An Appraisal of Embedding
"The reasons behind US actions and the
types of actions being taken are increasingly discussed in public
and the media. The result is that military secrecy is becoming increasingly
rare." - Lieutenant Colonel Beth Kaspar, USAF
"A Bradley under fire cannot be covered
dispassionately, like a news conference or a political rally."
- David Zucchino, embedded reporter, Los Angeles Times
On several occasions during Operation Iraqi
Freedom, sandstorms obscured the live coverage for hours, and yet
the television audience in the United States still had a clear and
current idea of what was happening in the war. In an age of the
continuous media cycle and information transparency, Operation Iraqi
Freedom marked the first time so many reporters were provided so
much relatively unrestricted front-line
access. Journalists who signed a contract with the military were
embedded with units in every military branch. All news media-the
major US television networks, 24-hour cable news stations, print,
radio, and comparable international outlets-carried exclusive coverage
from their embedded reporters. While most thought the "embeds"
enriched the coverage, two criticisms were frequently repeated:
the embedded reporters were compromised by their relationship with
their units, and the focus of their reports was too narrow. And
one haunting, hovering question was raised: If the war had gone
very badly for the United States and Coalition forces, what would
have happened to the embedding program?
In order to address how the military can obtain
the most beneficial coverage in the next conflict, this article
explores how the media intend to improve their wartime reporting.
An initial brief review of the history of war reporting, followed
by an examination of the Operation Iraqi Freedom coverage, demonstrates
a trend toward greater media-military cooperation. This trend analysis
is followed by an appraisal of the embedded reporter program, with
a careful look at the postwar critiques. An attempt to peer into
the future is then made through the example of the financial news
media's coverage of the last years of the 1990s bull market. This
comparison shows how bad news caused a sea change in the attitude
of financial and business news and illuminates the potential pitfalls
of embedded war reporting: understanding, not mere information,
makes the difference between fair coverage and a negative feeding
frenzy.
The media will have to be granted greater access
to future military operations if they are to reach this higher plateau
of understanding. Reporters must appreciate the operational level
of war in order to place the minute-by-minute events in context.
Since both the media and the military positively evaluated the recent
embedding experiment, it is a fair assumption that the Department
of Defense will try to accommodate the media in the future by increasing
access. Some might argue that the military and the media will never
be able to agree on the ground rules of such an arrangement, but
the affiliated trends of greater media-military cooperation and
information transparency point toward greater embedding of reporters
in the future-perhaps even in the drafting as well as the execution
of operational war plans.
A Brief History of War Reporting
Embedding reporters with the military is a
natural outgrowth of a relationship between the two organizations
dating back to the Crimean War. Since then, the interaction has
waxed and waned between adversarial and symbiotic, but the general
trend has been toward greater cooperation. In tracking this trend,
it is interesting to note that the fundamental obstacle to a close
working relationship has not changed much over time. In times of
crisis, the military experiences a greater urgency to conceal its
strength, location, and intent. This runs squarely counter to journalists'
desires to quickly report what they see and hear.
The type of media-military compromise brokered
in the Crimean War would be frequently repeated to solve the issue
of how bad news from the front was to be reported. Before the Crimean
War, this had rarely been an issue, since newspapers obtained their
war coverage from foreign journalists or by paying junior officers
to describe their experiences.1 This
changed when the London Times dispatched William Howard Russell
to report on the Crimean War. He overcame several challenges just
to reach the war zone, only to be banned by the military from the
battlefield. He adapted by interviewing soldiers returning from
battle, but was not satisfied at how firsthand accounts were often
contradictory. Russell had his newspaper exert sufficient pressure
to have him granted access to the action, and he henceforth observed
battles from high vantage points. This perspective allowed him to
judge British progress for himself, and in his reports he faulted
the military leadership for their lack thereof. His damning stories,
particularly on the infamous "Charge of the Light Brigade,"
lacked analysis but gave his British readers the first independent
appraisal of their military leaders. The British army reacted by
impugning the patriotism of the newspaper and its correspondent
and by citing the need for security of "artillery positions,
gunpowder requirements, [and] identification of specific units."2
The Times, not wanting its loyalty to the crown questioned, conceded
and agreed to self-censor by reporting only on completed military
operations.3
In the American Civil War, the technological
advantage of the telegraph increased the speed of reporting, but
censorship prevented much of the criticism of military leadership.
This was enforced by interrupting transmissions and even arresting
and court-martialing reporters.4
The adversarial relationship in the United
States was patched up in World War I by inducting reporters into
the US military. In this early form of embedding, uniformed reporters
accompanied units to the front and had unlimited access to the battlefield.
While the British banned reporters completely from the war zone,
the Americans gave reporters access, but imposed a mandatory censorship.
US journalists, for reasons of patriotism and close proximity to
action, complained little about the restriction.5
The US policy of inducting military reporters
was continued in World War II. A more relaxed form of censorship
was complemented by the Army's own publications like Stars &
Stripes and Yank, as well as its radio stations. "Instead of
attempting to stifle bad news, the services (especially the Army)
succeeded in releasing enough information to keep the press reasonably
satisfied."6 Indeed, from the military's
perspective, this was the golden age of war reporting.
The age ended and a modern era began in the
Korean conflict. Reporters found their own ways into the country
and arrived on-scene as the North Koreans poured into Seoul. While
there was no censorship, there was also little assistance in the
way of transportation or communication.7
All went well for the first year. General MacArthur praised the
press for its good coverage "without . . . a single security
breach."8 But when China entered
the war and journalists reported successive US defeats, the military
was unable to clearly identify guidelines on which newsworthy items
could be reported and was increasingly frustrated by the negative
coverage. The system broke down, and a strict censorship was imposed.9
The media-military relationship only soured
further in the next decade, when it became clear that the US efforts
in Vietnam were not bearing fruit. Journalists were in the unique
position of hearing the US military's assessments and then going
out into the field unrestricted to make their own observations.
President Johnson's position that the "South Vietnamese armed
forces were an effective fighting force, that the programs launched
by the US were improving life for peasants, and US military efforts
were making progress" was initially put forth and reported
until the press realized that it was not conforming to reality.10
The military's attempts to stay "on message" and to appeal
to reporters' patriotism led to a growing credibility gap in which
the media were caught between supporting the President and reporting
the truth. Despite-but perhaps also because of-this moral quandary,
the press viewed its Vietnam experience as its golden age of war
reporting.11 There was no significant
censorship, only guidelines; unrestricted access combined with accommodating
transportation; the new technology of television; and a great story:
the press was reporting the "real truth" about what was
happening in Vietnam. The experience profoundly affected both the
media and the military. For the former, the bar was set as the standard
against which all future coverage would be measured; for the latter,
the press had become an enemy, which in the future had to be tightly
controlled.
For the US military, the British experience
in the Falklands Campaign of 1982 presented itself as a case study
on how to tightly control the press. The British Task Force imposed
a news blackout on Port Stanley, and any reporter without permission
was apprehended.12
In the 1983 invasion of Grenada, the United
States tried a similar approach: "For the first two days of
the operation, the media [were] restricted to a neighboring island.
Some journalists attempted to independently rent boats to take them
to Grenada but were intercepted by US Navy ships and held for two
days."13 Even though the media's
protest about this treatment fell on unsympathetic ears-polls showed
that the American public supported the Administration's restriction
of press access14-the military subsequently
convened a commission to review the media-military relationship.
The panel was appointed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
General John Vessey, and was named after its head, Brigadier General
Winant Sidle.
One of the results of the Sidle Panel's findings15
was the idea of a military press pool, which was stood up in 1984.
The first opportunity for press pool war coverage, the US invasion
of Panama in 1989, was not deemed a success. The reporters expected
to witness the fighting but were only shown areas where action had
already taken place. To make matters worse, reporters who were not
in the pool got their stories out first.16
During the first Gulf War in 1990-91, the press
pool policy remained in effect, but was vastly larger in scope.
In Panama, the pool had consisted of eight journalists. In Operation
Desert Storm, there were 1,500 journalists in the Gulf region, and
the only way for reporters to legally get into Saudi Arabia was
through the pool.17 While the military
set ground rules for coverage and attempted to grant access safely,
journalists still were disappointed in the press pool arrangement.
The media's critique argued that the restricted access directed
the reporting and was, thus, indirect censorship.18
The military, for its part, could not logistically handle a pool
of 1,500 reporters. To put the numbers in perspective: in World
War II, 600 journalists were assigned to cover the entire South
Pacific, and 30 reporters covered the invasion of Normandy.19
Another aspect which appeared beyond the military's control was
the speed of the reporting. If Vietnam was the first TV war, then
Desert Storm was the first war of live coverage. CNN could broadcast
via satellite continuously from Baghdad, using reporters outside
the press pool.
The first experiment with modern embedding
came in 1995, when the United States deployed peacekeeping forces
to Bosnia. Initially journalists were allowed to report everything
they heard, unless they were specifically told it was off the record.
That changed after an incident involving a Wall Street Journal correspondent,
Tom Ricks:
[Ricks reported] a conversation in which
a commander warned some of his soldiers, who were African-American,
to be careful of the Croatians, whom he described as racist. The
commander was immediately heavily criticized for his comments
by senior government officials. Subsequently, the Department of
Defense issued a new set of rules for embedded reporters, stating
that from that point on all conversations with troops were to
be considered off the record unless otherwise stated. This rule,
widely criticized by members of the media, became known as "Ricks'
Rule."20
Embedded Reporting in Operation Iraqi
Freedom
Despite initial media reservations about how
much access would be granted, both the military and the media were
pleased with the results of the policy of embedding journalists
with military units in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Over 600 journalists
participated in the program, which began with a week-long "Embed
Boot Camp." The first of these was held in November 2002 for
58 reporters from 31 news organizations. Their first three days
were spent aboard USS Iwo Jima, where the embeds were taught such
things as basic pipe patching, safety awareness, and cruise missile
fundamentals.21 The following five
days were spent with the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia, where
reporters were familiarized with direct fire, nuclear-biological-chemical
attacks, minefields, combat first aid, tactical marches, being taken
captive by the enemy, and military jargon. They slept in barracks
bunks, rose at 0500, and were outfitted with military packs and
Kevlar helmets. Andrew Jacobs of The New York Times described it
as "alternately enlightening, entertaining, horrifying, and
physically exhausting."22 It taught
him combat survival skills and gave him a visceral appreciation
for how the subjects of his coverage lived. He was alert to the
bond created by "marching, commiserating, and drinking with
the Marines" and knew it would have to be tempered by the realization
that the military expected him and his colleagues to "beam
triumphant clips to living rooms across the country."23
To get all the journalists through the training, numerous other
boot camps were held at locations like Fort Dix, New Jersey, and
Kuwait. The experience was not for everyone, and some journalists
have written candidly about their decision to withdraw from the
program.24
After signing a contract stipulating that they
would not report missions in progress or their specific results,
specific force sizes, or future missions, and that they would not
travel in their own vehicles, reporters were free to join their
units. Once the war began, embedded journalists reported from aircraft
carriers, Special Forces units, the 3d Infantry Division, and the
1st Marine Division. Their stories were mixed with reports from
un-embedded reporters and analysis from news anchors and retired
officers.
In making the initial postwar assessments of
the embed experiment, many of the higher-profile journalists agreed
it was a success. NBC's Tim Russert thought it had "workedextremely
well" and "when you looked at all the various slices together,
you had pretty close to a complete picture."25
Wolf Blitzer, who had headed CNN's War Desk from Kuwait, called
it a win for the public, the media, and the military.26
The extensive training and concomitant understanding the embeds
received through the program, from boot camp to the day-to-day military
routine, no doubt contributed to the quality of their coverage.
In order to anticipate the ways in which the
media will try to improve their coverage, it may be valuable to
consider the criticisms the media have raised about their embeddingexperience.
The criticisms have centered on two issues. In many self-searching
analyses, embedded reporters have written about their fear of having
succumbed to "Stockholm Syndrome": having their work influenced
by their close relationship with their units. Reporters from both
print and television have recounted how they assisted their units
in combat, shared physical hardships, and felt accepted as one of
the group. These reporters bonded with their units and felt guilt
in returning to the United States while their units were still in
Iraq. While this closeness did not necessarily prevent them from
objective or critical reporting, journalists worried about losing
their impartiality nonetheless.27 The
second significant criticism was that the embeds failed "to
give a sense of the war as a whole."28
Whether or not this shortcoming was the fault of the news organizations,
who did not coalesce a comprehensive context for the story, many
agreed that "the program offered frustratingly narrow views
of the action."29
Both of these criticisms have been merged into
a larger question of whether the war made for "good TV."
Some media critics have argued that the quick action sequences from
correspondents made viewers "too fascinated by the level of
detail" and encouraged them to become "passive, follow-along
tacticians."30 Others have complained
that "within a week or so, the television coverage of the invasion
had become so confusing, so repetitive-so boring, for the most part-that
it was almost as burdensome to turn it on as it was not."31
Thus, despite the overall favorable reviews, the media will be inclined
to improve several aspects of their war coverage.
Similarly, military leaders became frustrated
by how quickly frontline issues which soldiers had discussed with
the embeds would turn into questions at the Pentagon or at the coalition
headquarters in Qatar. One indicative comment was that a Pentagon
spokeswoman "is being peppered almost hourly with queries from
the battlefield about topics as varied as checkpoints, rations,
rescues, and killing of civilians."32
Even more frustrating for the military and the Bush Administration,
though, was the "growing chorus, including several retired
generals, questioning whether the war plan of Mr. Rumsfeld and his
lieutenants was ill advised and whether the Administration [had]
fueled unrealistic expectations that Iraqis would welcome American
troops with open arms."33
When Lieutenant General William Wallace, the
Army's V Corps Commander, remarked that "the enemy we're fighting
is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against," his
comment was blown out of proportion by pundits, news anchors, and
retired generals who employed it as ammunition in their criticism
of US strategy.34 In response, "the
White House went into attack mode."35
According to senior officials, the President was irritated and switched
from a public hands-off approach to taking "personal control
of the message machine for the war."36
And yet, even the embed who had asked the question realized that
General Wallace "was just voicing the frustration and the anxiety
that he was feeling at the time out there."37
Considering how large the fallout over the
seemingly innocuous comment was, however, one wonders how negative
the coverage and subsequent fallout would have become if US forces
had suffered large numbers of casualties or a significant setback.
Most media critics have agreed that the embed system never truly
withstood the test of bad news. Negative embed stories-which covered
failed supply planning, civilian casualties, fratricide, and theft-never
caught the public's attention. Apparently these stories lacked sufficient
sensationalism to rise above the clamor of the military's success.
Even the embedded reporters themselves cannot say whether the absence
of sensationalism was a result of their "Stockholm syndrome"
or rather a greater fingerspitzengefuehl, or feel for the war, a
greater understanding which they had developed through their training
and experience.
Financial News Media Reporting
Since there is no convincing way to satisfy
the question of how dramatically negative news over a prolonged
period would have been covered by embedded reporters, an example
of a similar situation might shed some light on the issue. There
are many parallels between the coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom
and financial reporting in the late 1990s. In the mid-1990s, cable
financial news stations like CNBC began broadcasting from the New
York Stock Exchange trading floor. This form of "embedding"
journalists within the financial scene lent credibility to the financial
reporting and gave it an added immediacy. Similar to reporting from
the fog of battle, financial journalists, like the experts they
covered, "are feeling their way in a blizzard, squinting through
the snow, straining amid the white noise to make out the next trend
or market movement or sizzling stock."38
Just like military intelligence in battle, "financial intelligence
itself became a growth market for the media."39
Finally, the difference between the traders, brokers, and analysts,
who are responsible for millions of dollars, and financial reporters,
who are responsible only to their editors and readers, is similar
to the difference between service members, who "are assigned
responsibilities for life, property, and mission," and war
reporters, who "by and large, do not acquire anything approaching
comparable responsibilities until they become editors."40
Based on these parallels, it is revealing to
observe how financial reporting changed from "cheerleader"
in a bull market to "corporate fraud investigator" of
the bear market. "In an era of round-the-clock news, the chief
executive officer had become a spokesman-in-chief, marketing maven,
and certified media star. . . . The cult of the CEO was born."41
While some executives like Donald Trump or Lee Iacocca had become
business celebrities in the 1980s, "the hunger for 24-hour
business news made it inevitable that new players would emerge"
and at a faster rate.42 The volatility
of internet stocks made for exciting stories, and CEOs were the
heroes. For instance, Time magazine named the creator of Amazon.com,
Jeff Bezos, its "Man of the Year" in 1999, even though
his company had never turned a profit.
The hero angle of financial reporting was popular
because it took a difficult subject and made it personable and easy
to understand. Many of the correspondents were by no stretch of
the imagination financial experts, and they covered traders and
analysts who had never experienced a real declining stock market.
In the financial news audience, "there were two full generations
of amateur investors who didn't remember the way some stocks had
plummeted in the 1960s and 70s, let alone the crash of 1987."43
Thus, it struck few as peculiar that of the 15,000 investment opinions
covered in 1997, "less than half of one percent involved a
recommendation to sell any stock."44
More experienced or properly trained journalists could have turned
the situation into an educational opportunity for their audience.
Instead, they accepted the fanciful notion that the "new economy"
had no rules.
Financial new shows like Squawk Box on CNBC
were purposely designed like ESPN's SportsCenter, so that the financial
reporters could appear like sports enthusiasts discussing scores
and games. In the network's logic, otherwise uninterested viewers
could be drawn to coverage of complex financial dealings, as long
as they were explained in sports terms. CNBC tapped into a gold
mine, and the show developed such appeal that it began to affect
the stock market on its own. Traders who knew a stock would be featured
on the show would start buying it before the segment even aired.45
Reporters were not troubled by this dilemma.
The speed at which business news traveled, combined with the growth
in the sheer number of financial news outlets, had made it harder
and harder for reporters to be the first to get a story. While the
science, engineering, and economics of the companies were too difficult
for most reporters to master, it did not matter, since quickness
beat comprehension in the rush to be first.
Then, when the stock market became jittery
in 1999 and 2000, the financial news media began to tear down the
gurus they had created. "In this anxious environment, journalists
like nothing better than a rhetorical shootout between well-known
personalities."46 This type of
verbal fireworks simplified "the numbing complexity of market
gyrations and interest rates and economic trends to an old-fashioned
spit-ball fight."47
When the markets started to whiplash in April
2000, Wall Street became a soap opera, with the sharp up-and-down
swings played out on every front page, news broadcast, and talk
show. The triple blows of 9/11, the Enron bankruptcy, and WorldCom's
$3.8 billion accounting scandal soured the financial news. The declining
markets were accompanied by increasingly negative reporting. The
media coverage became "like a car wreck."48
A feeding frenzy took over, and the stories focused on the excesses
of CEOs like Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski, fraud and largess in big companies,
and retired investors who had lost their life savings. Similar to
the coverage of the bull market, the story lines stayed with what
would be easy to understand-stories that would evoke empathy or
disgust-and thus avoided the complicated explanations for what had
happened.
This financial news media example suggests
that if reporters do not truly understand the background, the deeper
issues, the how and the why, they will fall back on sensationalism
designed to evoke resonance with the viewer or reader. Likewise,
when faced with truly bad military situations, embedded military
reporters might resort to quick criticism, "gotcha" journalism,
and catastrophic predictions-if they do not understand the events
in the context of the operational and strategic levels of war.
Recommendation
The late Michael Handel, who taught at both
the Army and Naval War Colleges, used to refer to the first Gulf
War as "war deluxe." The same could be said about the
second Gulf War, and therefore all lessons learned from that conflict
should include a caveat. Even though the media and the military
were pleased with the embedding program, one must remember that
it was never tested by a tragic setback. The next conflict might
well bring such a calamity, and it would be prudent for the military
to consider how to make the most of the coverage in such a situation.
The options of the past-censorship and restricted access-will not
work as well in an age of satellite imagery and cell phones.
Most reporters, especially the ones who risk
their lives in combat zones, take their loyalty to the truth very
seriously. The temptation to sensationalize a negative story can
thus only be tempered by exposing reporters to the truth and a better
understanding of the big picture. When the bad news hits, reporters
need to already have considerable experience under their belts to
be able put their observations into context. If the military, from
the outset, allows journalists to glimpse the making of operational
plans-allows them to witness the care and consideration for all
possible contingencies, the deliberate avoidance of collateral damage,
and the cooperation with other governmental and nongovernmental
organizations-then those journalists will have a much greater appreciation
of the situation.
If the military denies correspondents access
to operational planning and execution, reporters will draw their
own, possibly erroneous, conclusions and assign blame where they
think best. Their efforts will be aided by retired generals and
admirals, who will judge progress from back in the studio and can
only guess at what the operational plans included. The resulting
fallout will have to be answered by senior military leaders, if
not the White House. If President Bush felt he had to take over
the "message machine of the war" after the "this
wasn't the enemy we war-gamed against" comment, it would be
safe to assume that serious military setbacks or even minor ones
will require White House involvement in the subsequent public relations
damage control. Any organization dislikes such involvement, since
it invariably appears reactive and defensive.
Some will argue that reporters cannot be trusted
with the highly classified material discussed at the operational
level, that if correspondents had access to operational plans, those
plans would be compromised. While the compromise of operational
war plans is a serious concern, selecting trustworthy journalists
with a proven track record could mitigate it. Moreover, journalists
like Ted Koppel or Rick Atkinson already have openly admitted they
had access to top-secret briefings and discussions with general
officers.49
Furthermore, in an age where much military
information can be gleaned through open sources, secrecy has become
increasingly difficult to sustain. Commercial satellite imagery,
cellular and satellite telephone intercepts, and the internet can
all be employed to track the movements of military forces.50
A fusion of that information, combined with the full-page war maps
of The New York Times and the retired generals' analysis on television,
could have provided the Iraqi military an accurate picture of the
US dispositions.
In closing, the historical trend toward greater
media-military cooperation and the increase in information transparency
are both harbingers of the next step: granting selected journalists
access to the operational planning and execution of the next war.
Failure to get out ahead of this trend and position the media within
the operational level could, in the case of military setbacks in
the next conflict, bring public relations disaster upon the Pentagon
and the White House. Similar to the trust the Department of Defense
placed in the embedded reporters at the tactical level-knowing that
the soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines would make a great story-so
should trust be proffered at the operational level. Giving the best
reporters the chance to observe such planning and execution will
be rewarded with great stories.
NOTES
1. William N. Nagy,
Department of Defense Combat Coverage Principles: Will They Serve
Us in the Future? (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Command and General
Staff College, 1995), p. 15.
2. Ibid., p. 16.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 19.
5. Gregory M. Hannan,
"The Military and the Media: An Historical and Cultural Examination"
(Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio: Air Force Institute of Technology,
1998), p. 6.
6. Ibid., p. 8.
7. Nagy, p. 24.
8. Hannan, p. 9.
9. Ibid.
10. Nagy, p. 12.
11. Hannan, p. 19.
12. Hannan quoting
Mort Rosenblum, Who Stole the News? (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1993), p. 237.
13. Nagy, p. 37.
14. Hannan.
15. "Report by
CJCS Media-Military Relations Panel (Sidle Panel)" (Washington:
Department of Defense, 23 August 1984), http://www.ndu.edu/library/epubs/20030710a.pdf.
16. Hannan, p. 19.
17. Charles W. Ricks,
The Military-News Media Relationship: Thinking Forward (Carlisle,
Pa.: US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 1993), p.
vi.
18. Nagy, p. 41.
19. Ricks, p. vi.
20. Nancy Ethiel,
ed., The Military and the Media: Facing the Future (Wheaton, Ill.:
Robert M. McCormick Tribune Foundation, 1998), p. 61.
21. Initial total
provided by Mazzetti was 400, updated by AP article to 600. Mark
Mazzetti, "Dispatches from Media Boot Camp," Slate Magazine,
18 November 2002. Associated Press, "Pentagon Embed Experiment
Drawing Favorable Reviews," Florida Times-Union, 21 April 2003,
sec. C, p. 3.
22. Andrew Jacobs,
"My Week at Embed Boot Camp," New York Times Sunday Magazine,
3 February 2003, pp. 34-35.
23. Ibid.
24. Hampton Sides,
"Unembedded," The New Yorker, 24 March 2003, pp. 30-32.
25. "Assessing
the Media's Battle Plan for Coverage," Buffalo News, 18 April
2003.
26. Ibid.
27. Two instances
of reporters assisting gunners in targeting enemy Iraqis or fulfilling
military tasks to help their units were recounted in David Zucchino,
"After the War," Los Angeles Times, 3 May 2003, sec. A,
p. 1, and Scott Bernard Nelson, "Embedded Reporter Comes Away
from the Front Lines Torn," Boston Globe, 22 April 2003, sec.
E, p. 1. The feeling of guilt brought on by returning home was described
in Betsy Rothstein, "After Iraq, Reporters Glad to be Embedded
in their Own Beds," The Hill, 29 April 2003, p. 16.
28. Liz Marlantes,
"The Other Boots on the Ground: Embedded Press," Christian
Science Monitor, 23 April 2003.
29. Ibid.
30. Nancy Franklin,
"TV Goes to War," The New Yorker, 31 March 2003, p. 33.
31. Charles McGrath,
"Bomb," New York Times Sunday Magazine, 14 April 2003,
p. 15.
32. Christopher Marquis,
"Access for News Media Brings Chorus of Criticism and Queries
on War," The New York Times, 3 April 2003, sec. B, p. 12.
33. Ibid.
34. Rick Atkinson,
"Did Embeds Provide Clear Snapshot of Combat in Iraq?"
CNN Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz, 27 April 2003.
35. Elizabeth Bumiller,
David E. Sanger, and Richard W. Stevenson, "How 3 Weeks of
War in Iraq Looked from the Oval Office," The New York Times,
14 April 2003, sec. B, p. 11.
36. Dan Balz and Mike
Allen, "CEO Bush Takes Over Management of Message," The
Washington Post, 28 March 2003, sec. A, p. 34.
37. Ibid.
38. Howard Kurtz,
The Fortune Tellers-Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media, and
Manipulation (New York: The Free Press, 2000), p. xv.
39. Ibid., p. xx.
40. William V. Kennedy,
The Military and the Media (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993), p.
14.
41. Kurtz, p. 112.
42. Ibid., p. 101.
43. Ibid., p. 85.
44. Ibid., p. 32.
45. Ibid., p. 30.
46. Ibid., p. 220.
47. Ibid., p. 221.
48. Randy Carver,
branch manager of Carver Financial Services/Raymond James in Cleveland,
quoted in "Investors Are Seeking Port in the Storm," San
Antonio Express-News, 15 July 2002, sec. A, p. 4.
49. Marvin Kalb recounted
a conversation in which Ted Koppel said he had attended morning
briefings of the 3d Infantry Division. Interview, All Things Considered,
National Public Radio, 29 April 2003. Rick Atkinson noted that his
complete access to General Wallace entailed the responsibility to
refrain from reporting Wallace's reactions to the passions of the
moment. Atkinson, "Did Embeds Provide Clear Snapshot of Combat
in Iraq?"
50. The ability to discern
the operational idea of a military strategy through open sources
has been shown. In 1997, an Air Expeditionary Force deployment to
Bahrain was tracked by a US Air Force Red Cell. Using public information
and commercial satellite imagery, the Red Cell discovered the bed-down
locations, missions, and force composition. Beth Kaspar, The End
of Secrecy? Military Competitiveness in the Age of Transparency,
occasional paper, Center for Strategy and Technology (Maxwell AFB,
Ala.: Air University, 2001), p. 15.
Also available online at:
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/04spring/mclane.htm
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