Thank you for the thanks... though I'm not sure I've done anything worthy of being thanked. FWIW, I definitely believe that no matter what SSG Bales may or may not have done, Mrs. Bales is among the victims in this nightmare. She deserves no blame for what happened and definitely deserves the sympathy and prayers and general encouragement of the military community.
254 posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 7:50:36 PM by Future Snake Eater: “That’s good to hear that life is progressing for her, thanks for the report. The media are insane over this, there’s no doubt. Hell, I feel like I’m making matters worse these days. I’ve spoken to a few folks about the idiotic interpretations of Kari’s blog entries. Who knows if it’s done any good?”
Thank you again for your efforts here, FSE.
I've already gone out on a limb here by saying considerably more than someone in my profession should say, but I'm going to keep doing some of that for two reasons: 1) I don't think there is any likelihood that I will ever have to cover this case, and 2) you got my attention loud and clear several days ago when you said you don't have any public relations people advising you. I'm not a PR guy by any definition of the word, and I'm definitely not in the same league as the media people you're dealing with, but I do know how the media work and perhaps what I can say will help.
Obviously it is your choice what to say and what not to say, but I'd encourage you to keep talking and keep correcting misunderstandings and errors. Given time, it works. The alternative is that honest misunderstandings and negligent errors combine to form a consensus view in the media which may be very difficult or impossible to counteract.
Reporters know there are at least two sides to a story and generally want to be able to tell both sides. That's very difficult in a situation like this where very few facts are available, where most people aren't talking, and where key information can be obtained only from Afghanistan — a place where there's no way even the embedded reporters and Kabul bureau personnel can do their own investigations without a high likelihood of being killed.
The result is reporters are hunting for facts anywhere they can be found, and getting a combination of accurate information, total nonsense, and everything in between, plus well-meaning misinterpretations of that information and misinformation.
Lack of access to facts provides an opportunity for those who do have facts — you included — to have a major role in shaping the narrative being told by the media.
In this case, it appears that you and SSG Bales’ lawyer are the only people telling his side of the story. At the same time, Army personnel are leaking things to the media, presumably with explicit permission or “please don't tell me what you're doing” tacit approval from their chain of command. This is a highly charged political case with international repercussions, and I'm not going to blame the senior leaders too much for the leaks which they probably think are necessary to prevent more soldiers from being killed, but the fact is that when only one side is talking, that side is the one which gets its story told. Perceptions, even if totally wrong, can quickly become reality in the mind of the general public if they don't get challenged.
Here's a concrete example of what can happen when people refuse to talk to the media early on, thus allowing public perceptions to get framed in problematic ways. Remember Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban refugee boy whose mother died along with others trying to bring him to Florida, but whose father in Cuba managed to obtain custody via American courts? Elian Gonzalez should have been a poster-child for the opportunities of America versus the near-slavery of Cuba, but early refusal of the Florida Gonzalez relatives to discuss the case allowed the Cuban government to tell their side of the story to the American and international media. By the time the Florida Gonzalez family became more aggressive in telling their story, the narrative had already been defined in ways that were not helpful to their interests. I'm not trying to blame the Gonzalez family here, merely to point out that in a battle for public perception of a high-profile case, early actions or inactions can have a tremendous effect down the road.
Again, I have no way to know what SSG Bales did or did not do in Afghanistan. I cannot take sides in a case where I don't know the facts. What I do know is that if his side of the story is going to be told, it will have to be people like you, who do know him, and who are willing to tell it.
262 posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 8:08:22 PM by Kaylee Frye: “That is unbelievably shameful. The movers should have called the cops the second that happened. My heart aches for Kari.”
Kaylee, I am not going to defend the conduct of reporters and photographers swarming the moving team at a vacant house to get photos for print or video footage for television. However, I'm saying that as a reporter who refuses to photograph dead bodies or injured people at car crashes, so I fall into the category of someone who thinks respect for victims is important and thinks photos are less important than facts. A lot of my colleagues won't agree with me on that.
**HOWEVER** — being an insensitive jerk is not a crime.
If these reporters and photographers did what they were doing from the street or sidewalk, they had every legal right to stand there and take all the photos they wanted. Conservatives protesting abortion clinics, for example, were entirely correct to demand their right to protest on public property.
If these reporters were trespassing on private property that changes things completely.
In closing, I feel horrible for the family of SSG Bales. Being a military wife is hard enough without something like this happening, which puts it off the charts on horrible outcomes of a deployment. I'd say the same thing about the surviving family members of the victims of this shooting if I knew enough to be sure they were innocent victims, but this is warfare, we're fighting an enemy which hates us, and we don't know enough yet for me to want to go out on a limb and say much about the shooting victims.
**HOWEVER** — being an insensitive jerk is not a crime.
If these reporters and photographers did what they were doing from the street or sidewalk, they had every legal right to stand there and take all the photos they wanted. Conservatives protesting abortion clinics, for example, were entirely correct to demand their right to protest on public property.
You're right, but the impression I was getting was that they literally swarmed into the house - or at least onto the property - when they realized it was open and unoccupied... And that IS illegal.