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Pentagon Offers Media Stalwarts A Rifle Sight View of War
By Thomas D. Segel
January 20, 2003

Now finding its way on to pages of local newspapers around the country is a very interesting announcement. Even a few television outlets have picked up the story. Strangely, though, after all the media cries that our Department of Defense is being too controlling of combat news, there hasn't been any huge excitement about the announcement reporters will be able to go to war with the troops.

The plan presented by Department of Defense officials is both ambitious and aggressive. It is most assuredly unprecedented in scope.

"All news mediums are to be included with significant representation from domestic and international outlets. The goal is to have broad-based coverage," said a DoD spokesperson.

The plan as it has been presented calls for media outlets to present the big-picture of any future conflict and it does not favor any one branch of the military over another.

News organizations will be given allocations with the services and units within those services will be identified as potential sites from which the reporters or correspondents can operate. It is the intent of the Pentagon to make these media representatives integral to the units. It is hoped to embed them with the units through training, deployment, combat operations and the return home.

The armed forces will provide the correspondents rations and transportation. It will be transport as the unit moves and not on-demand by the media representative. The correspondents will also be provided biological and chemical protective gear. Vaccines for anthrax, smallpox and other recommended inoculations will be on a voluntary basis.

Should these embedded reporters want helmets or flack jackets, they will be required to bring them or purchase them from the units.

The reporters will also be expected to bring all their own professional equipment, which should include transmission devices. They should bring only what they can carry.

The primary means of filing stories with their sponsoring news organizations will be by their personal transmission equipment. However, the military will serve as an alternate means for transmission of news and every effort will be made to assure reporters can file their stories.

Pentagon officials are quick to point out "reporters can elect to leave their embed situation at any time, but rotations will rarely be approved. That is, if an outlet (media organization) allows a reporter to leave they are not guaranteed another embed slot with that unit. The ideal is to have a reporter train, deploy and stay with the unit until it returns home."

Individual television stations, newspapers and media organizations are prohibited from making special arrangements with specific units or branches of the armed forces. For now the plan is centralized, with a tight management policy. It will be managed directly out of the DoD press office.

Media organizations across the United States have continued a steady mantra since September 2001 about all the restrictions placed on them by Washington. They have wanted the freedom to report on military operations without censorship or controls being placed on their representatives.

Now they will be given the opportunity to have their people at the scene... to report the good, the bad and the ugly. It is not beyond possibility that some local reporters may soon be giving viewers or readers at home a rifle sight picture of warfare.

But, it still brings to mind the old cliche, "Be careful what you wish for... you just might get it!"