Rantingprofs

Non-Combat Related Bravery

I was on the Defenselink site looking for something else, and I found this story. I thought you'd appreciate it, and I thought it deserved to be spread.

No One Is Beyond Criticism

The Times has an article this morning about the ways the terrible losses CBS took this week are forcing reevaluations among the networks concerning the way they cover the story, which risks are acceptable and so forth.

Well I've certainly no problem with any of that, certainly no problem with people understanding the types of risks faced by reporters or the way those risks impact their calculations.

My problem is -- has always been -- that no one is being honest about the work-arounds being used by the networks to deal with the security issues or about the limitations imposed on the reporting. Yes, the situation is unsafe, and reporters are at risk when they go out to report, but don't leave people with the impression that the network crews are taking those risks every single day, because that's simply a lie.

Again, to be clear, it has never been my position that reporters should go out if they feel the risk would be too great, but tell people that there are many days when rather than go out they are buying footage from wire services and doing the editing from inside the hotel. That isn't even in the Times article.

I think this takes tremendous nerve:

Several executives said criticism by conservative commentators that the networks were playing it safe and not trying to cover the full story of Iraq was unjust — and offensive.

"One thing I don't want to hear anymore," Mr. Capus said, "is people like Laura Ingraham spewing about us not leaving our balconies in the Green Zone to cover what's really happening in Iraq." Ms. Ingraham made that comment on the "Today" news program on NBC.

Mr. Cramer said that when played against the injury to Ms. Dozier and the deaths of her colleagues, "for people to criticize what we do is just monstrous."

I'm sorry, but while the limitations on their reporting may certainly be justified, they are still there, and there is nothing wrong in pointing those limitations out. There is something wrong in pretending there aren't limitations in the reports that get produced -- my position all along has also been that the way the networks need to compensate for not being able to go out themselves has to be treated with greater transparency, for example by having reporters be up front when they are basing stories not on their own eyewitness reporting but on that of stringers and wire service reports. (Do not hold your breath for the day a reporter introduces the produced part of their report with the words, "this story is based on footage purchased from APTV, as due to security concerns we were not ourselves able to travel to X province/city/town today.")

And I'll be damned if I'll stand for them saying that because they've suffered losses they're now off limits. That position is simply outrageous given how reliant we are on them to tell us how the war is going and how important that information is. Imagine if the military said, what we do is dangerous, and we've lost people, to criticize what we do is simply "monstrous." The press would be in open revolt, and properly so.

It would be one thing to tell them to take unnecessary risks or to attack them for being unwilling to do so, but it's another thing entirely to point out the way being responsible about taking risks puts limits on the stories produced. Or leaves gaps in the stories produced altogether.

Well I Feel Enlightened

Haditha is a serious business -- about which we currently have very few facts.

So The Today Show brings on James Carville and Michael Smerconish to discuss the issue?

Forget heat vs. light, this is just depressing.

Awful News

As you've probably heard by now, yesterday a CBS News crew was embedded with a military unit when a car bomb went off. The camera and soundman were killed, and the corredspondent, Kimberley Dozier, was critically injured.

As I have repeatedly written here, as critical as I am of much of the work produced by reporters in Iraq (and I'm not a particular fan of Dozier's) these people are deserving of our respect for their willingness to leave home and family and friends to go into very dangerous circumstances. It is also worth keeping in mind (and as I have also written here, I certainly could do a better job of this) that much of what we are critical of in the reporting coming out of Iraq is not the fault of the reporters. I've mentioned here Tom Fenton's book, which is one long rant from a foreign correspondent against the short-sightedness of producers and network money people. And I have written over and over and over that no story is worth a life -- that we should demand transparency from reporters regarding the inevitable limitations the security situation imposes on their reporting, not that they take unnecessary risks.

In short, being critical of Dozier's work is not the same as being disrespectful of her effort, and we should keep she and her family -- and certainly the families of the men killed -- in our thoughts and prayers.

Several other thoughts, however:

1. The converse is also true. Being respectful of the risks reporters are willing to take and are taking does not and should not mean that any of us should refrain from being critical of their work. One of the most basic premises of this site, of course, is that in a way unlike any other category of news, we are uniquely dependent upon the press when it comes to war news. They are our eyes and ears. We must learn to be critical consumers of the news, not in the sense of always being negative and argumentative but in the other sense of the word: being alert, challenging readers and listeners who do not accept what we are given on face simply because someone tells us to.

2. I have argued before that the press are being specifically targeted in Iraq. However (as with the ABC crew that was hurt) I strongly doubt that was the case here. It seems to me as if this was a case of wrong place, wrong time. On the other hand, it is being reported that yesterday was an unusually violent day in Iraq, and it would not at all surprise me if that was because it was Memorial Day. We know for a fact they pay careful attention to our news media: there's no reason to believe they wouldn't have known what yesterday was and what it meant. And just as they are interested in symbolic targets as far as locale is concerned, they are also interested in symbolism as far as date and day is concerned, Holidays and symbolic dates are of interest to any terrorist.

The East African embassies were attacked on the anniversary of the day American forces first landed on Saudi soil during Desert Shield. The Bali bombings took place on the anniversary of the Cole attack. Oklahoma City was on the anniversary of Waco. Just a thought.

3. I could be wrong about this, because I was so fixated on watching CBS's coverage last night that for once I didn't engage in my usual surfing, but it seemed to me that this attack received far less attention than the attack on the ABC crew, which was the lead story that night for all three networks, with multiple news pieces for each. But certainly, when that happened it was considered front page news by the Post, despite the fact that neither Woodruff nor his cameraman, not to be macabre, were killed. In this case, despite the fact that two men were killed, it is only page 9 news.

What's the difference? It can only be the fact that Dozier isn't the anchor.

Think about that for just a moment. It's considered more important -- more newsworthy -- when a network anchor is injured than it is when a network reporter is injured. Even a very new anchor everyone agreed had yet to really establish the same relationship with the audience than any of the Big 3 had, simply as a function of age and time in the saddle.

That said, it is still the case that the fact that reporters were present when this particular car bomb went off makes it a very special car bomb. As I've noted here before, the deaths and injuries of American military personnel, much less Iraqis, are reported with the barest bones of information. X number killed in Y province by Z weapon system, that's generally what we get, no narrative attached. There's no way to tell, in almost every circumstance, whether deaths were even the result of offensive American action, or whether American personnel were simply standing there minding their own business when they were attacked, or whether any enemy were killed in an exchange of fire.

Yet once we're talking about reporters being attacked, every detail about the attack is relevant, is replayed in computer simulations, is described in exquisite detail, as are their injuries, their chances, their treatment, and their route home.

Update: You see what I mean in two ways in this Times article. First, every other act of violence is subordinated to the CBS story.

Second, it's made clear that the threat to journalists that is perceived by them to be serious enough to keep them out of the country is not the regular background threats the entire country faces, but those that target them specifically.

In the past year, the risks of reporting the war have played a part in the steady reduction of the number of Western journalists based in Baghdad. The main hazard has come not from the bombings that have killed more than half of all American troops but from a rash of kidnappings, including the 82 days that Jill Carroll, an American reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, spent as a hostage of an insurgent group before being released in March.

Yet there's still a disconnect at work here, so that reporters will describe Iraq as a tremendously risky place for working reporters, but never seem to consider that might be particularly true for them.

Update: Just got the dead-tree Times -- it is front-page news for them. (Really, would it kill them to put on their online edition what page the story appears on, the way the Post does?)

3:00 Sharp

This editorial is a bit tendentious, but the point is well taken: Memorial Day is supposed to mean something more than the official kick-off to summer vacation. So at 3pm sharp, take at least one minute out of the day to pause and reflect on the sacrifices of those who have come before.

Perspective

The Times publishes a piece with a broader sense of perspective than is usually seen in her Good, Gray pages. Well worth a read.

A Very Bad Idea

I cut my teeth working on nuclear strategic doctrine as a form of communication. That was a long time ago, but the arguments I made then are just as sound today: nuclear deterrence was a system designed to work between adversaries who didn't completely trust one another. That meant that, given the stakes, they would never completely trust the things one another said. But they would be able to trust acts -- acts like weapons developments and deployments. The whole system was based on that single assumption: you structure a system based on what perceptions you want the other side to have, building and deploying the weapons that will create the perceptions you need the other side to have in order for the system to be stable.

That means, though, that you have to strictly limit yourself to only those deployments. If stability, for example, requires that you deploy inaccurate weapons, you can't also deploy some weapons that are accurate and tell the other side, "don't worry, we aren't planning to use those against you," because the entire premise of the system is that the other side will put his faith in what you build, not in what you say.

Which is why messing with the current deployment structure of nuclear weapons is a very bad idea.

We never even think about the nuclear system anymore -- which is evidence enough for me that we shouldn't mess with it.

All the arguments made in this article for needing a very rapidly available weapon are good reasons for needing a naval weapon, probably a missile, but it isn't clear to me why these aren't arguments for improving the currently available sub-launched cruise missiles, whose launch can't be confused with a strategic nuclear missile.

If I'm missing something about the limitations of the cruise missiles, I'm sure you'll tell me, but I'm not sure that would justify this program just the same.

A Different Kind of Milblog

I have to admit, I had no idea that military families were using blogs in this way, but it seems an entirely natural way to tie a community together in time of trouble.

Comparing Two Wars

The Post has an absolutely fascinating article on the different challenges presented by Iraq and Afghanistan for American helicopter crews. Good stuff.

An Important Reminder

Not all terrorism is Islamist. It may not even be lethal. That doesn't mean it isn't terrorism.