Ludicrous! Completely ludicrous to have reporters on the front lines for the War with Iraq. Or the mass surrender as it will most likely be.
Apparently there will be reporters living with, going on ops missions with, and filming the soldiers fighting the war.
Does anyone else think this is inherently bad? Why would we want to be in the middle of this, especially on the front lines.
CNN reporters in hotels for the first gulf was was crazy enough, but actually traveling with an armed tank brigade?
I would think a reporter would be a severe liability. And God forbid one gets shot, then what? We get to see them on national television screeming in agony?
Am I in the minority about this? Or does anyone else think filming and commentating on the war from the front lines is a bad idea?
I would imagine that the useful propaganda that comes out of it is well worth the risk to those who wish to have propaganda spread and to those who wish to have their name attached to it.
Since one of my cousins is a major network news reporter in Kuwait (at least, he was in Kuwait the last I heard, but it’s lilely he’ll be moving around), I think it’s an incredibly bad idea. We want him home in one piece. But hey, as much of a news junkie as I am, I realize I’m biased.
If you read your history, you will find that there were reporters on the front lines during WWII also. Including on bombing missions. Why do you think front-line reporting in the current situation is ridiculous? It’s when reporters are excluded that I worry.
I do not like the idea of soldiers possibly having to second guess anything whilst doing what they do. I do not like the idea.
I am not completely against the war in Iraq, I do hope we wait a while and have the UN backing but the propagando coming from such reporting I think is more dirty than other propaganda spreading from the war. I do not know much about reporting during WWII but I do remember reporters for Vietnam.
As others have said, nothing new here. And I’d MUCH prefer reporters on the front lines reporting the truth, than the bullshit that went on in the Gulf War.
It is going to be the closest you are going to get to seeing the front line action without being there personally. I think we need a third party opinion so long as it remains unbiased.
Me too. The #1 complaint coming out of the Gulf War was the way the Pentagon so tightly stage-managed the press briefings, so all we saw at home was what the Pentagon decreed we would see. I’d be for more freedom of information myself, and maybe if we did have reporters in the front lines, maybe we would have military minds being forced to rethink a few of their decisions. My Lai, anyone?
Nobody’s making them go. They want to go. They would pay money to go. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime career-making opportunity. How many people heard of “Nic-with-no-K Robertson of CNN” before he started doing standups in Kabul with his state-of-the-art digital video satellite hookup?
As others have said, nothing new here. And I’d MUCH prefer reporters on the front lines reporting the truth, than the bullshit that went on in the Gulf War.
I see no problem with this. Other than the fact that the damn first amendment bashing hampsters ate my first post to this thread!
I am sure that there will be enough controls in place that they aren’t reporting live during a sneak attack. The military seems to have gotten better at working with the press since Gulf War I.
Waitaminit… Youre comparing this future fiasco with newsreel reporters of world war II?? Are you joking? Newsreels were almost propaganda machines. Nothing they say saw or filmed was ever aired with several passes thru censors. Yes, Censors as in censorship. You say or print one wrong thing during those times and your ass is in Levenworth for sedition, buddy. unfettered Freedom of the press is a contemporary idea.
Even if there was relative freedom to say what is actually going on, that is a far cry from unresticted, instantaneous live feed from across the world to every TV in the free world. Newsreels took days and even weeks before they reached the US. By that time, the the military wouldve declassified that area and have moved on. In this case, I dont want Saddam to be watching CNN or MSNBC to gather information about the morale and strength of the US troops and possibly guess where they are or where they are headed. Why capture a US soldier trained to resist interogation when you can get some “journalist” and have him spill his guts about what the soldiers might have told him.
Well, since the Pentagon has not only authorized this whole “Jimmy Olsen Goes To War” project, but also has been holding “boot camp” for the reporters in order to toughen them up, I would assume that they don’t see a danger here. This probably means that they don’t expect any useful information about strategy to be disseminated to the grunts in the front lines, including the reporters.
The grunts in the front lines don’t normally have access to secret game-winning strategy along the lines of, “Yeah, the 81st Airborne is going to stage a sneak attack on Presidential Compound #29 on Thursday morning–but don’t tell anyone…”
I think somebody’s been watching too many WWII war movies. “Ve haff vays uff makink you talk…”
You have no idea what a grunt may or may not know. He may tell a journalist something that neither may think is important but can very well be a missing link to an upcoming strategy. Just finding out about troop strength and location becomes vital in certain scenarios. No matter how tough you train a civilian reporter, he is still a civilian and ultimately will look out for his life and the ratings for his show…and not necesarily in that order.
I have no problem about accurately reporting what goes on in the war, good or bad. What I have a problem with is the Live coverage of a small fraction of what is goin on. If all the news reports the one spectacular firefight in one small area where a dozen soldiers get wounded and possibly one or 2 dead, then the world percieves the whole war as being that intense and horrifying.
Its like the current media blitz on crime in America. You have an increase of about 600 percent reporting of crime but a decrease of about 30 percent in the crime rate over the past 20 years. The result is that people think that crime is everywhere when in fact it is actually diminishing.
The people may have the right to know (thats debatable) but they certainly dont have the right to know everything the moment it happens. Wait a few days. The thing that really annoyed me in Gulf War I was the constant news report live from the Persian Gulf and all they say is nothing is happening right now…
“Ve haff vays uff makink you talk…”