
The U.S. Military’s Campaign Against Media Freedom - phildeschaine
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/opinion/sunday/chelsea-manning-the-us-militarys-campaign-against-media-freedom.html?_r=0
======
r0h1n
Is it any surprise that newspaper war stories are usually one-sided and glib,
considering they are written by journalists who:

a. have "established relations with the military",

b. are rated by military contractors as likely to produce "favourable"
coverage

c. are subject to revocation of access AND blacklisting for "controversial
reporting"

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.

The problem, and the solution, lies in the rules of embedding:

> _A Pentagon spokesman said, “Embeds are a privilege, not a right.”_

> _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._

As long as embeds are considered a "privilege" to be doled out (or rescinded)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.

~~~
bambax
If you're "embedded" you're a guest; not only is it bad manners to bite the
hand that feeds you, it's also fundamentally against human nature. Embedded
journalists will almost always side with who they're embedded within.

Independent journalism can only be produced by truly independent journalists:
journalists who don't depend on the people they're reporting on for their very
survival.

Is this possible? Maybe, but we sure haven't seen much of it.

Hoping that traditional embedding will produce true journalism is wishful
thinking.

Or maybe the other side should offer to embed western journalists within them;
that could prove to be fascinating. As a reader, I would be very interested in
what the so-called "bad guys" think, what their motivations are, what goals
they're pursuing, how they're fighting, etc.

~~~
malandrew
Interesting idea, but you'd have to be batshit insane to embed yourself with
any military force fighting the United States military.

------
mattdeboard
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.

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.)

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.

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.

------
austenallred
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. ([http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-
york-times-propaganda-photo...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-york-times-
propaganda-photos-on-ukraine-exposed/5378942))

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.

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.

~~~
omonra
Your point lacks credibility because the one link you cite is nothing but a
Kremlin mouthpiece. Ie it's painfully blatant & appears to be written by RT
staffers.

------
higherpurpose
I hope Americans can elect a president that will pardon Manning and Snowden in
day _one_ 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.

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 _continue_ on the
dark path is currently on.

~~~
pyre
Even if said President _wanted_ to do it, I doubt that the military-industrial
complex would let him/her. They would burn a lot of political bridges, and
possibly end up unable to accomplish anything else of significance during
their Presidency.

------
uptown
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.

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.

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:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html?pagewan...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html?pagewanted=all)

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.

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.

~~~
eli
Soon most people will get their news online, not from TV. The audience for TV
keeps getting older and the market share for digital news keeps growing.

~~~
brownbat
There was a panel at a summit in Colorado where someone was talking about
their plans for fact based journalism on a new Al Jazeera America, and someone
from MSNBC or one of the other cable networks was there.

It was a really wrenching exchange as the existing cable mogul defended the
status quo, saying something like, "We'd love to have sophisticated news
consumers tune in, but those people have complex lives and interests, they
don't watch news every night, they just read it quickly online then go to
things like the ballet. We run the market experiment with sober, deep, fact-
based news every night against PBS. It doesn't win."

It's helpful to realize that even when Fox is top of the ratings, the viewers
it has as a percentage of the American population are exceedingly tiny.

In a Gallup poll in 2013, TV still leads, in surveys. But surveys overstate
things, because people want to look like they actually consume news.
[http://www.gallup.com/poll/163412/americans-main-source-
news...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/163412/americans-main-source-news.aspx)

On a strong weekday, Fox is looking at maybe 2 million viewers for the entire
day: [http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2014/06/10/cable-news-
ratin...](http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2014/06/10/cable-news-ratings-for-
monday-june-9-2014/272054/) (ie, under a percent of the US population).

It's easy to credit TV news with a larger cultural impact than it actually
has.

------
lifeisstillgood
Tl;dr

Iraq never had more than 12 embedded journalists covering 100,000 troops, and
they had to be nice or get removed.

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.

~~~
clebio
The piece is just shy of 1200 words. Is a tldr really needed? Would that his
analysis was longer.... Back to Hedges' books.

~~~
Gracana
> his

Her. Why are people _still_ misgendering Chelsea Manning?

~~~
clebio
You're absolutely right about that, and I apologize. It was pure sloppiness on
my part. I meant no disrespect towards or commentary on Manning.

------
danieltillett
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?

~~~
clebio
This is the question I hoped would bubble out of this post (as opposed to the
question 'why are we seeing politics on HN'). Part of the answer would be to
build tools such as SecureDrop/ StrongBox:

[http://www.newyorker.com/strongbox/](http://www.newyorker.com/strongbox/)
[https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/securedrop](https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/securedrop)

And Redphone and the various things Moxie works on:
[https://whispersystems.org/](https://whispersystems.org/)

But that only makes communications and authenticity possible. Access -- as in
embedding problem Manning describes -- and censorship or selection bias will
still be a problem. Those seem more like policy issues than technology
problems. Along those lines, possibly Sunlight Foundation
([http://sunlightfoundation.com/](http://sunlightfoundation.com/)) and of
course, supporting the EFF ([https://www.eff.org/](https://www.eff.org/)).

Those are my thoughts, but I second your question and hope others have input.

------
HenryMc
The Vice documentary 'This Is What Winning Looks Like' has some great
reporting on Afghanistan.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI)

~~~
personlurking
"The documentary follows U.S. Marines as they train Afghan security forces,
showing their ineptitude, drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and corruption as
well as the reduced role of US Marines due to the troop withdrawal."

A reddit discussion on looking at the documentary critically.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/25vm20/this_i...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/25vm20/this_is_what_winning_looks_like_2013_the/chlc80w)

------
danieltillett
I am glad to hear from Chelsea. Does anyone's know how she is fairing?

~~~
Ygg2
As a transgender person in prison... Probably, not too great.

------
Zigurd
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.

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.

------
eli
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?

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.

~~~
Ygg2
> 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?

It's outcome was known and obvious from the get go. You kill the dictator that
repress another extremist. What did you think it was going to happen? No
retaliation.

America's 'Wars' from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, War on Terror (and
War on Drugs) have all been, very, very, very bad. I can't think of a military
campaign that accomplished their goals, unless said goals were to cause as
much shit as possible and get paid shit ton for doing so.

[http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175854/tomgram%3A_engelhardt...](http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175854/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_a_record_of_unparalleled_failure/)

~~~
eli
My point is that it's tough to say "I told you so" after the fact.

~~~
Ygg2
There were many analytic saying it will end like this (I don't have links at
the moment).

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Dethroning Saddam just led to a
power vacuum that installed whatever he was suppressing for the duration of
his reign.

