Media coverage needed to uncover truth

  The Associated Press Photographer Nick
Ut’s 1972 Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken during
Vietnam.

By Leo Wallach
Daily Bruin Contributor

Journalists complain they are denied access to U.S. troops in
the field, leaving them to cover the war in Afghanistan from
briefing rooms ““ and, they say, the lack of accessibility is
not unique to the current situation.

The denial of up-close coverage, experts say, is part of a
three-decade-old Pentagon trend of careful control over media
access to U.S. conflicts.

“We have a long history in this country of journalists
accompanying troops into combat,” said Ian Marquand of the
Society of Professional Journalists.

Independent eye-witness accounts by journalists are essential in
ensuring accountability for government and military officials
during wartime, he said.

  The Associated Press Crowds celebrate the arrival of the
Northern Alliance troops in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Nov. 13. Vietnam
was the last American war in which journalists enjoyed easy access
to field operations, reporters say. Coverage was “very easy
for the media” during Vietnam, said Associated Press
photographer Nick Ut.

A U.S. press pass could get him out of Saigon on a military
helicopter or a C-130 transport to anywhere he wanted to go, Ut
said. Once in the field, reporters could move freely among U.S.
units. This was true up to the end of the war, he said.

Ut’s photo of a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl fleeing a U.S.
attack, screaming from the sting of napalm which had burned away
her clothing, won a Pulitzer Prize. Pictures like that, which
brought the stark realities of the war to Americans at home,
contributed to the clamping down on media access to U.S. military
in the field after the Vietnam War, he said.

Vietnam contributed to what political science professor Matt
Baum calls a “myth” among military personnel that the
press turned public opinion against the war. In reality, Baum said,
the press was patriotic for the first few years of the war but
became more skeptical because of constant misinformation from the
military.

Vietnam press conferences were nicknamed “the five
o’clock follies” because they were so filled with
obvious lies, Baum said. Government and military officials
constantly reported false statements about causalities and about
the progress of the war, he said.

Reporters knew they were “being lied to right and
left,” Baum said, and this led to a more zealous effort on
the part of the press to report realities of the war firsthand.

During the U.S. invasion of the Caribbean island nation of
Grenada in 1983, there was a “complete blackout of media
coverage,” Baum said.

Afterward, the media clamored for greater access, and the
military agreed to the creation of a pool of reporters who would be
whisked to the scene of future conflicts. But the agreement
contained no guarantees about what kind of access the pool would
have.

During the invasion of Panama in 1989, the pool of reporters
arrived hours after hostilities began and were kept away from some
battle zones.

Initial reports from the Panama invasion echoed Pentagon claims
that civilian casualties were low, but a “60 Minutes”
report later claimed the invasion had caused thousands of civilian
casualties.

The media coverage of the Gulf War also fell short of reporting
the entire scope of the conflict, experts have said. Gulf War
coverage has drawn criticism from media observers for its overt
patriotism and lack of investigative reporting, demonstrating to
some another failure of the pool system.

Media coverage during the Gulf War was “mostly
cheerleading,” Baum said. News broadcasts were full of images
of “smart bombs” dropping through chimneys to hit their
targets while in fact, the bombs accounted for perhaps 10 percent
of total munitions dropped, Baum said. Furthermore, reports that
came out after the war showed that even “smart bombs”
sometimes missed their targets.

Media observers have also pointed out that during the war, the
successes of the Patriot Missile ““ used to intercept Iraq
Scud Missiles in midair ““ were highly touted in the press.
Experts later testified that the Patriots may have destroyed only
one Scud.

Many in the media have blamed military restrictions for the lack
of in-depth coverage during the Gulf War. But there were
“precious few folks who even tried” to report beyond
the information provided by the military, Baum said.

A growing emphasis on profit has contributed to the
media’s willingness to submit to government controls, experts
say. No one wants to be the only one to “stick their neck out
and risk losing advertising,” Baum said.

Perhaps frustrated by their failures in the Gulf, reporters are
clamoring for more access to the current war.

“The AP meets weekly with the Pentagon to try to get
better access, but thus far we’ve had little success,”
Associated Press spokeswoman Kelly Tunney said in an e-mail.

There has always been a conflict between the people’s
interest to be informed and the interests of military personnel who
could be endangered by the release of sensitive information. This
conflict of interest is exasperated these days by the speed at
which information spans the globe, experts say.

For example, it was rumored during the Gulf War that Saddam
Hussein sometimes learned of developments first from CNN.

The conflict between national security and the right to know was
best demonstrated during the run up to the of the Bay of Pigs
invasion in 1962, a landing in Cuba by U.S.-trained Cuban
expatriates.

The New York Times learned about the impending invasion, but
President John Kennedy convinced the paper to hold the story.

The invasion ended in a disastrous defeat, and Kennedy was later
quoted telling the Times’ executive editor, “If you had
printed more about the operation, you would have saved us from a
colossal mistake.”

In the current conflict, the Bush administration has asked
American media not to report the contents of Osama bin
Laden’s statements, and media outlets have agreed.

When difficult situations arise, national security should
outweigh the public’s right to know, said political science
professor Lynn Vavreck.

The public’s supposed “right to know” has no
legal basis, Vavreck said. The Constitution guarantees free speech
and a free press, but that does not necessarily translate into a
right to know, she said.

Americans feel entitled to hear information about their
government from the press because “we want to have watch over
our government. We don’t necessarily trust our politicians
all the time,” Vavreck said.

During the current war, the media has complained that it is not
allowed to fulfill its traditional watchdog role.

At a meeting between bureau chiefs and Defense Department
spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, Sandy Johnson of the AP complained
that the U.S. had made no progress in the first month of the war in
giving reporters access to the war.

U.S. embassies in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan would not take press
queries, and in Germany, the media were not allowed to embed except
on humanitarian missions, Johnson said.

Even when journalists report from U.S. aircraft carriers, they
aren’t granted much information, she said.

“The pilots are not talking about where they’ve
been, where they’re going, what they have done.”

All this is troubling to Marquand, who said questions about
casualties and weaponry have gone unanswered.

And during the Gulf War, Americans were not told that civilian
casualties were high and that “smart bombs” were not
the dominant ordinance, Baum said.

Time will tell if history will repeat itself.

With reports from Daily Bruin wire services.