[Air-l] So Much For Embedding

[Frank Thomas]

I appreciate this exchange very much. However, I miss one thing: 
embedded as well as unembedded journalists are often specialists for I 
don't know what but surely not for combat, neither at the strategic nor 
at the operational level. When you s'ee which language journalists often 
use it is clear that they don't have the slightest idea of military 
action: Usually, a group of  irregulars carrying assault  rifles are 
'heavily armed'. In war terms, this is ridiculous, they are lightly 
armed as they have no armor and no artillery. The strategic retreat of 
Iraqi troop is described in general as the regime's falling apart. Its 
is anything but this: it shows that troops obey orders, that they 
retreat in order, that they fight if they czan gain local superiority. I 
didn't hear anyone give a serious military appreciation of the 
situation. Journalists, in the heat of the battle, see and report as far 
as the bullets sing.

I guess this is the fault of a lack of professional training, Mr and 
Misses professors of journalism. If a war reporter can't distinguish a 
combat tank from an armed troop carrier, if he or she has no historical 
comparisons, what's the sense of sending someone to the front to report 
? If not to be a member of a Propagandakompanie, the German version of 
embeddedness in the 1940s. By the way, the hurray patriotism of Murdoch 
and some? all? US television chains sometimes reminds me of their 
reporting style. 

As Europeans we were always so naive to confound Amercian self-interest 
dubbed "the Western civilisation" with our own one. But this was our 
fault. Thanks to Bush II. this is now corrected.

Frank Thomas
Paris

Randolph Kluver (Assoc Prof) wrote:

>I disagree with much of what Maximilian Forte says, based on my
>observations of the embedded journalists both within BBC and CNN, as
>well as the print journalists.  To my thinking, the embedded journalists
>haven't been much help to the US at all, as they have only highlighted
>delays and difficulties that wouldn't signal much concern if they
>weren't there.  When a reporter comes under fire, he/she says "the
>strategy is falling apart! We're gonna die!"   Two telling examples, the
>Sunday afternoon (Singapore time) skirmish in Umm Qasr, which was
>portrayed on both networks as a major battle, along the lines of battle
>of the bulge.  The nature of this coverage prompted the Iraqi
>information minister, who just a couple of hours earlier had said that
>all the footage from Umm Qasr was actually shot in Kuwait, as the
>coalition forces "weren't even in Iraq," to go on air to prove how
>effectively Iraq was repelling the troops, who were, in fact, in Iraq
>after all, and were getting a drubbing.  The response of Iraqi TV
>illustrates, I think, that the embedded reporters are not really helping
>the US forces much.
>
>A second example is the initial helicopter attacks in Medina, in which
>reporters as much as said that the hand guns fired at helicopters would
>prevent any effective air attack. Probes are a normal part of military
>strategy, and thus heavy resistance in one place is just more data, not
>to be confused with a true threat.  Certainly the military units
>involved paid attention to these, but only as part of a much larger
>battle field.  The following briefing by Tommy Franks was interesting,
>in that it showed that what military analysts and strategies took as a
>normal occurrence, the journalists interpreted ominously.
>
>One final issue is the Jerusalem Post embedded reporter, Caroline Glick,
>who "broke" the story on the supposed chemical factory.  Clearly, the
>pentagon said that news was "premature," as if it turned out to not
>manufacture weapons, the credibility of the US would suffer.  It seems
>at this point that it is an arms cache, not a chemical plant.  This
>illustrates my point, though, that the embedded reporters, although they
>are under orders to not reveal certain kinds of information, are
>something of a liability to the US forces.
>
>I guess I am curious as to how the military would be able to embed
>journalists among the Iraqi civilians, since there seems to be a desire
>to do that. Remember, there are at least as many "independent" or
>"unilateral" journalists in Iraq as there are embedded.  In fact, It
>seems that there are probably more independent journalists in Iraq,
>since as Forte has noted, out of 500 or so embedded journalists, a
>number of them are bored to tears, watching missiles fly out of
>warships, or sitting at  military bases.  I would be curious to know how
>many embedded jorunalists are actually in forward combat units.  At
>least two, but most likely four, have already lost their lives, so the
>message coming from the Pentagon is just as likely a friendly warning as
>it is a threat.
>
>Thus, the embedded journalists are more likely to undermine popular
>support for the battle, than to serve as cheerleaders, precisely because
>they have, in Forte's words, "very little in the way of critical
>analysis or concrete information".  In fact, now that every columnist in
>every newspaper, including Maureen Dowd, is giving war advice, it seems
>much more accurate to say that the embedded reporters are not much help
>to the military and/or political strategies fo the administration.  I
>would not argue that the program is to be suspended, as I think it is a
>valuable way of getting at least some perspective on the war.  Tommy
>Franks says he is a "fan" of the embedded reporters, but my sense is
>that he likes them primarily because they serve primarily to present the
>"view from the field," and thus are a check against false allegations.
>If this post is too "off topic" for this listserve, perhaps Dr. Forte
>could email me his responses privately.  
>
>A. Randolph Kluver
>School of Communication and Information
>Nanyang Technological University
>31 Nanyang Link
>Singapore, 637718
>(65) 6790-5770
>Fax (65) 6792-4329
> 
>
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