North writes: "The Pentagon's new 'Law of War' manual puts some journalists
in the category of 'unprivileged belligerents,' meaning they can be tried by
military tribunals as spies, a further sign of U.S. government hostility
toward reporting that undercuts Washington's goals."
An ABC News cameraman in the Persian Gulf War films the arrival of Syrian
troops. (photo: Don North)
Pentagon Manual Defines Some Reporters as Spies
By Don North, Consortium News
24 August 15
The Pentagons new Law of War manual puts some journalists in the category
of unprivileged belligerents, meaning they can be tried by military
tribunals as spies, a further sign of U.S. government hostility toward
reporting that undercuts Washingtons goals, writes veteran war
correspondent Don North.
Honest war correspondents and photographers who try to cover wars
effectively are about to become suspect spies if a new Pentagon manual, Law
of War, is accepted by U.S. military commanders. I can confirm from
personal experience that reporting on wars is hard enough without being
considered a suspicious character secretly working for the other side.
The 1,176-page manual, published on June 24, is the first comprehensive
revision made to the Defense Departments law of war policy since 1956. One
change in terminology directly targets journalists, saying in general,
journalists are civilians, but under some circumstances, journalists may be
regarded as unprivileged belligerents. [p. 173] That places reporters in
the same ranks as Al Qaeda, since the term unprivileged belligerents
replaces the Bush-era phrase unlawful combatants.
Reporting on military operations can be very similar to collecting
intelligence or even spying, the manual says, calling on journalists to
act openly and with the permission of relevant authorities. The manual
notes that governments may need to censor journalists work or take other
security measures so that journalists do not reveal sensitive information to
the enemy.
The manuals new language reflects a long-term growing hostility within the
U.S. military toward unencumbered reporting about battlefield operations as
well as a deepening interest in information warfare, the idea that control
over what the public gets to hear and see is an important way of ensuring
continued popular support for a conflict at home and undermining the enemy
abroad.
But allowing this manual to stand as guidance for commanders, government
lawyers and leaders of foreign nations would severely damage press freedoms,
not only for Americans but internationally. It would drastically inhibit the
news media ability to cover future wars honestly and keep the public
informed, which is after all what both U.S. government officials and
journalists say they want.
Bitter Vietnam Memories
The new manual also reflects an historical trend. During the Vietnam War, a
majority of U.S. military officers believed the press should have been under
more restraint. By the early years of the Reagan administration, it had
become an article of faith among many conservatives that the press had
helped lose that war by behaving more as disloyal fifth columnists than a
respectable Fourth Estate.
So, the Pentagon began to strike back. During the short-lived Grenada
invasion of 1983, press coverage was banned in the early phases of the
conflict. Soon, the Pentagon began a more formal process of both
constraining and co-opting journalists. In the first Gulf War, journalists
were forced to work in restrictive pools. In the Iraq War, reporters were
embedded with military units while facing multiple limitations on what
they could say and write.
Now, the Pentagon appears to be engaging in an attempt at intimidation or
prior restraint, essentially warning journalists that if they are deemed
to have reported something that undermines the war effort, they could be
deemed unprivileged belligerents, presumably opening them to trial by
military tribunals or to indefinite detention.
And, while that might seem to be an extreme interpretation, the manuals
ominous wording comes at a time when the U.S. government has escalated its
denunciations of what it regards as propaganda from journalists at RT, a
Russian network, and earlier of Al-Jazeera, an Arab-based network, both of
which broadcast internationally, including inside the United States offering
alternative perspectives and contrasting information from what is often
reported in the mainstream U.S. media.
Growing Dangers
This rhetoric labeling unwelcome journalism as propaganda hostile to U.S.
national security goals also comes at a time of global political turmoil
that has seen a shocking number of journalists jailed, intimidated and
murdered with impunity simply for doing their jobs.
Reporters Without Borders reported 61 journalists killed last year, with 59
percent dying while covering wars. The same study found media freedom in
retreat across the globe, including in the United States, which ranked 49th
among the 180 nations examined regarding the environment for press
activities, the lowest standing since President Barack Obama took office.
The Reporters Without Borders report suggests that the Pentagons new manual
may be part of a worldwide trend in which governments see shaping the
presentation of information as an important national security goal and
skeptical journalism as an impediment.
Many governments used control and manipulation of media coverage as a
weapon of war in 2014, ranging from over-coverage to complete news
blackout, the report stated. It creates a hostile climate for journalists
and has disastrous consequences for media pluralism.
In the United States, the hostility toward unwanted or unapproved reporting
whether from RT, Al-Jazeera or WikiLeaks has merged with more
classification of information and greater delays in releasing material
sought through Freedom of Information channels.
Despite President Obamas pledge to make his administration one of the most
transparent in history, press freedom watchdogs have continually slammed his
administration as one of the least transparent and criticized its aggressive
prosecution of leakers, including Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley)
Manning for releasing evidence of apparent war crimes in the Iraq and Afghan
wars. Manning received a 35-year prison sentence and is currently facing
possible solitary confinement for alleged prison infractions.
The Obama administrations obsession with secrecy even extended to the
status of the new manuals views about war reporting. A spokesman for the
National Security Council has declined to say whether the White House
contributed to or signed off on the manual.
The manual does contain a disclaimer about its possible limits: The views
in this manual do not necessarily reflect the views of
the US government.
The manual was issued by the office of Stephen W. Preston, general counsel
for the Pentagon and former chief attorney for the CIA. After six years
overseeing the Obama administrations legal policy with respect to lethal
drone attacks as well as the raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden and the current war against the Islamic State, Preston resigned from
the Pentagon in June following publication of the manual and has not been
available for comment.
Media Pushback
The manual has even drawn some criticism from the mainstream U.S. media. On
Aug. 10, a New York Times editorial declared: Allowing this document to
stand as guidance for commanders, government lawyers and officials of other
nations would do severe damage to press freedoms.
The Times also dismissed the value of the manuals disclaimer about not
necessarily reflecting the views of the U.S. government: That inane
disclaimer wont stop commanders pointing to the manual when they find it
convenient to silence the press. The White House should call on Secretary of
Defense Ashton Carter to revise this section, which so clearly runs contrary
to American law and principles.
Reporters Without Borders published an open letter to Secretary Carter
calling on him to revise dangerous language of the Pentagon manual that
suggests journalists can become unprivileged belligerents, akin to spies
or saboteurs.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists in a critique of the
manual writes, By giving approval for the military to detain journalists on
vague national security grounds, the manual is sending a disturbing message
to dictatorships and democracies alike. The same accusations and threats to
national security are routinely used to put journalists behind bars in
nations like China, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Russia to name just a few.
Public attention to the new Pentagon manual came at an awkward time for U.S.
government officials. Secretary of State John Kerry was recently in Hanoi
lecturing the Vietnamese to let up on oppressed journalists and release
bloggers from jail.
In Iran, the U.S. government has protested the trial of Washington Post
reporter Jason Rezaian on spying charges and has marshaled international
support behind demands for his release. United Nations human rights
advocates called on Tehran to release Rezaian, declaring: Journalists must
be protected, not harassed, detained or prosecuted.
So, the new law of war manual suggests that we are seeing another case of
American double standards, lecturing the world about principles that the
U.S. government chooses to ignore when its own perceived interests are seen
as endangered.
The reality is that the U.S. military has often taken questionable action
against journalists, particularly Arab journalists working for U.S. or third
country agencies. AP photographer, Bilal Hussein, whose photo of insurgents
firing on Marines in Fallujah in 2004 earned him a Pulitzer Prize, was
detained by the U.S. Marines and held two years without charges, evidence or
explanation.
Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj was detained in 2001 while covering a U.S.
offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan. U.S. military forces accused
the Sudanese cameraman of being a financial courier for armed groups but
never produced evidence to support the claims. Al-Haj was held for six years
at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
Prior to releasing him, according to his lawyer, U.S. military officials
tried to compel al-Haj to spy on Al-Jazeera as a condition of his release.
In its 6,000-plus footnotes, the manual ignores these two cases. Instead it
suggests its own perspective on how journalists covering conflicts should
operate: To avoid being mistaken for spies, journalists should act openly
and with the permission of relevant authorities advice that is both
impractical and problematic.
For instance, how would the U.S. military respond if the permission of
relevant authorities came from a battlefield adversary? Would that be taken
as prime facie evidence that the reporter was collaborating with the enemy?
Plus, in any war that Ive covered from Vietnam to Iraq, I have never gone
looking for relevant authorities in the fog of battle, as finding one
would be as unlikely as it would be risky. Indeed, the more likely result if
such a person was found would be for the reporter to be detained and
prevented from doing his or her job rather than receiving some permission
slip.
Such naïve advice suggests the editors of this manual have had little
experience in combat situations.
A False Comparison
When asked to give an example of when a reporter would be an unprivileged
belligerent, a senior Pentagon official pointed to the assassination of the
Afghan rebel military commander Ahmad Shah Massoud in September 2001, but
the two assassins were not real journalists; they were simply using that as
a cover.
I was at Massouds headquarters at the time and can confirm that the two
assassins were Al Qaeda agents from Algeria posing as television journalists
with explosives hidden in their camera. They could just as easily have posed
as United Nations envoys or as mail couriers. They were not journalists.
Significantly, the manual does not list any current or former American war
correspondents as consultants. Military legal experts from Britain, Canada,
New Zealand and Australia are listed as having an input, as well as
unspecified distinguished scholars.
Whatever their vast knowledge, the manuals author as well as those
scholars and other military legal experts apparently had little
familiarity with, or regard for, the First Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, which is supposed to guarantee freedom of the press.
Andrew Pearson, who was one of my colleagues at ABC News in Vietnam,
observed: When the Pentagon gets squeezed between stupid presidents and
truth-telling journalists, the answer isnt jail for the journalist, though
that seems to be the answer that the new manual favors.
The Pentagon types dont learn that much out on the firing range about the
Constitution, so somewhere along the way in our complicated democratic
system, there has to be protection for journalists against a Pentagon that
thinks theyre a dictatorship, Pearson added.
In an interview on NPR last Friday, a senior editor of the manual, Charles
A. Allen, deputy general counsel for international affairs, could not
respond to the question: Can you give any examples of any cases of
operations being jeopardized by journalists in say the last five wars?
Allen said he could not provide examples without referring to Pentagon
files.
In fact, in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, I can remember only a very few
infractions of the media rules by the thousands of journalists covering
military operations.
A History of Distrust
Yet, it may be true that the tension between the military and the press will
never cease, because both need each other but cannot grant the other what it
really wants. The reporters want absolute freedom to print or film
everything on the battlefield, while the militarys mission is to fight and
to win.
The generals would prefer the journalists to perform as organs of state
propaganda to ensure popular support for the war or to undermine the enemy.
But the journalists purpose is to find and report the truth to the public,
a mission not always compatible with successful warfare, which also relies
on secrecy and deception.
As one World War II military censor in Washington described his view of
appropriate media relations, I wouldnt tell the press anything until the
war is over, and then Id tell them who won.
The U.S. militarys mistrust of the press goes back even further. As General
William Tecumseh Sherman one of the Civil Wars most aggressive and
outspoken commanders declared: I hate newspaper men. I regard them as
spies, which in truth they are. If I killed them all, there would be news
from hell before breakfast.
So, war correspondents struggle with the constant conflict between the
publics right to know and the military zeal to keep things secret. One side
fights for information and the other fights to deny or control it. The U.S.
militarys legacy of suspicion and even hostility toward the media has been
passed down through generations within military institutions like a family
heirloom.
It is unlikely we will ever again find ourselves with the unfettered access
to war that we had in Vietnam, my first experience as a war correspondent.
At that time, the U.S. government recognized the importance of journalists
being allowed to do our jobs at our own risk. We were considered a necessary
evil that had to be tolerated.
However, the Vietnam lesson for the U.S. military was that images and the
written word can inform the public with devastating effect and can lead to
demands for accountability for war crimes as well as an erosion of popular
support for the war. In other words, a well-informed public in a democracy
might decide that the war was a bad idea and that it should be brought to an
end short of victory.
War correspondents have short working lives and there is no tradition or
means for passing on their knowledge and experience. However, the American
news media must learn to represent themselves collectively with one voice on
matters of access to information and censorship as represented in the
Pentagons Law of War.
The news media should establish a working council of news representatives to
meet with government and military officials to negotiate acceptable ground
rules for the future. Number one on the agenda should be a rewrite of the
Pentagons Law of War.
________________________________________
Don North is a veteran war correspondent who covered the Vietnam War and
many other conflicts around the world. He is the author of a new book,
Inappropriate Conduct, the story of a World War II correspondent whose
career was crushed by the intrigue he uncovered.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
An ABC News cameraman in the Persian Gulf War films the arrival of Syrian
troops. (photo: Don North)
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/08/19/pentagon-manual-calls-some-reporters-s
pies/https://consortiumnews.com/2015/08/19/pentagon-manual-calls-some-report
ers-spies/
Pentagon Manual Defines Some Reporters as Spies
By Don North, Consortium News
24 August 15
The Pentagons new Law of War manual puts some journalists in the category
of unprivileged belligerents, meaning they can be tried by military
tribunals as spies, a further sign of U.S. government hostility toward
reporting that undercuts Washingtons goals, writes veteran war
correspondent Don North.
onest war correspondents and photographers who try to cover wars
effectively are about to become suspect spies if a new Pentagon manual, Law
of War, is accepted by U.S. military commanders. I can confirm from
personal experience that reporting on wars is hard enough without being
considered a suspicious character secretly working for the other side.
The 1,176-page manual, published on June 24, is the first comprehensive
revision made to the Defense Departments law of war policy since 1956. One
change in terminology directly targets journalists, saying in general,
journalists are civilians, but under some circumstances, journalists may be
regarded as unprivileged belligerents. [p. 173] That places reporters in
the same ranks as Al Qaeda, since the term unprivileged belligerents
replaces the Bush-era phrase unlawful combatants.
Reporting on military operations can be very similar to collecting
intelligence or even spying, the manual says, calling on journalists to
act openly and with the permission of relevant authorities. The manual
notes that governments may need to censor journalists work or take other
security measures so that journalists do not reveal sensitive information to
the enemy.
The manuals new language reflects a long-term growing hostility within the
U.S. military toward unencumbered reporting about battlefield operations as
well as a deepening interest in information warfare, the idea that control
over what the public gets to hear and see is an important way of ensuring
continued popular support for a conflict at home and undermining the enemy
abroad.
But allowing this manual to stand as guidance for commanders, government
lawyers and leaders of foreign nations would severely damage press freedoms,
not only for Americans but internationally. It would drastically inhibit the
news media ability to cover future wars honestly and keep the public
informed, which is after all what both U.S. government officials and
journalists say they want.
Bitter Vietnam Memories
The new manual also reflects an historical trend. During the Vietnam War, a
majority of U.S. military officers believed the press should have been under
more restraint. By the early years of the Reagan administration, it had
become an article of faith among many conservatives that the press had
helped lose that war by behaving more as disloyal fifth columnists than a
respectable Fourth Estate.
So, the Pentagon began to strike back. During the short-lived Grenada
invasion of 1983, press coverage was banned in the early phases of the
conflict. Soon, the Pentagon began a more formal process of both
constraining and co-opting journalists. In the first Gulf War, journalists
were forced to work in restrictive pools. In the Iraq War, reporters were
embedded with military units while facing multiple limitations on what
they could say and write.
Now, the Pentagon appears to be engaging in an attempt at intimidation or
prior restraint, essentially warning journalists that if they are deemed
to have reported something that undermines the war effort, they could be
deemed unprivileged belligerents, presumably opening them to trial by
military tribunals or to indefinite detention.
And, while that might seem to be an extreme interpretation, the manuals
ominous wording comes at a time when the U.S. government has escalated its
denunciations of what it regards as propaganda from journalists at RT, a
Russian network, and earlier of Al-Jazeera, an Arab-based network, both of
which broadcast internationally, including inside the United States offering
alternative perspectives and contrasting information from what is often
reported in the mainstream U.S. media.
Growing Dangers
This rhetoric labeling unwelcome journalism as propaganda hostile to U.S.
national security goals also comes at a time of global political turmoil
that has seen a shocking number of journalists jailed, intimidated and
murdered with impunity simply for doing their jobs.
Reporters Without Borders reported 61 journalists killed last year, with 59
percent dying while covering wars. The same study found media freedom in
retreat across the globe, including in the United States, which ranked 49th
among the 180 nations examined regarding the environment for press
activities, the lowest standing since President Barack Obama took office.
The Reporters Without Borders report suggests that the Pentagons new manual
may be part of a worldwide trend in which governments see shaping the
presentation of information as an important national security goal and
skeptical journalism as an impediment.
Many governments used control and manipulation of media coverage as a
weapon of war in 2014, ranging from over-coverage to complete news
blackout, the report stated. It creates a hostile climate for journalists
and has disastrous consequences for media pluralism.
In the United States, the hostility toward unwanted or unapproved reporting
whether from RT, Al-Jazeera or WikiLeaks has merged with more
classification of information and greater delays in releasing material
sought through Freedom of Information channels.
Despite President Obamas pledge to make his administration one of the most
transparent in history, press freedom watchdogs have continually slammed his
administration as one of the least transparent and criticized its aggressive
prosecution of leakers, including Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley)
Manning for releasing evidence of apparent war crimes in the Iraq and Afghan
wars. Manning received a 35-year prison sentence and is currently facing
possible solitary confinement for alleged prison infractions.
The Obama administrations obsession with secrecy even extended to the
status of the new manuals views about war reporting. A spokesman for the
National Security Council has declined to say whether the White House
contributed to or signed off on the manual.
The manual does contain a disclaimer about its possible limits: The views
in this manual do not necessarily reflect the views of
the US government.
The manual was issued by the office of Stephen W. Preston, general counsel
for the Pentagon and former chief attorney for the CIA. After six years
overseeing the Obama administrations legal policy with respect to lethal
drone attacks as well as the raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden and the current war against the Islamic State, Preston resigned from
the Pentagon in June following publication of the manual and has not been
available for comment.
Media Pushback
The manual has even drawn some criticism from the mainstream U.S. media. On
Aug. 10, a New York Times editorial declared: Allowing this document to
stand as guidance for commanders, government lawyers and officials of other
nations would do severe damage to press freedoms.
The Times also dismissed the value of the manuals disclaimer about not
necessarily reflecting the views of the U.S. government: That inane
disclaimer wont stop commanders pointing to the manual when they find it
convenient to silence the press. The White House should call on Secretary of
Defense Ashton Carter to revise this section, which so clearly runs contrary
to American law and principles.
Reporters Without Borders published an open letter to Secretary Carter
calling on him to revise dangerous language of the Pentagon manual that
suggests journalists can become unprivileged belligerents, akin to spies
or saboteurs.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists in a critique of the
manual writes, By giving approval for the military to detain journalists on
vague national security grounds, the manual is sending a disturbing message
to dictatorships and democracies alike. The same accusations and threats to
national security are routinely used to put journalists behind bars in
nations like China, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Russia to name just a few.
Public attention to the new Pentagon manual came at an awkward time for U.S.
government officials. Secretary of State John Kerry was recently in Hanoi
lecturing the Vietnamese to let up on oppressed journalists and release
bloggers from jail.
In Iran, the U.S. government has protested the trial of Washington Post
reporter Jason Rezaian on spying charges and has marshaled international
support behind demands for his release. United Nations human rights
advocates called on Tehran to release Rezaian, declaring: Journalists must
be protected, not harassed, detained or prosecuted.
So, the new law of war manual suggests that we are seeing another case of
American double standards, lecturing the world about principles that the
U.S. government chooses to ignore when its own perceived interests are seen
as endangered.
The reality is that the U.S. military has often taken questionable action
against journalists, particularly Arab journalists working for U.S. or third
country agencies. AP photographer, Bilal Hussein, whose photo of insurgents
firing on Marines in Fallujah in 2004 earned him a Pulitzer Prize, was
detained by the U.S. Marines and held two years without charges, evidence or
explanation.
Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj was detained in 2001 while covering a U.S.
offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan. U.S. military forces accused
the Sudanese cameraman of being a financial courier for armed groups but
never produced evidence to support the claims. Al-Haj was held for six years
at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
Prior to releasing him, according to his lawyer, U.S. military officials
tried to compel al-Haj to spy on Al-Jazeera as a condition of his release.
In its 6,000-plus footnotes, the manual ignores these two cases. Instead it
suggests its own perspective on how journalists covering conflicts should
operate: To avoid being mistaken for spies, journalists should act openly
and with the permission of relevant authorities advice that is both
impractical and problematic.
For instance, how would the U.S. military respond if the permission of
relevant authorities came from a battlefield adversary? Would that be taken
as prime facie evidence that the reporter was collaborating with the enemy?
Plus, in any war that Ive covered from Vietnam to Iraq, I have never gone
looking for relevant authorities in the fog of battle, as finding one
would be as unlikely as it would be risky. Indeed, the more likely result if
such a person was found would be for the reporter to be detained and
prevented from doing his or her job rather than receiving some permission
slip.
Such naïve advice suggests the editors of this manual have had little
experience in combat situations.
A False Comparison
When asked to give an example of when a reporter would be an unprivileged
belligerent, a senior Pentagon official pointed to the assassination of the
Afghan rebel military commander Ahmad Shah Massoud in September 2001, but
the two assassins were not real journalists; they were simply using that as
a cover.
I was at Massouds headquarters at the time and can confirm that the two
assassins were Al Qaeda agents from Algeria posing as television journalists
with explosives hidden in their camera. They could just as easily have posed
as United Nations envoys or as mail couriers. They were not journalists.
Significantly, the manual does not list any current or former American war
correspondents as consultants. Military legal experts from Britain, Canada,
New Zealand and Australia are listed as having an input, as well as
unspecified distinguished scholars.
Whatever their vast knowledge, the manuals author as well as those
scholars and other military legal experts apparently had little
familiarity with, or regard for, the First Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, which is supposed to guarantee freedom of the press.
Andrew Pearson, who was one of my colleagues at ABC News in Vietnam,
observed: When the Pentagon gets squeezed between stupid presidents and
truth-telling journalists, the answer isnt jail for the journalist, though
that seems to be the answer that the new manual favors.
The Pentagon types dont learn that much out on the firing range about the
Constitution, so somewhere along the way in our complicated democratic
system, there has to be protection for journalists against a Pentagon that
thinks theyre a dictatorship, Pearson added.
In an interview on NPR last Friday, a senior editor of the manual, Charles
A. Allen, deputy general counsel for international affairs, could not
respond to the question: Can you give any examples of any cases of
operations being jeopardized by journalists in say the last five wars?
Allen said he could not provide examples without referring to Pentagon
files.
In fact, in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, I can remember only a very few
infractions of the media rules by the thousands of journalists covering
military operations.
A History of Distrust
Yet, it may be true that the tension between the military and the press will
never cease, because both need each other but cannot grant the other what it
really wants. The reporters want absolute freedom to print or film
everything on the battlefield, while the militarys mission is to fight and
to win.
The generals would prefer the journalists to perform as organs of state
propaganda to ensure popular support for the war or to undermine the enemy.
But the journalists purpose is to find and report the truth to the public,
a mission not always compatible with successful warfare, which also relies
on secrecy and deception.
As one World War II military censor in Washington described his view of
appropriate media relations, I wouldnt tell the press anything until the
war is over, and then Id tell them who won.
The U.S. militarys mistrust of the press goes back even further. As General
William Tecumseh Sherman one of the Civil Wars most aggressive and
outspoken commanders declared: I hate newspaper men. I regard them as
spies, which in truth they are. If I killed them all, there would be news
from hell before breakfast.
So, war correspondents struggle with the constant conflict between the
publics right to know and the military zeal to keep things secret. One side
fights for information and the other fights to deny or control it. The U.S.
militarys legacy of suspicion and even hostility toward the media has been
passed down through generations within military institutions like a family
heirloom.
It is unlikely we will ever again find ourselves with the unfettered access
to war that we had in Vietnam, my first experience as a war correspondent.
At that time, the U.S. government recognized the importance of journalists
being allowed to do our jobs at our own risk. We were considered a necessary
evil that had to be tolerated.
However, the Vietnam lesson for the U.S. military was that images and the
written word can inform the public with devastating effect and can lead to
demands for accountability for war crimes as well as an erosion of popular
support for the war. In other words, a well-informed public in a democracy
might decide that the war was a bad idea and that it should be brought to an
end short of victory.
War correspondents have short working lives and there is no tradition or
means for passing on their knowledge and experience. However, the American
news media must learn to represent themselves collectively with one voice on
matters of access to information and censorship as represented in the
Pentagons Law of War.
The news media should establish a working council of news representatives to
meet with government and military officials to negotiate acceptable ground
rules for the future. Number one on the agenda should be a rewrite of the
Pentagons Law of War.
Don North is a veteran war correspondent who covered the Vietnam War and
many other conflicts around the world. He is the author of a new book,
http://www.inappropriate-conduct.com/Inappropriate Conduct, the story of a
World War II correspondent whose career was crushed by the intrigue he
uncovered.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
