[r0h1n]

Is 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As long as embeds are considered a "privilege" to be doled out (or rescinded) by the army based on it's own publicity objectives, it's impossible to expect neutral journalism from such a system.

[bambax]

If you're "embedded" you're a guest; not only is it bad manners to bite the hand that feeds you, it's also fundamentally against human nature. Embedded journalists will almost always side with who they're embedded within.

Independent journalism can only be produced by truly independent journalists: journalists who don't depend on the people they're reporting on for their very survival.

Is this possible? Maybe, but we sure haven't seen much of it.

Hoping that traditional embedding will produce true journalism is wishful thinking.

Or maybe the other side should offer to embed western journalists within them; that could prove to be fascinating. As a reader, I would be very interested in what the so-called "bad guys" think, what their motivations are, what goals they're pursuing, how they're fighting, etc.

[malandrew]

Interesting idea, but you'd have to be batshit insane to embed yourself with any military force fighting the United States military.

[rainsford]

I read that far more as a problem with journalism than a problem with the military. None of those points in any way limit the freedom of the press to report neutrally, or in any other way they want, on a war. Even if being an embedded reporter might not be a constitutionally protected right and might be subjected to military control, that's not the only way the media can report on a war. It's just the easiest way, and modern journalism seems to like the easiest approach to everything.

The concept of press freedom doesn't necessarily seem to include an implied obligation that the government must help them do their jobs.

[mikeash]

Can you imagine that complaint being used for anything else that journalists report on?

"Reporting the activities of drug cartels ends up favoring the cartels because they only accept journalists who tell their side of the story."

"We were going to do a big expose on medical malpractice in Regional Hospital, but the administration refused our request for a month-long officially sanctioned observer mission within the hospital so we couldn't."

"It's no wonder that news reports always praise the police, since your ride-along privileges get terminated right away if you don't play along."

Yeah, reporting from a war zone is dangerous and difficult and getting help from the military makes it a lot easier. But that's their job.

[fit2rule]

I think a better way of expressing the issue is that, as long as the US Military considers itself a State unto itself, we have a problem. In fact it is the military who have a _privilege_, not a right, to play with their toys and keep their secrets, which can and shall be taken from them by The People who are granting that privilege. Any time a military officer attempts to apply military policies/logic to his civilian masters, you've got someone who needs to be removed from that post immediately. Alas, there are few politicians capable of doing that, these days.

And so we have to rely on our traitors and prisoners to do the work for us. I applaud you, Chelsea!

[eshvk]

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?

[revelation]

Of course other ways exist! In these, you will have your head blown off by 18 year olds who mistake your camera for a RPG.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike

[growupkids]

18 year olds don't fly Apaches. It takes 2-3 years at a minimum, after enlistment, before all the required schools are completed before someone is qualified in an AH-64. In the case of most officer pilots, tack on another couple of years for commissioning.

[brownbat]

The risk goes up if you're hanging out with a group of armed insurgents heading towards US infantry wearing no clothing to distinguish you as a noncom before crouching behind cover to aim a shoulder mounted lens at an Apache that was just subjected to RPG fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrik...

[brownbat]

Maybe the silent downvote was for the snark. I was trying to follow the tone of parent, but this is probably too serious an issue to joke around on. My apologies.

I get frustrated, though, that so many still take the WL narrative of events at face value, even though WL edited the video and omitted relevant facts, ultimately distorting the entire nature of the incident.

First, WL marked up the video to highlight non-weapons, suggesting by omission that there weren't weapons in the video, even though there were. Then, they omitted facts like how the Apache crew had avoided engaging insurgents earlier that day, because they suspected noncoms were present, and were going out of their way to avoid civilian casualties.

I find it especially frustrating that supporters of a group that promotes the open discussion of information will just suppress, through silent downvotes, anyone with a different perspective on events, even if that perspective is based on facts they should know if they had only read the source they originally cited.

For the record, revelation, I didn't even downvote you, I just added my take. Even though we disagree, I don't think hive minds and one-sided discussions are ever beneficial for a site like this.

[brownbat]

I don't think journalism outside of warzones is good enough to convince me that lack of access is the problem.

We have rapid access to more information today about daily violence around the world, be it in Syria or Iraq or Nigeria or North Korea,* than under any other era of information technology.

The problem isn't distribution of information. The problem is that people can't be bothered.

* NK is probably the best example of problems with access to information, their regime keeps a very tight lid on things. Even so, we still all know the country is undergoing systematic repression, forced labor, starvation as a method of controlling the people, along with brutal gulags where torture, rape, and death are your most likely short term outcomes. Look at the "news" stands though. People are only interested in celebrities. They're most likely to associate NK with Dennis Rodman over anything else.