Media/Military Relations in the United States

Occasional Paper # 10

Douglas Porch

July 2001

Media/military relations in the United State have been frequently strained. In time of war, especially, communication between the two institutions often becomes aggravated and adversarial. The basic reason is that the nature and goals of the two institutions virtually decree a tension. To this, one may add the increasing tendency to formulate U.S. foreign policy with little or no formal debate. The media rushes to fill a vacuum left by the absence of argument between the Administration and Congress. In this way, the military complains that the media often drives the mission, forcing deployments to places where the United States has scant national interests. Like most bureaucracies, the military prefers to do its business behind closed doors, all the more so because the nature of its business is so often shocking to public sensibilities. It also relies on public support for its missions, and too often sees the media as a subversive, rather than a positive, element in that process. Although media/military tension may be endemic, the two institutions need to work together. The nature of democracy itself requires a free press to expose the actions of political and military leaders to public scrutiny. The press has a responsibility to question the policy/strategy match in military operations. Furthermore, the process is beneficial for the military, for it allows the two institutions to work in a symbiotic relationship to build support for policy and to tell the military's story.

This paper will examine the roots of poor media/military relations. It will then examine the mechanisms put in place since the end of the Cold War to allow media access to military operations. It will briefly explore future trends that will affect the development of media/military relations. Finally, it will suggest some guidelines to structure media/military relations in future deployments.

The Roots of Poor Media/Military Relations

Poor media/military relations have been a constant feature of U.S. history and are not just a short-term product of the Vietnam War. How, then, does one account for them? First, the institutional cultures of the two groups are practically antithetical. The press is fragmented into many sub-groups that are competitive, self-regulating, and lacking a firm code of professional standards. "The great strength of American journalism is its amateur nature," insists Washington Post defense correspondent Tom Ricks. "Anyone can become a reporter. This guarantees many different perspectives."(1) Journalism is a highly individualistic, and highly subjective enterprise. The journalist's job is to collect information, and package it in a form that will sell to the general public, in the process out-performing the competition and getting his or her by-line on an article. They are willing to bend, even break, rules in their pursuit of "the story." While the perception of the liberal political bias of the media is exaggerated by the right, it is equally true that journalists see it as their role to expose abuses of power by large institutions, and to publicize instances where democratic and "military values" clash.

While the journalist is an entrepreneur, the requirement to manage violence imposes on the soldier an organization, and an attitude, that is hierarchical, disciplined, and professional. The soldier is a team player in an institution that has strict professional and ethical standards, and rigorous, even ritualized, sets of procedures. "The natural tendency of the military (is) to keep things under control," insists Lt. Charles E. Hoskinson, a Public Affairs Officer (PAO) in the Gulf War.(2) The soldier who values loyalty is deeply suspicious, even offended, by a "publish and be damned" journalistic ethic. While recruitment, outlook and technology make the press a heterogeneous institution - in so far as it is an "institution" at all -- the fact that soldiers live apart from civilian society imposes insularity and homogenizes the institutional attitude of the military. The political outlook of most military people tends to be conservative.(3)

Second, the goals of the two institutions are different: the journalist seeks to tell a story of such interest to the public that it will pay to access it. The role of the military, however, is to pursue national objectives, to fulfill the specific mission assigned by political leaders. These two aims need not be incompatible and may often be mutually supporting. However, the mix of deeply antithetical cultures, one competitive, the other cooperative, combined with sometimes antagonistic objectives creates the raw material for media/military conflict. Soldiers fear that in wartime the media may tilt the balance between victory and defeat by publishing stories or images that may breech security and cost lives or, worse, undermine public support for the war effort. From a military perspective, many journalists nurture a bias against military values, are untutored in the fundamentals of the military profession, and are psychologically unprepared to deal with the realities of combat. One widely held stereotype of the press is that ambition and a quest for sensationalism, rather than a search for truth, drives the journalistic "ethic." For their part, reporters insist that they have a professional obligation and constitutional duty to report the news. They argue that the military's closed culture, exaggerated insistence on operational secrecy, and adherence to a "command climate" hostile to outside scrutiny bars their effort to get "the story."

A third factor in the deterioration of the media/military relationship, some journalists argue, is the increasingly haphazard way U.S. foreign policy is formulated. All concerned recognize that close media scrutiny reflects healthy civilian control of the military. Free speech is the requirement of a healthy democracy. A free media is one of the cornerstones of American system that the military is sworn to uphold. The media's task is to inquire about the military's business, and the military's obligation is to facilitate that inquiry within the requirements of operational security. Media scrutiny is especially necessary, many journalists argue, because military operations are increasingly undertaken after a minimum of public debate among elected officials. Journalist Michael Ignatieff believes that political leaders increasingly assume a "virtual consent" for a war among the American public which has been exposed to no debate over the benefits and risks of an intervention. Tom Ricks calls this absence of debate a feature of America's "fire and forget foreign policy."(4) In the view of many journalists, the media has an obligation to step into this policy vacuum, to supply the information and provide the deliberation that officials and politicians shirk. The greatest enemy of the military's ability to accomplish the mission is not the media, they argue, but the absence of a firm policy. The absence of clearly articulated goals combined with a credible strategy for achieving them creates an opportunity for the media to shape policy. A poorly conceived policy creates conditions that may bring media/military relations under great strain. But that is not the fault of the media. In fact, it is their job to question the policy/strategy match, as they did during the Kossovo conflict.

Post-Vietnam War attempts to establish a working relationship between the media and the military

The media and the military need to establish a working relationship. This is because war is a political act. The policy makers need the press to inform and educate the general public about foreign policy goals. The media is the major filter through which the military convinces the public that the strategy will achieve those goals at an acceptable cost. Incremental success toward policy goals reported by the press strengthens and extends pubic support. The media also supplies the vehicle through which the public is introduced to the military, and comes to appreciate the complexity of its mission. In short, the media offers a means for the military to tell its story. Therefore, the media and the military need to work in a symbiotic relationship. Unfortunately, attempts to establish effective working relationships have foundered on distrust and hostility.

Press Pools

In the 1980s, a Planning Guidance - Public Affairs was issued to each major command. The purpose of the document was to establish ground rules for interaction between the two institutions. It acknowledges the right of the public and Congress to the acquisition of "timely and accurate information" about military operations compatible with security requirements. Planning Guidance sets out precise rules on the accreditation of reporters, the standards for stories and procedure for security reviews, as well as the military's obligations to provide support to the media in combat zones. This advance planning, however, demonstrated two serious flaws when it was first applied in the 1983 operation URGENT FURY to rescue U.S. medical students on the island of Grenada. First, rather than integrate the media into their planning, the command had simply handed off the press to a specialized corps of Public Affairs Officers (PAOs). Because the PAOs were themselves kept in the dark about military operations, they were unable to satisfy press curiosity about military goals, preparation and progress. The second problem grew from the first -- the military was logistically unresponsive to press needs largely because commanders had not factored the press corps into their operational planning. As a consequence, over 600 disgruntled reporters were marooned in a comfortable exile on Barbados while the military made the story, unseen and hence unreported, on Grenada.(5)

The media vented its frustration on the military following the press fiasco in Grenada, which prodded the military to review its practices.(6) A commission was convened under Major General Winant Sidle to devise ways to reconcile the requirement for press access with operational security. The Sidle Commission's major accomplishment was the creation of a Department of Defense National Media Pool (DoDNMP) in 1985. The idea was that a group of journalists pre-selected from the major news organizations would agree to abide by security regulations and share reports, and be ready to move to the "seat of war" at a moment's notice. This group would be maintained in existence only until the main body of reporters appeared on the scene. Practice deployments in Central America suggested that the DoDNMP was logistically manageable, that it gave the military a core of reporters versed in military affairs, and would insure early coverage of events. The DoDNMP was first made operational during Operation EARNEST WILL, the re-flagging of Kuwaiti ships in 1987-88. Unfortunately, Defense Secretary Richard Cheney delayed calling out the DoDNMP in December 1989 when U.S. troops were ordered into Panama. The result was that non-pool reporters simply arrived in Panama on their own to practice "four-wheel drive journalism," while pool reporters specially prepared for the job were fobbed off with briefings rather than allowed to cover the action. (7)

The Gulf War of 1991 and Press Pools

If Panama experience did little to foster trust between the media and the military, the war in the Persian Gulf lifted media/military relations to a new plateau of acrimony. At the outset of Desert Shield, it did not appear that this would be the case. To his credit, Cheney tried to make amends with the press by activating the seventeen-member DoDNMP, only to discover that King Fahd of Saudi Arabia refused to grant visas to reporters. Barred from official access, some journalists simply flew to Bahrain and crossed the border into Saudi Arabia illegally, which gave rise to the phenomenon called "unilaterals." These non-accredited reporters evaded the tutelage of military nannies to prowl on the margins of the conflict, operating from dingy hotels, in constant fear of expulsion either by the military or the Saudi police.(8) Fahd was persuaded to lift his ban on the Western media only when it was pointed out to him that CNN had begun to broadcast from Baghdad. The DoDNMP got their first briefing five days after the first U.S. troops deployed in Saudi Arabia, and remained in existence for three weeks, which was longer than anticipated.

This media/military entente rapidly deteriorated. By late August, the military was swamped by as many as 1,600 reporters who settled on Saudi Arabia to cover the first large-scale military deployment since Vietnam. The military response to this expression of media interest was to organize press pools as an ad hoc way of dealing with the situation. Accredited reporters who agreed to abide by security regulations, would be taken out in small groups by escort officers to visit military emplacements and be briefed by commanders. With the cooperation of the major news organizations, "non-competitive" ground rules that treated photographs, notes and stories as common property insured that the product of the pools would be shared with reporters who had not been included in the pools.

Although the war appeared to be thoroughly covered by the media, the pool system as practiced in the Gulf War revealed several problems. The primary problem of Gulf War pools was that of censorship and manipulation. Because the military was in control of the pools, press travel was circumvented by tight military restrictions. Press veterans of Vietnam arriving in the Gulf were rapidly disabused of the naïve fantasy that they would be free to flit about the war zone, then return to Dhahran to file stories. In fact, most reporters never saw the war as ultimately only 186 reporters joined the pools, less than 10 per cent of the reporters enrolled by the Joint Information Bureau.

Journalists rapidly concluded that providing an infrastructure for the pools was low on the military's order of priorities, and that this was intentional. Requests to visit Army units were frequently rejected either because of lack of transport or by commanders citing security concerns. The system was cumbersome and unresponsive to breaking news. The military did not expeditiously return pool products back to Dhahran for filing. Increasingly chaffing under military restrictions, journalists charged that filing delays and press-shy officers conformed to a command climate which dictated that there be "no bad stories."(9) The press complained that media tours were "too canned." Worse, from the press viewpoint, "When the war happened, we couldn't see it."(10) Veteran reporter Walter Cronkite insisted that "the Pentagon's censorship policy" in the Persian Gulf "severely restricted the right of reporters and photographers to accompany our troops into action, as had been permitted in all our previous wars. This denial prevented the American people from getting an impartial report on the war."(11) "The campaign to liberate Kuwait was perhaps the most under-reported and media-managed conflict in history," conclude Australian scholars of the media Peter Young and Peter Jesser.(12)

Unlike the U.S. Army, the Marines, who perhaps more than the other services realize the value of the press to burnish further their already highly favorable public image, opened their arms to journalists. Even this fairly modest attempt at openness backfired. The media later claimed that they unwittingly had been manipulated by General Norman Swartzkopf as part of an elaborate deception to publicize Marine amphibious units off the coast, troops who he did not intend to employ, to distract the Iraqis from his true intentions. The press also charged that Swartzkopf had deceived them in other ways. Bombing videos suggested that precision, laser-guided ordinance dominated the air campaign, when, in fact, these weapons made up only a tiny fraction of Allied arsenals. Also, officials exaggerated the success of Patriot missiles in intercepting Iraqi Scuds, although, at the time, this was believed to be the case. To media complaints that denial of access was the worst form of censorship, the military replied that they could not have allowed the media to reveal Swartzkopf's plans for the "left hook" across the desert into Kuwait and Southern Iraq.(13)

If the pool system strained media/military relations, it also introduced more than a touch of acrimony into the journalistic fraternity. The pool system insults the entire culture of journalism. Journalists are competitors by nature, not team players. "(Competition) is their livelihood," one PAO notes. "They don't like the other guy's take on a story. (A PAO) cannot tell other reporters what each is working on. That's death!"(14) Unable to compete for stories across a level playing field, reporters sought ways to circumvent the rules. With reporter inmates running the press asylum, the larger press organizations plotted to exclude members of the smaller and/or independent media from pool selection. The ostensibly arbitrary process of selection for a pool sortie might mean that reporters experienced in military matters discovered themselves shouldered out by rotations or conspiracies that favored novice journalists, some from women's magazines. Indeed, press behavior during the Gulf War made Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, a satire of a novice reporter victimized by unscrupulous senior colleagues during the 1936 Abyssinian War, appear civilized by comparison. With rules applied unfairly or not at all, reporters jostled to influence a PAO or a general to get priority.(15) A few journalists managed to evade the restrictions of the pool by transforming themselves from wild media beasts on the prowl for scandal into "pet journalists" willing to report favorably on a general in return for access to the front. Finally, cognoscenti of the media considered the pool product in the Gulf War mediocre, an undifferentiated pap of narratives based upon the collective perspective of the few journalists allowed into the field, rather than on the creative observations of individual reporters free to fashion stories out of the raw drama of soldiers churning the desert. The journalistic quality of pool stories was considered "depressing...about one in ten has anything in it that's useful...It's really pretty superficial stuff."(16)

Pools, therefore, are not popular with a press that sees them as attempts by the military to limit access to the theater, and hence censor and even manipulate information. They also argue that, by restricting press access to the battlefield, the military did not allow its story to be told, to the point that many soldiers who deserved medals failed to receive them because no one witnessed their acts of valor. The military reply is that pools are the only way to manage large numbers of journalists in wartime. The press outcry about what they saw as deliberate media muzzling in Grenada and subsequently in Desert Shield/Desert Storm resulted in the publication of DOD Principles for News Media Coverage of DOD Operations in April 1992. While it reiterated a familiar list of press complaints and solutions, it did attempt to bring to the attention of the commanders the importance of their personal involvement in the planning for news coverage of military operations. The first principle states that: "Open and independent reporting will be the principal means of coverage of U.S. military operations." Subsequent principles bind reporters to respect military security and leaves the option with the military to censor stories. The media initially objected to the military right to impose censorship, but dropped its protests because it was felt that advances in technology, as well as the opening of an era of humanitarian operations, meant that the military increasingly will be unable to enforce what it euphemistically refers to as "security reviews." The military's response has been "security at the source" - e.g. do not divulge information to the press which violates security and hence obviates the need for review of reports.

Embedded Media

Journalists' objections to the pool system, and the advent of humanitarian operations has seen the revival of "embedded" journalists. American intervention in Bosnia in December 1995 saw the expansion of "embedded media," a concept that had been experimented with the year before in Haiti. In effect, a reporter is assigned a unit, deploys with that unit and lives with it for a lengthy period of operations. While FM 46-1 Public Affairs Operations, the army field manual on public affairs procedures, concedes that every soldier is a spokesperson for the mission, interviews must nevertheless respect a soldier's privacy and mission security. In Bosnia, IFOR rules prohibit the media from reporting on intelligence collection, special operations or casualties.

"Embedding" reporters in a unit is has the overwhelming support of the media, especially if the alternative is the press pool. In many respects, "embedding" is hardly a novel concept, but revives World War II and Vietnam practices. In Haiti, the less historically-minded re-discovered that "embedded" reporters usually bonded with their units, better understood the difficulties of the military's missions, and tended to file favorable reports.(17) The military cannot shut the press out in an attempt to mask bad policy, or hide incompetence in the officer corps. Living together breaks down media/military hostility, allows the press to blend into the operational landscape, and the soldiers to be far less self-conscious about the presence of a reporter in their midst. Front line reporters and photographers often get respect from the military because they share the dangers and hardships of war. The reporter gets his or her story, while the military gets free and generally favorable publicity for a job it performs with great credit out of sight of the American people. "I learn stuff every day with a unit," veteran correspondent Tom Ricks argues. "I've never been in a front line unit that didn't enjoy having reporters. With the American people disengaged, this is seen as a sign that the American people are interested. The troops really love it. I was called 'our reporter'."(18)

"Embedding" attracts critics, however, not all of whom are soldiers. From a media perspective, the fear is that journalistic objectivity becomes the first casualty when the reporter identifies too closely with the unit that he or she is a part of. For its part, the military lives in dread of the opposite - that off the record conversations, minor or poorly understood events may become the subject of unflattering stories by "embedded" reporters. Loose lips not only sink ships. They may also scupper the most distinguished military careers.(19)

In Bosnia, reporter Tom Ricks dropped an American battalion commander in hot water for reporting that he had warned African-American troops in his command that Croats were racists. The subsequent ruckus over this seemingly innocent revelation resulted in what is labeled "Ricks Rule" - all conversations with troops are off the record unless otherwise stated. "Any PAO will tell you that there is no such thing as 'off the record,'" says one PAO. "There is no legal basis for it. There is only a thin journalist ethic. I take a laissez-faire approach to journalists. Help them where you can, but don't 'embed' them."(20) While many in the military view Ricks' transgression as one of disloyalty and violation of confidence, the Washington Post correspondent scoffs that the caution that bears his name betrays the command's absence of faith in their own doctrines, an unwillingness of seniors to support subordinates, and ultimately a deep distrust of civilian control of the military. Although the military invariably invokes security as a reason to exclude the media, ninety per cent of the time "off the record" is military short-hand for "don't make our general look bad," Ricks argues. "The amount of stuff I don't publish is astounding. I would never publish anything that would compromise the security of U.S. troops. Any good journalist picks up lots of information he doesn't publish."(21)

Future Trends

The last decade has witnessed trends that indicate media/military relations will become more difficult to manage, not less, due to the following factors: the advent of humanitarian operations, an increasing use of air power and stand-off weapons like missiles by the United States to resolve conflict, and the emergence of Information Operations as a potential dimension of conflict. Finally, the changing technology of news coverage and the rapid evolution of the media as an "institution" have outpaced attempts to establish formal mechanisms to put order in media/military relations. The prospect for the future is that media/military relations will likely become more chaotic, not less. Nevertheless, it remains important for the two institutions to cooperate because each needs the other to fulfill its mission.

The Advent of Humanitarian Operations

On the surface, the advent of humanitarian operations has removed several sources of tension in media/military relations. In humanitarian operations, the military is usually unable to deny the press access to the theater of operations. Nor is operational security a paramount issue with the military as in wartime. Hence, censorship seldom intervenes to bedevil the normally tense relationship between the media and the military. In fact, humanitarian intervention has stood the traditional relationship between the American military and the press on its head. Humanitarian operations differ from wartime operations in several aspects: unlike wartime, national survival is not at stake. The military is not involved in the political solution. It is not in charge, but only one of several organizations involved in an operation. Its mission is limited to facilitating the work of Non Government Organizations (NGOs) and Civilian Government Organizations (CGOs) that have the primary task of alleviating the humanitarian disaster. Because these civilian organizations also give interviews, have press offices, and issue press pronouncements, the journalistic focus is diverted from the military. In humanitarian operations, goals are less ambitious, operations tend to be extended, and progress difficult to measure. "In the end, it is the NGOs' war to win or lose," writes Major Chris Seiple.(22) Unlike limited war, the media is largely uninterested in uncovering military setbacks, revealing operational shortcomings, or criticizing martial prejudices of soldiers who struggle to alleviate human misery. Access to the theater is open, beyond military control. Therefore, press pools, if deployed, are merely a temporary expedient, one quickly abandoned as the influx of journalists overwhelms the desire, or the ability, of the military to restrict them. In fact, the media usually arrives before the military, and is free to practice "four-wheel drive journalism" without restraint. Rather than the military briefing reporters on the situation as in wartime, the military actually benefits from the presence of reporters who have been on the ground longer and are usually better informed of events than are soldiers.(23)

Despite the advantages offered by the press presence in humanitarian operations, some tensions in media/military relations persist. For example, military commanders often blame the media for driving them into operations that they view as a perversion of their mission to fight wars. Senior officers complain that humanitarian operations are extremely expensive to run, disrupt training and readiness, and gut military budgets, especially as they tend to be lengthy deployments. Humanitarian operations are seldom seen by the military as an opportunity to demonstrate their operational virtuosity. Rather, for an institution whose mindset and training is to concentrate resources on specific goals to achieve rapid results, peace operations offer only the bleak prospect of an open-ended commitment to a mission with vague goals and shallow public support. This is the negation of the Weinberger/Powell Doctrine. This doctrine, drawn up during the Reagan/Bush Administrations, laid out a set of strategic pre-conditions for an operation that insists on clear goals and a "reasonable assurance" of public support before an operation is undertaken.

To combine vague goals with shallow public support is for many commanders to recreate a condition akin to that which, in their view, contributed to the nightmare of Vietnam. Military leaders complain that humanitarian operations suffer from a lack of policy direction at the highest level. Into this policy vacuum step the media and the NGOs in an alliance designed to draw the military into an operation that they are ill-equipped to handle, in a distant corner of the world where the United States had scant interests. NGOs have increasingly become players in the media game, as they conspire to influence unfocused official policy. In 1996, the New York Times noted that NGOs, whose numbers have grown from 48 in 1989 to 1,500 a decade later, "are increasingly involving themselves directly in social, political, and even at times, military matters."(24) NGOs, whose funding depends on publicity, invite the media to produce television pictures of starving children and desperate refugees. In this way, the argument goes, they bring public pressure to bear on the politicians who catapult soldiers into altruistic but poorly conceived missions. The widely held perception in the military is that, "I'm here because of CNN," might be amended to include, "I'm here because of the NGOs."

Finally, mission creep is a risk of policy drift. "The military always thinks about trouble," argues a PAO. "But the NGOs don't think trouble until it happens."(25) NGOs plunge headlong into a troubled region, only to discover that their mission is compromised because of insecurity. They then pressure the military to expand their mission beyond that of providing tactical and logistical support to the NGOs, and ask them to resolve the security issue. NGOs worried about their security have called for a stronger military presence in Somalia, Rwanda, Zaire and Kosovo. The military is well aware that a mission that is sold to the politicians and the public as a straight-forward operation to alleviate suffering can, and usually does, turn violent, as in Somalia. And because peace operations occur in places difficult to locate on a map, as soon as shooting starts and casualties are inflicted, public support evaporates. The U.S. military is left holding the bag, stranded in some desolate backwater, searching desperately for exit strategies.

Tom Ricks argues that military defensiveness vis-à-vis the media puts them at a distinct disadvantage in the battle with NGOs to sway public opinion.(26) Others are not so sure. Because NGOs are by definition international organizations, they lack drawing power for a press corps, especially an American press corps, focused on a national news market. Additionally, the media often finds it difficult to understand a contradictory NGO culture that combines hard business attitudes with a "flaky-do-gooder" image.(27)

Somalia opened a new era in media/military relations -- one unwelcomed by the soldiers. Because security reviews - e.g. censorship -- are no longer possible in humanitarian operations, the military adopted in Somalia a "security at the source" policy. Reporting was favorable at first as soldiers fanned into the countryside to distribute aid, and the famine subsided. As in Vietnam, however, stories became more critical as mission costs increased and peacekeepers began to clash with local "militias." But veteran journalist Warren Strobel argues, it was not casualties per se that provoked the withdrawal from Somalia. What the downing of the Black Hawk helicopter did was to re-ignite a policy debate in Washington over the escalating goals and risks of an operation that had gone dormant because of the good news and apparent low costs of the mission.(28)

Military intervention in Haiti in September 1994, however, saw a much more harmonious media/military relationship, even though residual suspicion of the press lingered in the military. Ground rules were worked out with the press in advance of the operation, and the press willingly complied with most of the military's operational security concerns. A Joint Information Bureau (JIB), set up by the military in Port-au-Prince, processed requests to visit units from 1,300 journalists. No escort officers were requested or supplied. The only hint of media driving policy occurred when news reports caused the U.S. military to intervene to stop beatings of Aristide supporters by paramilitary forces loyal to deposed President Raoul Cedras.

Air Campaigns and the Media

One reason that the Kosovo conflict disrupted a more harmonious relationship between the military and the media evolved during the humanitarian operations of the 1980s was that NATO chose to fight the war with air power alone. The problem from a media standpoint is that the air campaign returned the media to a position of dependence on the military for information unseen since the Gulf War, a sort of "pool plus" situation. "I don't know how to cover an air war," Tom Ricks insists.(29) In fact, there are three ways to cover an air war. A reporter can hitch a lift on an aircraft and while this may give technical insights into how an air war is prosecuted, he or she is unlikely to be able to gage its effects from 15,000 feet in the air.

The second option is to sit through military briefings and look at videos of precision strikes. The problem with this is that the military only shows the press what it wants them to see, which may not be what the other side is telling them.

This leaves the third option, which is for reporters to cross the lines to get the other side's version of events. During the Kosovo war, the press was given an incentive to investigate Serb and Russian versions of events, especially after Jamie Shea stumbled over the mistaken NATO bombings of a convoy of refugee tractors near Djakovica on 19 April, 1999. Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark's attempt to pin the blame for the attack on the Serbs joined Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon's insistence that "we only bombed military vehicles" to encourage Newsweek to complain that NATO "couldn't get its own story straight."(30) Shea's subsequent explanations -- that he was a victim of the "Fog of War," and that pressure to manufacture fresh stories round the clock meant that press releases went out before they could be fully verified - seem plausible to a point. However, Shea's demeanor of bemused contempt for searching press questions and the fact that his claims were refuted by pictures supplied by the Serbs, rocked NATO credibility with a press on the qui vive against manipulation. The media's primeval agnosticism played out in games of "gotcha" journalism. As the air war dragged on without apparently putting a dent in Milsovec's resolve, it appeared as if the issue of NATO credibility, rather than ethnic cleansing, might decide victory or defeat with an alliance population unconvinced of the necessity of intervention.

Air Force Major Gary Pounder argues that Kosovo was the first instance when "instantaneous coverage and dramatic visual images rendered strategic importance to a handful of tactical events and threatened to undermine political and military coalitions in the process." He quotes Brigadier General Dan Leaf, commander of the 31st Expeditionary Wing at Aviano Air Base in Italy whose command was responsible for the refugee tractor bombing as insisting that the Djakovica incident "could have cost us the war."(31) Jamie Shea saw Djakovica, and the five days it took NATO to admit its mistake, as the war's nadir -- "many believed that we'd lost our moral rectitude," he remembered.(32) Shea believes that, from this point, the media became a significant weakness for the alliance, because by focusing on "the 0.1% of failure" of NATO bombing, collateral damage, rather than ethnic cleansing and the refugee crisis, threatened to become the central issue of the Kosovo conflict, undermining the moral credibility, and hence public support, for the campaign. According to this view, the irony of Kosovo was that Milosevic, the ex-Communist who specializes in the reanimation of medieval ethnic quarrels, proved a master of information technology, expertly diverting the press to focus on a few dozen innocents killed by stray bombs while, beyond press scrutiny, Serbs acting on his orders butchered thousands of Kosovar Albanians.(33) This argument is seconded by journalist Michael Ignatieff, who believes that NATO surrendered the moral high ground when it substituted a stand-off air campaign for a mano-a-mano confrontation with the Serbs. Because risks were not equally shared, Ignatieff argues, NATO looked like a ponderous Goliath assaulting a nimble David.(34) Because Milosevic was able to showcase NATO errors while masking his own, air strikes that killed innocent civilians were accorded a sort of moral equivalency with ethnic cleansing.

In an attempt to compel Milosevic's submission, NATO targeted Serbian television headquarters. American commanders argued that Serb television offered a legitimate objective because it was a creature of Milosevic, broadcasting anti-NATO venom rather than acting as an agency of free expression and information. Once again, however, Molosevic demonstrated an aptitude for cold-blooded cunning that left NATO strategists gape-jawed with disbelief. Alerted in advance of the attack, it is alleged that the Serbs ordered unsuspecting civilian employees into the station. When at least fourteen of these were killed by the anticipated air strike, Milosevic cynically denounced the attack on innocent civilians. The British had objected to the attack, and refused to participate. Many in the press, especially the foreign press, saw the inclusion of the media on the target list as a direct attack on the traditional non-combatant status of the press, and an indirect blow at freedom of speech. If NATO attacks the media, they argued, how can they complain when Milosevic, or the Russians in Chechnya for that matter, do the same thing? The Serbs, the Russians and Amnesty International denounce it as a war crime. Even some in the U.S. military decried the bombing as testimony to the failure of NATO's public information campaign.(35) Milosevic, once again, had diverted attention away from ethnic cleansing and turned NATO strength into a liability through his use of media images.

Information Operations

Milosevic's audacious manipulation of media images to stretch a poor hand into a potential trump against a much more powerful adversary has forced the military to reevaluate their media dimension of conflict. Information Operations (IO) is an outgrowth of Information Warfare (IW), the belief, incubated since the 1980s by theorists such as Alvin and Heidi Toffler, that instantaneous communications have revolutionized warfare. Information dominance has been defined as the "fifth dimension" of conflict. However, while IO was once focused on technical aspects such as protection against cyber attack or network defense, others insist that instantaneous press coverage of a conflict means that open information is the more important, and more visible, dimension of IO.(36) Kosovo focused attention on the potentially decisive role of media images in conflict. If the will of a population to continue to prosecute a conflict can be undermined by media-generated images, then the media campaign must be treated as an integral part of a strategy rather than as an add-on. Colonel Jack Ivy, deputy director of the Air Force's Public Affairs Center for Excellence at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, argues that "public information is a battle space that must be contested and controlled like any other."(37) Jaime Shea confessed that this was precisely NATO's intention - by saturating air time with NATO briefings and pictures, he hoped to keep the press glued to NATO briefing rooms and keep them away from Belgrade.

The positive elements of IO are obvious. Media impressions are an important factor in allowing the military to sell its strategy to the public, and to counter enemy attempts to undermine morale. During the Kosovo war, a militarily weak Milosevic repeatedly forced the Allies on the defensive by showcasing collateral damage caused by allied bombing. NATO media specialists found that their slow, and sometimes inaccurate, response to these mistakes wounded their credibility. They lacked an adequate number of PAOs to handle the press. Nor did NATO's press offices include Serbian specialists able to monitor Yugloslav media and anticipate propaganda ploys. An integrated public-relations/IO campaign that highlighted NATO themes and forcefully put NATO's case was lacking. Separate briefings in London, Washington and Brussels often sent mixed signals.

The concentration on IO is a potentially dangerous development in media/military relations, even in civil/military relations, because some IO enthusiasts view information as a commodity to be manipulated for operational advantage, rather than as a bridge of trust between the media and the military. While Major Pounder speaks of the "IO Revolution," the use of the press as an operational element in war has been around at least since Bismarck edited the Ems dispatch to goad Louis Napoleon into declaring war on Prussia in 1870. The press willingness to go to the enemy for sources during Kosovo, from the NATO viewpoint, revived the problem of Peter Arnett broadcasting from Baghdad during the Gulf War - what do you do about images that may weaken the will of your people to pursue the fight? But the problem stems in part from the reluctance of the military to supply adequate information, "gray outs" that left the press hungry for information and incited them to level the usual charges of secrecy and manipulation at the Pentagon and NATO.

The answer is not to be drawn into a cynical game of press manipulation, according to Colonel P.J. Crowley (USAF, Ret.), Principal Assistant Secretary of Defense for public affairs. Crowley argues that to treat information as a "battle space" has "dreadful implications." Others argue that to mix public affairs with IO carries the potential for great harm.(38) For a side to seize and hold the moral high ground, information must be anchored in truth, not propaganda. BBC news set the gold standard of information for millions in Europe during World War II precisely because, unlike its Axis competitors, it vowed to broadcast the bad news as well as the good. By attempting to sucker the media into a game of manipulating media images for operational advantage, the military courts skepticism, hostility and ultimately invites a lack of confidence in its message. Already, the air attack on Serb television suggests that, in future conflicts, an open season may be declared on journalists regarded as legitimate military targets. Foreign governments may retaliate against Western reporters, closing off an important information channel. In the end, the public may become inoculated against government pronouncements of success, as during the Vietnam War, and withdraw their support.

Finally, to treat information as "battle space" misses the point, because it confuses operational success with strategic victory. The strength of the military's position in any conflict is the extent to which it is anchored public support for the policy. If the goals are clear, popular, and achievable at reasonable cost, then no amount of media manipulation will decide the issue one way or another. Steve Livingston, Associate Professor at George Washington University, noted that U.S. public support for the war remained unshaken despite pictures of collateral damage in Serbia. Even the Chinese embassy bombing did not undermine public support for the war in the United States, even though the alliance was slow to respond to these incidents and was often forced on the defensive by Milosevic's media assaults. Shea counters that these events did impact public opinion in those NATO countries as Germany and Italy, where support for the war was soft, or where there was little residual sympathy for ethnic Albanian Kosovars as a group, as in Greece.(39) And while the performance of NATO's public affairs campaign in the Kosovo conflict probably rated no better than a C+, one should not exaggerate the extent of Serbian media success. Footage of captured U.S. soldiers and weary refugees fleeing over wintry mountains into Albania and Macedonia offered an indictment of Serbian brutality which no amount of Milosevic's media manipulation could refute. For these reasons, P.J. Crowley insists that NATO won the public relations war "by a large margin."(40)

Changes in media environment

Two trends in the media, one technological, the other changes in the market for media product, seem to offer contradictory indications about future trends in media/military interaction. Technological advances indicate that information increasingly will be available to the press and emancipated from military control. Market trends, however, suggest that the media's dependence on the military for sellable material will increase.

In limited wars in which the security risks are higher, the military will no doubt continue to insist on more control of information, although many argue that this is counterproductive and will in any case become impossible to enforce for technological reasons. "Security at the source" will become the rule as reporters increasingly will have reduced need of developed media infrastructures that, until now, only the military could provide. Journalists can circumvent Joint Information Bureaus to file directly from the field with cell phones, the internet, and Remote Area Network Data (RAND) systems which allow the transmission of compressed video signals. Enhanced satellite CODEC technology allows for transmission from anywhere in the globe. Satellite, micro-wave and optical fiber transmitted systems are becoming miniaturized and increasingly mobile. Reporters have access to commercial satellite images that can divulge, among other things, troop deployments.(41) For this reason, military refusal on the grounds of security to guide press pools deployed troops as during the Gulf War will appear increasingly less credible and effective. The ability of reporters to file directly from the field may present a security risk if the enemy decides to direct a missile along a reporter's signal as he files from the briefing tent of a senior officer. Flag officers may in future find it prudent to request that reporters step several hundred yards away from headquarters before they file their reports.

The advance in technology cuts both ways, in that media independence also opens the path to media manipulation and deception. Satellite imagery can be easily modified. Video images are, for the moment, more difficult to alter, but that will change in future. The film "Wag the Dog" offered a humorous but plausible essay in virtual deception. In future, the enemy can manufacture videos or plant stories on the Internet that may call U.S. credibility into question. The media should be the first line of defense to filter this information to determine its credibility. That is what journalists do. But if the military undermines its standing with a media that believes that it has been censored, denied access to information, manipulated or deceived, then it is hardly likely to give the generals and admirals the benefit of the doubt, even when the information comes from the bad guys. The military needs to be open with the press. At the same time, it must integrate public relations into its strategic planning, and build a Public Affairs community capable of handling an increasingly technologically sophisticated and savvy media.

But while the media's ability to collect and disseminate information free from censorship is growing, it is unlikely that the media will declare independence from the military and go its own way. A balance will probably be struck because, in the long run, it is in the interests of both the media and the military to cooperate to get the story out. The market incentives for the media to cut loose from the military are diminishing. The media needs help in reporting on stories about humanitarian operations, all the more so because the long term trends are not good for foreign news coverage in general, and for military stories in particular. News is a business that must be cost effective to remain competitive. The media is becoming increasingly multi-national in its organization, and hence is less likely to be influenced by the outlook of a single nation, no matter how powerful. That said, however, the media increasingly has to focus on niche markets. Polls and focus groups inform editors that the priorities of the reading public are local news first, and foreign news last. With interest in foreign news in free fall, American television news becomes increasingly parochial. CNN has begun regional production to feed foreign news to the markets where it is no longer foreign.

In the United States, the foreign news most likely to be covered is that which produces the most dramatic footage, or which has an American link. The media, especially the U.S. media, needs the military, because the military is the story. Starving children and wars in places most Americans could not locate on a map do not sell newspapers or television advertising. On the contrary, the media realizes that the pubic suffers from "compassion fatigue." Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor believes that scenes of carnage in Rwanda shown on television offer proof that the American public could have been watching Auschwitz live and done nothing about it. "'One dead American = a handful of dead Europeans = hundreds of dead Africans' is the criteria for getting a story on page one. Unless U.S. troops are involved, it is difficult to convince an editor that a story is worthwhile."(42) What sells the story is not the crisis, but the fact that the military arrives to do something about the crisis.

The media is first and foremost a business, one that has a target audience to which it must appeal. And media skepticism of military management of news to the contrary, it does not make money by bashing U.S. soldiers who perform tough jobs for their country far away from home. There is strong marketing pressure on the media to conform to audience expectations. This creates a great initial advantage for the government and the military if they embrace the media, rather than shun them.(43) Carla Roberts of the Wall Street Journal notes that American reporters feel that they are under intense scrutiny when they report on their own people. They try to be impartial, but are acutely aware that this is their side that they are writing about. The result was that, in the Gulf War, editors ignored stories about the suffering of the Iraqi people caused by Allied bombing because these stories might have built sympathy for Saddam. Likewise, the sanctions and continued bombing of Northern Iraq receive scant coverage in the American press in part because editors do not want to be viewed as critics of American policy.(44) Therefore, it is not in the interests even for an international news organization like CNN to show footage or give their reporting a slant that will offend the sensibilities of the American public.

The decline of foreign news interest in the visual media put the onus on the print media to shape and inform public opinion. Unfortunately, newspapers, too, are competing with television and the Internet for a share of a public who, in their view, wants to be entertained and has a short attention span. If the audience loses interest in a story, the ratings fall and revenues decline. The entertainment value of the Elian Gonzales story, for instance, drove much foreign news off the screen and from newspapers. Producing foreign and investigative reports is expensive, especially if the public ignores the stories. The pages devoted to foreign news in once prestigious weeklies like Time and Newsweek have plummeted from a dozen a few years ago to barely two pages, while local newspapers seldom report foreign news on the front page. People interested in foreign news turn to the British Economist, one of the large American dailies that still covers foreign news like the New York Times, or rely on the Internet. Once bustling foreign news bureaus are closing, and those that remain open have been reduced to skeletal staffs, often run by local "stringers" to save money. Becoming a foreign correspondent, or covering foreign news from Washington is no longer the hot ticket to top administrative posts in news organizations. Foreign crises witness a descent of "parachute" journalists, "generalists" who have little time to get up to speed on a story, and who have scant knowledge of the military or of the area to which they are deployed.

Conclusion And Recommendations

The military should not declare victory over the media and proceed to ignore or manipulate them. Ignorance and misinformation are potentially far more damaging for the military than informed reporting, no matter how critical. The tendency for an unprepared media charging from crisis to crisis is to frame complex issues in simplistic ways.

The military needs the media to get its story out. Furthermore, it owes this access to information to the Congress and the American people. But it should insure, so far as possible, that the story that emerges is one that, within the bounds of truth, the military would like to be told. The military will be competing with other groups eager to put their "spin" on events. NGOs, for instance, actively cultivate the media because they need publicity to bring in contributions. They bombard editors with e-mails putting their case for intervention, offering their statistics and interpretation of events. This may bring pressure on the military to deploy assets in ways that they believe inefficient, dangerous, or that expand the mission. Worse, in situations of open conflict, an enemy like Milosevic will invariably seek to put his point of view, either through the Internet, or through the regular news media.

While the creation of a news vacuum as in the Falklands War or Grenada may have worked in the past, it is unlikely to do so in future. Any news gap artificially created by the military will be filled by "on-line correspondents," NGOs, and even the enemy who, like the Serbs in the Kosovo War, translated all their stories into English and put them on the Internet. Indeed, the trend in Kosovo was for NATO to dominate the media space, although they did not always do so effectively. The theory is that the media gravitates toward the sources that are most obvious and available. Tyrants like Sadaam or Milosevic will always welcome reporters as a medium to propagate their versions of reality. Allied officers were incensed when CNN reporter Peter Arnett reported the Gulf War from Baghdad. The military complaint was that reporters in Iraq were subject to censorship, and so could only report that which was in Saddam's interest. "They were, in effect, mouthpieces for the enemy," insisted the commander of British forces in the Gulf, General Sir Peter de la Billiere.(45) But because the enemy will likely develop a sophisticated media strategy in future to showcase collateral damage and the suffering of their peoples, it is incumbent on U.S. officers to develop one as well as the scope for distortion, manipulation and disinformation will increase.(46) Therefore, it is all the more imperative that the military establish a solid working relationship with the press to insure that the media is integrated into the military's strategy, and not kept at arm's link, treated as hostile interlopers in a private domain.

Some Possible Solutions

The following should be guidelines to structure media/military relations in deployments. They are hardly exhaustive, nor are they all under the control either of the media or the military. They are based on the premise that the media and the military have no intrinsic reason to distrust each other, and can establish a perfectly workable, professional relationship if each respects some fundamental ground rules.

1. Policy goals in a deployment should be clearly articulated by the political leaders. If the policy has support, and the strategy is sound, then the media will have little scope to influence policy.


2. The size, structure and rules of engagement should be clearly stated, and the mission of those forces clearly articulated.


3. If possible, a core pool of reporters trained and informed in military doctrine, operations and equipment should be available to deploy to cover the early stages of an operation. The DOD should establish guidelines for qualifications for media representatives. News media should not dispatch the food correspondent to cover a military deployment.


4. All commanders must understand that dealing with the media is part of their responsibility, a high priority, and not something that remains the exclusive province of the PAO. In large-scale deployments, a flag officer should be placed in charge of the media. There should be clear media policy and top-down direction.


5. Dealing with the media should become part of training in war colleges. PAO should become a more attractive career option.


6. Get reporters involved in the planning stage so that they will understand the overall concept of an operation and the strategy to be employed. Most will understand the security concerns. In any case, the risks are minimal and the potential payoff great. Keeping the media in the dark will lead to skepticism, and encourage them to second-guess decisions, especially when the military encounters a setback. It will minimize the potential for "gotcha" journalism. It will also reduce the tendency for press coverage to influence tactical deployments in response to a perceived crisis.


7. Press briefings should offer solid, truthful and timely information from the military. "Spinning" a story does more harm than good, because it encourages the press to seek out less reliable sources to verify an account. Make your case, but say only what you believe to be true.


8. State the sources of your information. If you cannot verify a story, do not present it as the truth, only as something reported.


9. The tempo of press conferences and the nature of the press releases should not be driven by the constant pressure for "new news." The assumption is often that mega stories, like wars, require a constant, round-the-clock stream of dramatic news. If it's "All Quite on the Western Front", say so.


10. When there is an unflattering story or a setback, face the story and get it out. Never try to cover up. If the press has been taken into your confidence and is convinced that the strategy is robust, then it will be less inclined to jump to the conclusion that the situation is unraveling.


11. The military should get out of the censorship business. In any case, its ability to apply "security reviews" is rapidly being outpaced by technology. "Security at the source" is a much better policy.


12. Allow the media maximum access to the battlefield consistent with the security. "Embed" journalists in units. The practice of nominating "Pet" reporters should be discouraged as far as possible.


13. In humanitarian operations especially, pay attention to local media. This will give commanders a good feel for what is going on, especially if the local media is attempting to poison the population against you. PSYOPS should be used to counter unfavorable local press. However, do not use PSYOPS to deceive or manipulate the U.S. and international media.


14. In humanitarian operations, take advantage of the local media, and of reporters on the ground before the deployment of the military. They may know the area well and have useful information and contacts.


15. The media should make an effort to approach each operation with an open mind, and not shape its expectations in the light of a previous operation.

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(1) Charles Moskos cautions that one must not take the "amateur" nature of journalists too far. Journalists are professionals "in the sense that they are trained in their vocation, have a corporate self-identity, and serve in an institution that is a cornerstone of a democratic society." The Media and the Military in Peace and Humanitarian Operations, (Chicago: McCormic Tribune Foundation, Cantigny Conference Series Special Report, 2000), p. 47
(2) John J. Fialka, Hotel Warriors. Covering the Gulf War, (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), p. 57. The Public Affairs Officer is responsible for relations between the military and the military.
(3) Frank A. Aukofer and William P. Lawrence, "America's Team; The Odd Couple - A Report on the Relationship between the Media and the Military," The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, September 1995. (no page numbers in original)
(4) Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War. Kosovo and Beyond. (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000), p. 177-80; Tom Ricks interview with author, 6/23/00 (5) Publisher Larry Flynt unsuccessfully sued the DoD, claiming that denial of access to the battlefield was a violation of First Amendment rights in Grenada.
(6) Vice-Admiral Joseph Metcalf, USN (ret.), "The Press and Grenada: 1983," in Peter Young, ed., "Defence and the Media in Time of Limited War, " Small Wars and Insurgencies, December 1991, pp. 169-70
(7) The press center was inadequately equipped, which delayed stories up to four days. On 30 March, 1990, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a new guidance for public affairs, which required the CINCS to coordinate all public affairs activities with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, to provide adequate guidance for all public affairs activities, prepare adequate communication and transport support and ensure the implementation of all DoD public affairs policy and programs.See "Annex F, Planning Guidance -- Public Affairs," in JCS Pub 5-02.2, March 30, 1990, in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Pentagon Rules on Media Access to the Persian Gulf War, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1991), p. 246. (8) General Sir Peter de la Billiere, Storm Command, (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), p.64
(9) See John Fialka, Hotel Warriors: Covering the Gulf War, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991)
(10) Carla Roberts, of the Wall Street Journal, speaking during "Partners or Partisans: NATO and the Media in Kosovo," U.S. Institute For Peace, 4 April, 2000.
(11) Letter to the editor, New York Times 16 May, 2000.
(12) Young and Jesser, The Media and the Military, p.281.
(13) For a summary of media and military attitudes in the Gulf War, see Aukofer and Lawrence, op.cit., chapter 2.
(14) Interview with Commander Robert Anderson, 7/6/00
(15) Fialka, Hotel Warriors, p. 41
(16) Fialka, Hotel Warriors, p. 5
(17) Colonel Barry E. Willey, "The Military-Media Connection: For Better or Worse," Military Review. February 1999, pp. 4-5
(18) Tome Ricks interview, 6/23/00
(19) General Mike Dugan was fired by Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney in September 1990 after a reporter allowed to fly back to Washington on Dugan's plane quoted the Air Force chief of staff as saying that the Gulf War would consist of a massive air campaign targeting Sadaam Hussein. In 1993, Major General Campbell was forced to resign after he made unflattering comments about his commander-in-chief within earshot of a reporter. Two years later, a reporter took exception to a comment by U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Richard Macke concerning the Okinawa rape case, which ended the Admiral's career.
(20) Interview with Commander Robert Anderson, op.cit. Ricks is adamant that his story was deeply flattering, but senior army commanders allowed themselves to be spooked by a comment from a junior member of the NSA, which they took to be a signal from the White House to discipline Colonel Fontenoy. Ricks sees this as yet more evidence of a lack of consistency and confidence in the army.
(21) Ricks interview with author.
(22) Chris Seiple, The U.S. Military/NGO Relationship in Humanitarian Interventions, (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Peacekeeping Institute, 1996), p.180
(23) Strobel, Late Breaking Foreign Policy, pp. 10-15
(24) Scott Anderson, "What ever Happened to Fred Cuny, " New York Times Magazine, 28 February, 1996, p. 47
(25) Interview with Commander Robert Anderson, op.cit.
(26) Ricks interview with author.
(27) Moskos, "The Media and the Military in Peace and Humanitarian Operations," op.cit., p. 33 NGOs are often accused by locals as being "neo-colonialists." Their presence may antagonize some local groups and even increase the level of violence. Ibid., p. 34.
(28) Strobel, op.cit., 221
(29)Interview with Author.
(30) "Casualties of War," Newsweek, 26 April 1999, pp. 26-29. Quoted in Major Gary Pounder, USAF, "Opportunity Lost. Public Affairs, Information Operations and the Air War against Serbia," Aerospace Power Chronicles, Vol. XIV, No.2 (Summer 2000): p. 57 (31) Pounder, "Opportunity Lost," op.cit., p. 58
(32) Tim Judah, Kosovo. War and Revenge, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 261
(33) Pounder, "Opportunity Lost," op.cit., p. 58
(34) Ignatieff, Virtual War, 162
(35) Pounder, op.cit., p. 72
(36) Carl H. Builder, The Icarus Syndrome: the Role of Air Power Theory in the Evolution of the U.S. Air Force, (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transation Publishers, 1996), p.249.
(37) Pounder, op.cit., p. 60
(38) Pounder, op.cit., p. 60, 65
(39) "Partners or Partisans?", op.cit.
(40) Pounder, op.cit., p. 71
(41) Some of these technical developments are discussed in Young and Jesser, The Media and the Military, op.cit, pp. 12-14.
(42) Based on comments Peterson, and by Danien Benjamin, "News versus Snooze," U.S. Institute for Peace, 11 May, 2000.
(43) Young and Jesser, op.cit, 14
(44) "Partners or Partisan," op.cit.; See also Scott Peterson's comments in "News Versus Snooze," op.cit.
(45) De la Billiere, Storm Command, op.cit., 64.
(46) "News Versus Snooze," op.cit.
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