No Cynics, Please!
It seems that as old as war itself is the desire of commanders to banish those pesky reporters who keep writing their own version of the truth.
Now comes word from Stars and Stripes (an independent newspaper, not controlled by the government) that before reporters can “embed” with U.S. troops on the battlefield, they will have to be vetted, based on the quality of their previous reporting.
And the vetting is being done by a PR group, whose activities in the past have been the subject of some controversy.
According to the story by Charlie Reed, Stars and Stripes has been told that any reporter seeking to embed with U.S. forces is subject to a background profile by The Rendon Group, which gained notoriety in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq for its work helping to create the Iraqi National Congress.
The paper reports two months ago the U.S. Army barred a Stars and Stripes reporter from embedding with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division because the reporter “refused to highlight” good news that military commanders wanted to emphasize.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman emphatically denies that any decisions about embedding reporters are based on a review of their past work. “That’s not taking place,” Whitman tells Line of Departure.
Journalists’ recent work examined before embeds
