The U.S. Military’s Campaign Against Media Freedom
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Re: The U.S. Military’s Campaign Against Media Freedom
#2I am glad to hear from Chelsea. Does anyone's know how she is fairing?
Re: The U.S. Military’s Campaign Against Media Freedom
#3I 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.
Re: The U.S. Military’s Campaign Against Media Freedom
#4Since 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?
Re: The U.S. Military’s Campaign Against Media Freedom
#5The 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...
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.
Re: The U.S. Military’s Campaign Against Media Freedom
#6Tl;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.
Re: The U.S. Military’s Campaign Against Media Freedom
#7Is 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.
Re: The U.S. Military’s Campaign Against Media Freedom
#8The 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 Jenn…
I believe pbiggar of CircleCI might comment on that - his (failed) YC from a few years back was a "new news" take. Apparently it is far from clear what is going to come next - technology has provided the opportunity but not the solutions
Re: The U.S. Military’s Campaign Against Media Freedom
#9The Vice documentary 'This Is What Winning Looks Like' has some great reporting on Afghanistan.
Re: The U.S. Military’s Campaign Against Media Freedom
#10Is 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 t…
From my very limited understanding of embeds, it appears that they are journalists who form part of the army team. It is not clear to me if they are protected/have access to military secrets by virtue of being part of the team; however, it appears to be implied. In such a scenario, I am not sure how the question of neutrality even ever appears. If you are embedded, you are by definition not neutral? Surely, there are other means for war journalism to exist? As was the case during the other wars of the past century?