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Feel free to use this if you find it helpful. However, this wasn't intended for publication and if I had intended it for publication I would have put in references, footnotes, etc., documenting my point with official DOD policy statements.

What I wrote is opinion but it's not uninformed opinion. I've spent two decades in the media, and am a reporter who now deals with Army Public Affairs regularly in my work outside Fort Leonard Wood and previously outside Cannon Air Force Base. Also, I've seen the inside of how things work; after 9/11, I was a civilian working in PAO in a contract reporter role for one of the post newspapers.

For many years, Army PAO models in dealing with external media have included phrases such as this: “bad news does not improve with age.” The concept has been that the military has a good story on its own and doesn't need to resort to PR models of communication to tell that story. Furthermore, in dealing with internal communications to servicemembers and civilian personnel, the approach since before World War II has been that if soldiers don't trust their commanders to tell the truth, they may not be confident following orders, so telling “the good, the bad and the ugly” has been crucial in publications such as Stars and Stripes as well as internal command information publications such as post and base newspapers.

Will that change? Not necessarily. Much will depend on implementation. But I have concerns.

I need to emphasize that my concerns are more about a change in theory than a change in actual practice. My read of the situation is that when PAO and external media have a decent working relationship, the words on paper don't make much difference and this will have minimal if any impact on how PAO deals with most reporters who cover the military on a regular basis. Mission statements are intended to set a general tone, and the specific policies and procedures exist not primarily to deal with day-to-day relationships but rather to outline how to handle things when something goes wrong and formal rules have to be pulled out because informal relationships have fallen apart.

My guess (note that I'm deliberately using language with a lower level of certainty) is this change in mission will be most significant in dealing with the “Big Army” level — i.e., how public affairs deals with the national news media — and not on the local level where most military reporting gets done anyway.

I know my local PAO people. I know their background, I know why they decided to go into PAO and what motivates them at a personal level, I know their track record of dealing with media, I know that they won't lie to me, and I know that if I don't ask the right questions it's not their fault that they didn't volunteer potentially damaging information I didn't think to ask about. I also know them well enough to know when they're avoiding answering my questions and that I need to start digging somewhere else. If PAO gets a new mission of public relations (i.e., acting like a corporate communications department) that won't affect how I deal with them because I know them on more than a merely business level. On the other hand, reporters who don't routinely cover the military or who don't know the local PAO personnel have generally thought all along that PAO was doing a “corporate communications” type of PR anyway, in other words, spinning things to their benefit, trying to kill bad news, pushing “good news” even if it wasn't newsworthy, and other forms of damage control. I don't think we need to worry about Pentagon PAO personnel deliberately lying to reporters in the United States; anyone dealing with the attack-dog approach of reporters on the national level knows already that lying to a reporter is a good way to get publicly exposed as a liar, and that's not good for the career of anyone who wears a uniform or is a senior GS civilian employee.

Bottom line: I'm worried about where this could lead, and the devil is in the details, but the practical effect is likely to be minimal — for now.

Bottom line, as I see it, is this: Department of Defense media relations are currently supposed to be guided by mottoes such as these: “maximum disclosure, minimum delay” and “bad news does not improve with age.”

Will the current commitment to such things as “maximum disclosure, minimum delay” change under the new policy? I don't think anybody knows the answer with certainty down the road. However, I do believe some of the people on this thread who worry the new policy will authorize lying to the American people have misunderstood the policy's intent.

The current policy is good. It is a fact-based approach which recognizes that the strength of our all-volunteer force, and more broadly, the role of the military in a democratic system of government, both depend upon the support of the American people for the work of those who wear the uniform. It recognizes that while some things cannot and should not be disclosed due to national security concerns, the voters **ARE** the bosses and have a constitutional right to know what the military is doing.

Current DOD policy trusts that the military has a good story that tells itself and doesn't need “spinmeisters.” That may no longer be realistic in an environment where the vast majority of Americans have never worn the uniform and don't even have any family members or close friends who have worn the uniform.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the military has very effective “corporate communications” resources at its disposal. Winning the “infowars” against Islamic radicalism on the internet, and more broadly, correcting false statements and misrepresentations of military policy, are important goals. I suspect that there is some really, really, really good material out there which is currently being directed to non-US readers, and which most people on Free Republic would be extremely happy to see put out to an American audience. That could be a very good thing.

But perceptions count. It would be an extremely bad thing if Americans got the idea that the policy change authorizes our government to lie to its own people.