Outside perspective on Journalism

[mdh]

I wanted to repost this from the rules of conduct thread because I wanted to get some feedback from the journo aficionados on this thread - wonder if you folks has any perspective to add....

General Hillier sounded very effective, sensible, and responsible putting forward the reasons why the troops on the ground operated in this fashion.   I would argue, in fact, he has far more credility as a serving soldier than a rather obscure human rights "expert" - and I would further suggest that the general public would tend to agree with Hillier.

But instead of continuing to stay ahead of the story, the CF has provided no additional communication - at least I have seen nothing on the CF web site to put some context on the controversy from its point of view.  

Why not put out a statement -- backed up by an expert in addition to Hillier - who supports the General's argument - it shouldn't be that difficult to find a third-party legal opinion which would support the CF's point of view, then call up the reporters covering this story and offer up an alternate argument?

They may not necessarily write up the story in response, but at least the reporters would know that there is another viewpoint that has equal credibility.

By way of contrast, the Department of Defense in the US takes these issues head on - here is an example, taken from their web site, when a negative story produced by Seymour Hersh:


Statement from Pentagon Spokesman Lawrence DiRita on Latest Seymour Hersh Article
            The Iranian regime's apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organizations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment than Seymour Hersh provides in the New Yorker article titled â Å“The Coming Wars.â ?
            Mr. Hersh's article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed.  
            Mr. Hersh's source(s) feed him with rumor, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist, and statements by officials that were never made.

            A sampling from this article alone includes:

The post-election meeting he describes between the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not happen.

The only civilians in the chain-of-command are the President and the Secretary of Defense, despite Mr. Hersh's confident assertion that the chain of command now includes two Department policy officials.   His assertion is outrageous, and constitutionally specious.

Arrangements Mr. Hersh alleges between Under Secretary Douglas Feith and Israel, government or non-government, do not exist.   Here, Mr. Hersh is building on links created by the soft bigotry of some conspiracy theorists.   This reflects poorly on Mr. Hersh and the New Yorker.

Mr. Hersh cannot even keep track of his own wanderings.   At one point in his article, he makes the outlandish assertion that the military operations he describes are so secret that the operations are being kept secret even from U.S. military Combatant Commanders.   Mr. Hersh later states, though, that the locus of this super-secret activity is at the U.S. Central Command headquarters, evidently without the knowledge of the commander if Mr. Hersh is to be believed.

            By his own admission, Mr. Hersh evidently is working on an â Å“alternative historyâ ? novel.   He is well along in that work, given the high quality of â Å“alternative presentâ ? that he has developed in several recent articles.
            Mr. Hersh's preference for single, anonymous, unofficial sources for his most fantastic claims makes it difficult to parse his discussion of Defense Department operations.
            Finally, the views and policies Mr. Hersh ascribes to Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, Under Secretary Feith, and other Department of Defense officials do not reflect their public or private comments or administration policy.

What was the CF's response to the Citizen piece?: "Defence officials did not respond to the comments by Mr. Neve and Mr. Byers."

Unless there are some behind-the-scenes politics at NDHQ that we don't know about - you have to wonder why there isn't a more concerted strategy to manage an issue like this one.  

It reminds - in terms of a PA response - of the allegations made against the Navy that it had engaged in a coverup of information when the fire broke out on HMCS Chicoutimi - that story was allowed to run for about a week and half, IIRC, before the Navy finally responded forcefully - a tactic which put the controversy to rest.

cheers, mdh

 

[a_majoor]

Some backstory on where a lot of journalists come from:

Reporters as Citizens
The things journalists learn on assignment.

Guess what Mary Beth Sheridan, a reporter from the Washington Post, learned when she was embedded with our troops in Iraq?

That they are not, in fact, "blood-thirsty maniacs."

I found that out the other morning at a Columbia Journalism School First Amendment breakfast. The topic under discussion was "reporters as citizens," and Sheridan was on the panel.

These First Amendment breakfasts are held about once a month, and when there is a superstar journalist, or the topic is full of buzz, they are fairly crowded affairs. But on this Tuesday morning, there were plenty of extra croissants to go round.

The moderator, as usual, was lawyer and Columbia journalism professor Floyd Abrams, and he started the proceedings with a couple of personal anecdotes. First of all, he recalled his most famous First Amendment triumph, the "Pentagon Papers" case. He described Chief Justice Warren Berger's dissenting opinion, which he quoted in part, as a "whine." Then he went on to tell a long anecdote about a Fred Friendly panel, sometime in the past, that included Peter Jennings, Mike Wallace, and a wounded Vietnam veteran.

Abrams recalled that Friendly, as he often did, presented the panel with a hypothetical scenario that there was a civil war between the northern and southern sections of an unnamed country, with America helping the southern forces. An American journalist, to his surprise, was invited to go on patrol with the northern forces. While on the mission, the journalist realized the northern forces intended to attack a group of Americans. What should the journalist do?

Peter Jennings, Abrams recalled, said he hoped he would have the courage to call out and warn the American troops. But Mike Wallace interrupted to admonish Jennings, asking, "Peter, why are you there?," implying that as a journalist he should not get involved. Abrams said Jennings then began to backtrack on his answer. The only comment of the wounded veteran who was on the panel was: "I always knew you guys were like that."

A fairly provocative way to begin, and the topic of "reporters as citizens" is full of potential for debate. But, sad to say, the discussion went downhill from there. One of the panel members was Addie Rimmer, associate professor of the j-school, who talked about how her grad students cover the Bronx for their student newspaper, the Bronx Beat. I really don't know why she was part of the discussion at all.

Another panel member, Tom Robbins, a reporter from the Village Voice, talked engagingly about how he had protected his "confidential sources" while writing an expose for the Daily News about the mob's influence at New York's Javits Center. But, as it turned out, the "confidential sources" who had fingered the mob â ” and then lost their jobs in the subsequent clean-up â ” wanted him to reveal the names of other "confidential sources" who, they believed, had unfairly had them fired. They even sued to try to make him comply. Their case was thrown out, but while the freedom of the press to protect such sources was reaffirmed, the whistle-blowers lost more than they gained by telling all to a crusading journalist â ” an ironic little twist.

The panel member who, one would have thought, would have the most to say about the subject of a "reporter as citizen" was Mary Beth Sheridan. But, she explained, she hadn't realized she would have to make a speech at the breakfast, and that her remarks about her experiences in Iraq would be just "free-flowing" â ” and, indeed, they were.

First of all, she said she was "overwhelmed by the military," but she did learn by being embedded that members of our armed forces were not "blood-thirsty maniacs." Yes, she really did say that.

In fact, she said, they were "really decent people." And even "sweet." Of course, after being shot at they were eager to shoot back â ” a military attitude that seemed to surprise her.

She also reported that when she asked soldiers why were they in Iraq, every single one told her, "to help the Iraqi people." Again she was surprised that the military could create such a unity of purpose even though, she said, she didn't see any "brainwashing" going on. She also noted that many soldiers had no opinion about the war. They had gone where they were ordered to go, like all good soldiers. Such an attitude seemed to dazzle her as well.

She didn't have anything much to say about "reporters as citizens," but clearly she appeared to be one citizen who had very little familiarity with, or understanding of, or even quite possibly respect for the military before her tour of duty. In a way, it is kind of sad that only after some first-hand experience did she learn what most American citizens believe: that American soldiers are "decent people." And that it is those soldiers, not our journalists, after all, who protect our freedom of the press.

â ” Myrna Blyth, former long-time editor of Ladies Home Journal and founding editor of More, is author of Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness â ” and Liberalism â ” to the Women of America. Blyth is also an NRO contributor.
 
http://www.nationalreview.com/blyth/blyth200502170748.asp

 

[Cloud Cover]

What was the CF's response to the Citizen piece?: "Defence officials did not respond to the comments by Mr. Neve and Mr. Byers."

Unless there are some behind-the-scenes politics at NDHQ that we don't know about - you have to wonder why there isn't a more concerted strategy to manage an issue like this one.  

It reminds - in terms of a PA response - of the allegations made against the Navy that it had engaged in a coverup of information when the fire broke out on HMCS Chicoutimi - that story was allowed to run for about a week and half, IIRC, before the Navy finally responded forcefully - a tactic which put the controversy to rest.

Three good points. On the other hand, there's nothing that would be gained by engaging in an open running dialogue with the likes of Alex Neve et al.   And, the CF could cause a self inflicted wound by trying to "manage" people like Neves and Byers, whom more sensible people don't listen to anyway.

I whole-heartedly agree with your comments on the Navy ... in fact once they got their act together, the PA management was pretty good. I might also add that within the time period you outlined, several campus preachers cum self appointed defence experts* took it upon themselves to wage campaigns through the media to exploit the situation for what were obviously ulterior motives. If I can find it, I will post the comments from a Global television "investigative" piece. [for lack of a better word!!]



* thats right SS, I mean you.
   

 

[GGboy]

mdh: an interesting question and something of a thorny one in the bowels of DGPA (Directorate Gen'l of Public Affairs) I understand.
I suspect part of the problem is the split between the mil and civ sides of the house, because simply put a lot of this kind of pro-active media is the purview of the minister's office and/or the department. And we all know how effective they are at media management  :
But I agree that the PAffOs could and should be doing more, in fact, I suspect some or even many of them would like to be doing more to counter this kind of stuff. One of the problems is that when you try to actively counter a story or stories you end up being portrayed as "spinning" and get attacked for it by the same reporters who did the initial story, thus giving it another couple of days of play where it might've died away on its own. Plus, as Sam Clements said: "Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the gallon."
The navy did an outstanding job IMHO shooting down some of the nonsense being written or aired (mainly on CBC) about Chicoutimi, although they were a bit slow off the mark. And they did it the best way possible, by just putting out the indisputable facts and making certain reporters eat their words. That's what the army should be doing with this flexicuff/hood story: just put out the facts and let the largely sensible Canadian public draw its own conclusions. Perhaps even invite any reporters who want to go on some training courses showing how to handle prisoners?
Unfortunately, in my experience, the army is dominated (even among its PAffOs) by officers still gun-shy about Somalia ... including, sad to say, Gen. Hillier. When he was ISAF commander he backed up his KMNB commander's decision to forbid embedded reporters from accompanying raids like the one at the centre of this "controversy" By doing that, he virtually guaranteed that reporters would conclude that there was something fishy going on, whether there was or not.

 

[bossi]

Unfortunately, in my experience, the army is dominated (even among its PAffOs) by officers still gun-shy about Somalia ... KMNB commander's decision to forbid embedded reporters from accompanying raids like the one at the centre of this "controversy" By doing that, he virtually guaranteed that reporters would conclude that there was something fishy going on, whether there was or not.

And I'm going to stick with my theory that somebody was given extremely bad advice
(i.e. from a "professional amateur", as I'm fond of calling incompetent full-timers).

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ... thought all you bloggers would find this interesting:

Bloggers go big-game hunting
As Internet `journalists' bag another prize, there are consequences for mainstream media
Tim Harper (Toronto Star)

Often witty, sometimes racy, certainly irreverent, frequently sanctimonious, the blogosphere has been bulking up for years.

But the mainstream media have long taken a largely dismissive approach to this world of online political journals: Open. Peek. Chuckle. Close.

No more.

The growing army of American cyber-pundits hunched over their search engines has begun to wield strength that no one predicted.

The bloggers have brought down the powerful.

They have unmasked an impostor in the White House briefing room.

Perhaps most importantly, they have begun to shape a wide-open race for president in 2008.

And they are in the vanguard of a movement that should give pause to everyone who works in what the bloggers refer to disparagingly as the MSM â ” mainstream media.

It invites the question: is everybody a journalist today?

The blogosphere won a lot of attention during the U.S. presidential campaign when it broke the news that documents relating to President George W. Bush's National Guard service in the 1970s, aired by CBS News, may have been fake.

The traditional media jumped in after being alerted by bloggers and the story dealt a body blow to a venerable news organization, ultimately leading to next month's retirement of anchor Dan Rather and the departure of respected editor Mary Mapes.

In recent weeks, the blogosphere struck again, outing an impostor right in the White House briefing room, a man who called himself Jeff Gannon, but whose real name is James D. Guckert.

Writing for an Internet news service known as Talon News, a web offshoot of the pro-Republican GOPUSA, Guckert drew attention to himself by tossing a sympathetic question to Bush during a recent press conference, asking how the president would deal with Democrats who "seem to have divorced themselves from reality."

When bloggers further revealed he had links to sexually explicit websites, including one called militarystuds.com, the story "gained legs" and added to White House embarrassment.

However, it was the stunning takedown of CNN news executive Eason Jordan that brought the blogosphere to the forefront of debate.

Jordan was speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland late last month when, according to witnesses to his off-the-record comments, he said he believed the U.S. military had purposely targeted journalists in Iraq and killed 12 of them.

None of the journalists present reported the remarks until Rony Abovitz, a 34-year-old businessman from Florida and neophyte blogger, posted a story on Jordan's comments.

Outside of a couple of comments on cable news round-tables, virtually no one in the mainstream media reported anything about the comments until Jordan resigned, a victim of a story that never made it beyond the Internet.

The battle lines were drawn.

Bloggers crowed, saying they had trumped the MSM, which was trying to protect one of its own.

The mainstream media portrayed bloggers as vigilantes.

A headline in The New York Times referred to them as New Media Trophy Hunters.

"Bloggers bagged a TV-news bigwig," reported Broadcasting and Cable, a trade publication.

Steve Lovelady, a former Philadelphia Inquirer and Wall Street Journal editor now with the Columbia Journalism Review, reacted to the Jordan resignation with a comment sure to live in the memories of bloggers for years to come.

"The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail," he wrote.

Tom McPhail, a Canadian-born professor of journalism at the University of Missouri, has already been a target of bloggers for calling them "pretend journalists."

"They see red meat and they swarm," he said in an interview. "Eason Jordan is just their latest roadkill."

Bloggers' impact cannot be ignored, said McPhail, who believes they gained legitimacy when officially accredited to cover the U.S. political conventions last summer.

But that doesn't make them credible, he said.

"There will be no more `off-the-record.' This will have a chilling effect on politicians.

"You are going to have bloggers out of the White House, Parliament Hill, Queen's Park â ” and it's going to change the way politicians operate."

Bloggers first broke into the national consciousness in a big way in 2002,when they ultimately forced Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi to step down.

Lott, in a 100th-birthday tribute to now-deceased South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, waxed nostalgic about the good old days of segregation, a comment first ignored by the media in the room.

But the comment was captured by C-SPAN and the bloggers went to work, this time with the help of the mainstream media which, on further review, decided it was a big story and hammered Lott until he stepped down.

The tables were turned on a blogger recently when Maryland's Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich had to fire an aide who had been posting erroneous rumours about the marital infidelity of Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, his probable Democratic opponent in the 2006 state gubernatorial race.

After the Washington Post outed the aide, O'Malley and his wife arrived hand-in-hand to denounce the rumour mongering and now there are allegations that the Ehrlich operative had been lured into the open by a blogger â ” either a journalist or a Democrat â ” going by the moniker MD4BUSH.

On townhall.com, a daily roundup of conservative views, Media Research Center president Brent Bozell said the blogosphere appeared powerful because the mainstream media had avoided the Jordan story.

The resignation "made the blogs seem so powerful that liberals started attacking them for recklessly destroying Jordan's career, even using goofy terms like `cyber-McCarthyism' to denounce it.

"But what the bloggers did here was deliver information and accountability, the same things the major media purport to be providing â ” unless it's one of their own in the hot seat."

Still, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker, a fan of the blogosphere, added a warning: "For all their attractive swashbuckling and bravura, bloggers also can become a cyber-mob that acts, as mobs do, without conscience or restraint."

Parker worries that â ” if bloggers continue to believe everything is fair game â ” "off the record" will no longer apply and the ability to speak freely will become a thing of the past.

 

[George Wallace]

Scott Taylors recent article in The Halifax Herald reminds me of the controversy over Jane Fonda's sojourn into North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.   I wonder what side he professes to favour?   He says he speaks from experience.   So do many of us who serve and have been through POW treatment.   It is not as if any prisoner in any circumstance is treated with "Kid Gloves", even by your local Police Force.   What would one expect in a Combat Zone?   Taylor seems to have slipped from reality to be spouting things like this.   He claims to have had some military training, but doesn't seem to have grasped any of it.   Here is his article:

http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2005/02/21/fOpinion145.raw.html

Monday, February 21, 2005                      The Halifax Herald Limited

Beware giving troops OK to abuse detainees

By Scott Taylor ON TARGET

RECENTLY, there has been some public discussion about the manner in which Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan have handled prisoners. The discussion was sparked by the revelation of an internal memorandum written last year by Maj. J.M. Wilson - a military policeman - to his superiors at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.

What concerned Maj. Wilson was the televised images of Afghan captives being herded about with sandbags over their heads and hands bound by plastic cuffs.

"I thought we had outgrown this method of handling prisoners, and arguably such treatment is contrary to the Geneva Convention," Wilson wrote.

When the story broke, DND officials didn't challenge Wilson's initial assumption. They simply advised reporters that "since the Afghan mission is a peacekeeping operation, any prisoners taken by Canadian troops are not subject to the (Geneva) Convention."

While such a statement is obviously nonsense (why would soldiers be regulated in their humanity in a wartime situation but be absolved of such restrictions in a less hostile environment?), the most startling comments on this issue were attributed to W. Hays Parks.

As a special assistant to the U.S. army's Judge Advocate General, Parks claimed that the hooding and handcuffing of prisoners is "a standard security procedure for most militaries, if not all, upon capture."

The response to Parks would have to be a big "What the hell are you talking about?" Other than post 9-11 images of U.S. soldiers herding prisoners into their detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan or Iraq, there are not too many instances that come to mind in which military captives endure such dehumanizing treatment.

Looking back at films and photographs of all the wars in the previous century, Parks would be hard pressed to find any evidence to support his assertion. It is a fact that during World War II, Canadian survivors of the 1942 raid at Dieppe were shackled on Hitler's direct orders for one year and 44 days. The reason for this mistreatment was that the Germans discovered from captured documents that the Canadians were ordered to "manacle their prisoners," which they expected to capture at Dieppe. The Canadians then shackled German prisoners held in Canadian camps, until the Red Cross intervened on behalf of both sides to stop the abuse.

Fast-forward to the March 2003 coalition forces' invasion of Iraq, and there is no example wherein American soldiers were bound or blindfolded after capture by Saddam's army.

In fact, the opposite was true. When Pte. Jessica Lynch and her six comrades from the 507th Maintenance Company were taken prisoner following an ambush outside Nasiriyah, they were treated with comparative courtesy. Even more astounding was the example of an American aircrew shot down near Kerbala. When seen on television, these pilots were shown calmly drinking tea with their Iraqi guards.

Nevertheless, both U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair immediately described the broadcasting of such embarrassing images to be a "war crime" and "in violation of the Geneva Convention."

One can only imagine what Bush and Blair would have said were those soldiers displayed hooded and handcuffed.

While it may have recently become common American practice to treat prisoners of war in this fashion, it is certainly not "standard" procedure elsewhere.

Another questionable statement by Parks regarding the use of blindfolds and hoods was his claim this was "not a matter of trying to abuse (prisoners) in any way" because "they obviously still can breathe."

What is obvious is that Hays Parks has never been on the receiving end of such treatment. I can speak from the personal experience of being held hostage by Iraqi insurgents last September, during which time I was frequently bound and hooded. Could I still breathe? Of course, but not without discomfort. The worst part of all was the heightened fear brought on by the sensory deprivation. Did I feel that I was being abused? Absolutely.

But if Canadian soldiers are authorized to treat their prisoners and suspects in this same manner, we can no longer claim any moral high ground.

One of the best arguments to surface regarding the Defence Department's liberal interpretation of the Geneva Convention in this instance was put forward by Jim Rycroft, a retired Canadian Forces Judge Advocate General lawyer. In a letter to the editor in the Ottawa Citizen, Rycroft wrote, "It is a neat academic point whether the UN, not being a state, is strictly bound by the (Geneva) conventions and protocols. But Canada as a nation is, and the individual members of the Canadian Forces are. Deployed soldiers need unambiguous and useful directions, not statements that could be interpreted as a licence to abuse detainees." I couldn't agree more.    

[Edit]  Come on Mr Taylor; we aren't dealing with a bunch of kids suspected of shoplifting, we are dealing with suspected murdering thugs and possible terrorists.

GW

 

[big bad john]

Already posted.

http://army.ca/forums/threads/26666/post-170431.html#msg170431

 

[George Wallace]

Was noted, but felt that it was relevant here, with link.

Thanks for the original post.

GW

 

[big bad john]

Any time and I do agree.

 

[big bad john]

The only question I have is: Why did they give him back?

 

[camochick]

Would you want him? >

 

[Kat Stevens]

In all of Scott Taylors extensive military training, he must never have had Brits or French enemy force for E&E exercises.  Stress position,  tie wrap  cuffs, and lovely burlap headgear were pretty standard for anyone captured.  Good thing those guys were on our side...

CHIMO,  Kat

 

[big bad john]

And that's just for our friends.  You should see how we treat the people we really don't like.

 

[Slim]

Well they were still doing that stuff as a matter of course when I got in...Everyone did the training. No big deal.

But now, thanks to the MEDIA and public opinion, we can't even stress our enemies out, much less guard against or detain them!

(Everyone bare in mind, of course, what THEY do to captives!)

Slim