Warier Warriors
You might as well call it “The Anonymous Sources Full Employment Policy”.
As predicted the other combat boot has dropped as the Defense Secretary Gates has issued new rules of engagement with the news media, according to my colleague Thom Shanker reporting this morning in The New York Times.
[“Gates Tightens Rules for Military and the Media,” New York Times, July 2, 2010]
The Pentagon says it’s not related to the Rolling Stone article that brought down Gen. McChrystal. Nevertheless it requires all on the record interviews to be cleared by the Pentagon. Which means if reporters want get any quotes or insights that go beyond the official Pentagon-sanctioned message, they will have to talk to anonymous sources on background, or heaven forbid, off the record.
It was Gates who famously declared, “the press is not the enemy” shortly six months after he took over back in 2007.
“The same is true with the press, in my view a critically important guarantor of our freedom. When it identifies a problem, as at Walter Reed, the response of senior leaders should be to find out if the allegations are true – as they were at Walter Reed – and if so, say so, and then act to remedy the problem. If untrue, then be able to document that fact. The press is not the enemy, and to treat it as such is self-defeating.“
– Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense, Annapolis, Maryland, May 25, 2007
The now infamous Rolling Stone article so clearly shows, treating the press as your friend can be self-defeating, too. Or at least career-limiting.
By the way: There is a lot of grumbling among career military PAOs [Public Affairs Officers] that this massive screw-up with McChrystal was a the fault of a politically-appointed civilian who was “too clever by half” in pursuing the trendy goal of “strategic communications.” No one quite knows what “strategic communications” is, but the general idea is to do a better job winning people over to your way of thinking, and so the idea of getting a story in Rolling Stone was perhaps aimed at reaching a different audience, which up to now has not been all that supportive of the war effort. Not only did the effort backfire in spectacular fashion, it has also helped to discredit the whole notion of “strategic communications,” which many see as a gussied-up euphemism for plain old media manipulation and propaganda.
There will be a lot of handwringing inside and outside media circles about how all this is going to make the missions of both the military and the media more difficult. But the truth is it will change very little. Commanders will be more wary. There will be a short term cutback on embed opportunities with senior officers, but in the end experienced reporters with a track record of integrity and independence, will use their hard-earned trust to get the access they need. That’s never easy.
Meanwhile the whole episode serves as reminder to both sides of the military/media divide just where their loyalties should lie.
One footnote:
Traveling with Secretary Gates to Singapore shortly after his 2007 speech, I made up a bunch of buttons with his “not the enemy” quote, and passed them out to the traveling press, as a joke to gently chide the secretary to live by his words.
I wore one on my lapel to one of those off the record after-hours social events that have now come under renewed scrutiny.
(You can see it in this picture I have posted here, if you click on it to see the image full size.)
It was a typical off the record affair, just a chance for the traveling party to mix share some lighthearted banter, and yes there was drinking going on. I can’t tell you what was in the secretary’s glass but I think it was club soda. As you can see I was drinking what appears to be lemonade in a wine glass. What did we discuss that night? In all honesty I have no idea. I didn’t take notes, and I don’t remember. But I can assure you no one was dissing the President. And there were no hijinks that the press corps was covering up.
Tags: Gates, ground rules, Media, Pentagon, Press
