awe” campaign. They concluded that the general sense of objectivism was not compromised early in the war. “Perhaps, in their concern to appear more objective under their unusual circumstances, embedded reporters were more conscientious about not using the broad-ranged 'we' in their reports. These findings might even suggest that non-embedded reporters were actually less objective than embedded reporters, as only they made references to the broad-ranged 'we,' perhaps showing more support for the Shock and Awe campaign,” they said.
The next time you pick up a newspaper or turn on a TV, keep in mind that while everyone in dangerous locations like Iraq and Afghanistan is there at great risk, reporters that move with the military are keeping just as an objective view as the rest, while helping insure that they come home safe too.
No comments:
Post a Comment