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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Friday, March 28, 2003

Journalists get inside view of war

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

There's the war in Iraq, there's our perception of the war in Iraq, and, serving as a conduit between the two, hundreds of members of the news media "embedded" with U.S. forces.

The term itself seems an unfortunate word choice (embedded, like in the sand, under the skin, perhaps inappropriately intimate?) but the idea was to get the storytellers of our time as close as possible, given all the varying safety concerns, to the story. Or, as the military ground rules for embedded media puts it, "our story."

The "policy" section of the five pages of ground rules states: "Our ultimate strategic success in bringing peace and security to this region will come in our long-term commitment to supporting our democratic ideals. We need to tell the factual story — good or bad — before others seed the media with disinformation and distortions, as they most certainly will continue to do so."

The detailed rules for embedded media are fascinating. There seems to be a concerted effort to balance access to information with protection of sensitive information. The rules spell out how embedded members of the media can quit anytime they want to and how, if a commanding officer wants to kick one of them out, it must be for cause and it must go through proper military channels. Embedded media can't use their own vehicles or carry personal firearms. They have to come with all the gear necessary to file stories from the field, but if their stuff breaks, they are authorized to use military communications capabilities. The military cannot censor, confiscate or impound stories, photos or videotapes, but can conduct "security reviews" of potentially sensitive information. "The primary safeguard," the rules state, "will be to brief media in advance about what information is sensitive and what the parameters are for covering this type of information."

A couple of other eyebrow-raisers:

"All interviews with service members are on the record."

"The standard for release of information should be to ask 'why not release' vice (sic) 'why release.' Decisions should be made ASAP, preferably in minutes, not hours."

"Personal safety of correspondents is not a reason to exclude them from combat areas."

Will this unprecedented access to U.S. forces in combat ultimately serve the military, the media, the American public or the truth? That's a question that can only be answered in hindsight.

If, in the final analysis, the concept of "embedding" proves to be a useful way to understand a complex situation from the inside, perhaps it can serve as the antidote to our isolated, computer-terminal Internet-search version of life experiences. Lawmakers, speechmakers and policy-makers can be embedded in our local areas of combat (public schools, public housing, prisons, drug treatment, homeless shelters) to get a firsthand view of what the troops at home are doing to fight the good fight.