REFLECTIONS ON THE MEDIA
COL Jack Jacobs
USA (Retired)
Lately, the tension between the military and the media often seems almost palpable and increasingly strained. In that regard, not much has changed.
When I was an infantryman in Vietnam, any potential contact with reporters was strenuously, even arduously, avoided. Most of us, even the draftees, considered ourselves professionals and comfortable in our milieu, but talking to a reporter placed us instantly out of our own dangerous but familiar world into a surreal place where we lacked experience. Not even the prospect of appearing on the evening news ameliorated the anxiety of having to deal with the greater likelihood of looking like an idiot or, worse, inadvertently saying something that could easily be edited into five seconds of support for the anti-war movement. Most soldiers would rather be point man on patrol for the duration of their combat tours than speak with a reporter for any length of time, however short, and the majority who appeared on the evening news did so because being on television for a minute was an extraordinary opportunity, never to be repeated.
None of us harbored any illusions: we were doing what we had to do, but we knew we were fighting a wildly unpopular war. And as people often do in difficult situations, we viewed the world with remarkable clarity. We soldiers stood on one side. Arrayed against us was everyone else, chief among them journalists.
As with most things in life, the truth was a bit more complicated. Most (though clearly not all) of the journalists who were decidedly against fighting in Vietnam also felt strongly that they held that opinion as a function of being intensely patriotic, and the few who were actually in favor of a communist government usually said so. The majority of soldiers were proud to be serving their country, but they were not all that thrilled about getting shot at, their dedication to their comrades notwithstanding, and their disillusionment increased over time. Ultimately, of course, even the Administration got fed up, and in early 1973, President Nixon did essentially what Senator George Aiken had presciently suggested years earlier: declare we’d won and go home.
And how much influence did the media wield in getting us to leave Vietnam? Well, in my opinion, not a lot. Not directly, in any case. Remember that we were very actively in combat in Vietnam for more than ten years, and no one with any intellectual acuity could seriously make an argument that it takes an entire decade for the press to have an impact. It seems, particularly in retrospect, that the media, no matter what their proclivities, were doing a much better job of reflecting evolving public opinion than shaping it.
To those of us who came of age in that era, it seems like only yesterday, but it was really a very long time ago. More time has elapsed since then…twice as long…as had elapsed between the end of the Second World War and our going to Vietnam. When we went to Vietnam, World War II veterans were a bit over 40 years old, fully 20 years younger than most Vietnam veterans are now. And the business of journalism has changed quite dramatically.
During WWII, broadcasting was a very young enterprise, and broadcast journalism as we know it today did not exist. Television had been invented just before the war, but it was mostly an engineering curiosity and did not become a commercially viable product until well after the war was over. When we got our first television in 1949, it consisted of a four-inch screen housed in a cabinet the size of a refrigerator that needed three men to move, and it carried unsophisticated live programs on just two channels. It generated so much heat that we used it to supplement the inadequate kerosene space heater that struggled to warm us in winter. Everyone listened to the radio, of course, but people got most of their news from newspapers, and there were lots of newspapers around. Just after World War II, even after a wave of mergers, there were still nearly a dozen daily papers distributed in New York.. When America went to war, the citizens read about it, and, except for sanitized newsreels in movie theaters, the only pictures we saw were equally tasteful photographs in the newspapers. There were no warnings of disturbing images to follow, because there were no disturbing images. In addition, most men, and thus most journalists, were military veterans, with the ability to distinguish objective reality from fabricated rubbish, the kind of discrimination possessed only by those who have been in combat. There was a sobriety in the world of serious journalism that was a synthesis of the composed Edwardian era that had recently passed and the stark reality of a civilization that had been rescued from the brink of destruction.
By the mid-fifties, the news business had begun to change in important ways that would ultimately have far-reaching effects. The economy’s growth and volatility and the archaic nature of the newspaper business started to take a toll, and there began a trend, slowly at first and then with some ferocity, to greater consolidation among the nation’s daily newspapers. This trend was exacerbated by the growth and popularity of newsmagazines, as technological advancements made it possible to publish and distribute relatively recent news in a slicker format and in more depth than the newspapers could. The result was fewer newspapers, particularly in major markets with growing populations, and these papers tended to be owned by organizations that operated more than one paper, very often in more than one market. Today, this trend is now the standard business model, criticized by some as a structure that erodes objectivity.
Simultaneously, the television broadcasting business came of age and grew quickly to that which it is in 2004: the principal source of the public’s awareness of current events. This tended to put even more pressure on the published news business, which in turn caused accelerated consolidations. Today, while there is a glut of magazines catering to every conceivable arcane interest, the number of major newspapers is actually quite small.
During the thirty-five years after the Second World War, the three television networks had a monopoly on the dissemination of televised material, and that included news. Conceptually, they viewed themselves as journalists in the old sense, and, indeed, the large majority of television news people had been print reporters before the popularity of television. They saw themselves as following a higher calling, of serving the public’s interest, of being objective and above the fray. But, as is often the case, concentration of influence can be the genesis of exactly the opposite behavior, and many observers criticized what they perceived as sanctimony, condescension and political partisanship, exactly the criticism leveled at the newspaper industry, and for the same reason.
By the time the United States went to war in earnest in Southeast Asia, television news was in its adolescence. It tried very hard to grow into relevance, to cope in a mature way with the somber, important and deadly business of warfare. It was very good at some things, like capturing thrilling firefights on film and creating compelling sound bites from the relatively shallow observations of soldiers. But it did not act as the architect of a complete, reasoned and balanced presentation of the facts, nor was it designed to. It was originally a vehicle for entertainment, because the medium lends itself to that function most easily, and competition among the three networks drove broadcasts to become increasingly thrilling, shocking, dramatic, surprising and…entertaining.
By placing reporters on the combat field, news organizations, but particularly television networks, could appeal to the public’s most finely developed sense: the sense of sight. Humans are intensely visual creatures and are most easily interested and distracted by stimuli they can see. During the Second World War, reporters were in the field, too, but the government had total control over the reporting of information, and nothing was released that did not aid the war effort. During our participation in the war in Vietnam, there was no control, and reporters went wherever they wished, hitching rides on operational helicopters, riding in jeeps rented from the Vietnamese and filing their stories without censorship. It was probably the worst combination for good relations and good reporting: unfettered access and a long, unpopular war. Not surprisingly, the relationship between the military establishment and the press was not good, and it got worse as time passed.
The military used an entirely different approach in the latest war in Iraq. {I am loath to call it “Operation Iraqi Freedom” because a thinking person ought to be at least mildly repelled by the low level of intellectual development that uses such unimaginative cognates to name military operations. It’s really quite silly, when you think about it. A similarly low level of sophistication would have had “Operation Invade France” for D-Day.} In Iraq, the Defense Department made a decision relatively early that relationships with the press required a high priority for careful planning and thoughtful decision-making. By now, satellite communications enabled the broadcast news business to be technologically sophisticated enough to produce virtually instant battlefield reports, and war news was certain to be the only show to watch.
One important consideration in how to deal with the press in Iraq, perhaps the most compelling one, was that the United States was undertaking unilateral military action without the ameliorating event of having been directly attacked. The United States has a long history and tradition of isolationism and, with a very small number of notable exceptions, has had difficulty generating enthusiasm among the populace for fighting in foreign wars. The most glaring modern example of American reluctance is World War II, which began in Europe nearly two years before we entered it. One can argue persuasively that, had we recognized our responsibilities earlier, we could have saved tens of millions of lives that disappeared into the abyss created by fascist aggression.
In Iraq, in a modified reprise of the approach that was such a success sixty years earlier, it was decided to embed reporters in American combat units. Placing reporters in harm’s way has a curious effect: it co-ops them. Instead of announcing to the camera, “They’re taking incoming,” the report is typically an excited “We’re taking incoming.” And unlike in Vietnam, where reporters could evacuate themselves at will, retiring to the relative comfort and convenience of a shower, hot food and a hotel, embedded reporters in Iraq went the distance with their units, generally sharing their privations, their successes, and their losses. I was in Qatar, broadcasting NBC’s Today show, and spoke with the late David Bloom almost every day. When he died, it was clear that he was closer to the men in the unit he accompanied than he was to his NBC colleagues, and he was deeply missed by the troops when he passed away.
As for the tactical intelligence disadvantage of broadcasting live from the battlefield and thus perhaps divulging sensitive information, the fact is that we were dealing in the Iraqi army with a foe unlikely to be able to make much use of the little that it heard. It was, after all, a short campaign against an enemy who was grossly overmatched and often opted to do what we suggested in a billion leaflets that we airdropped in the days before the start of operations: go home.
Over time, things have changed very much in the broadcast arena, but as the French say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Years ago, there were three networks, all vying for market share. The advent of cable and satellite systems, which made dissemination of programs widespread and inexpensive, put a great deal of pressure on the three traditional networks to perform to the satisfaction of the audience. For quite a while, CNN stood alone as a full-time news station, but it was clear that there was plenty of room for competition. MSNBC, CNBC and, later, Fox debuted, and a following was created for continuous news coverage, attracting much of the network news audience. And who dominates broadcast news these days? Well, still three news outlets, but now they are MSNBC, Fox and CNN.
These outlets usually get only small- or moderate-sized (but influential) audiences most of the time, but they swell to huge proportions when there is breaking news. When the war in Iraq got underway, all three cable stations broadcast continuously for the duration, with live reports from both the battlefield and the studio 24 hours a day. They all relied very heavily on expert commentary from retired military officers, most of whom had a great deal of experience but who varied widely in their ability to synthesize what they knew into information that was intelligible, interesting and easily digested by the viewing public.
In truth, the people who were most dependent on their commentators’ expertise were the staffs of the networks themselves. Remember that the proportion of the American public that has military experience is small and shrinking, and the percentage of television production staff with military experience is positively minute. And thus it is interesting to contrast the knowledge of reporters and TV producers before and after the war. Now, many of them can converse quite professionally about things like the capabilities of shoulder-fired SAMs, while before the war started, none of them could distinguish between a rifle and a rocket-propelled grenade. They are not more patriotic now; they are just more knowledgeable. News people argue that they try to be neutral and objective, and most of them are, but, although they believe they are following a higher calling, there is something else at work here: economics.
People often forget that these entities are not operated as a public service. They are businesses, they exist to make money for their parent corporations and their stockholders, and we should not be surprised when they focus on stories that are sensational. Attracting a larger audience than their competitors allows them to charge more for advertising time, and attracting an audience does not necessarily result from airing the most intellectually rigorous segments. Broadcasters have concluded, correctly it appears, that people would rather watch the aftermath of a train wreck than the deliberations of an economic summit. Recently, all three news channels broadcast breaking news about Michael Jackson’s court appearance. After several hours of what could conservatively be described as a shoddy spectacle at the courthouse, CNN and Fox went to other news. MSNBC, often last in the ratings, stayed with the Michael Jackson story and consequently drew a larger audience than CNN.
Most news people are thoughtful, earnest and professional, and they want to publish and broadcast the truth. Not always, but certainly most of the time, they check a story and get confirmation before disseminating it. There have been some breathtaking exceptions, such as CNN’s irresponsible dissemination of the “Tailwind” story, in which it was asserted, evidence to the contrary, that we had gassed our own troops in Vietnam. Journalists, particularly broadcast journalists, are stuck in a variation of Schelling’s Prisoners’ Dilemma: if there’s a hot story, be first to air it, even if the only thing to recommend it is that it is sensational. If you don’t, you will lose your audience to one of the other news channels.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that news organizations are far more likely to focus on a roadside bombing in Iraq rather than the opening of a new sewage treatment facility. Good news sells, but bad news sells better, and sensational news sells the best. To be sure, there is plenty of rhetoric on TV, and we can all identify news people whose commitment to ideology or partisanship transcends their objectivity. But make a mistake in the field, and all the news organizations will be crawling over you, not necessarily because the broadcasters lack patriotism, but because they will ultimately be able to charge more for peanut butter commercials.
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