This seems to me to be a brilliant idea. Even liberal channels have trouble maintaining their liberal "slant" once they've gotten the reports from these embedded reporters. Does anyone have any sources or articles that would nail down whose idea it was to do this?
I casually am acquainted with one of the people who make up the top tier of media/PR officers in Rumsfeld's office. He's former military, but spent several years doing media/PR relations in a completely unrelated field for a few years before going back to the Pentagon. In that field, one of his brilliant ideas was to "embed" the media at the rubber-meets-the-road level.
This is a great idea because of the long term benefits, perhaps unintended.
Most of these reporters are young, and up-and-coming at their respective networks. They are the future Tom Brokaws, Peter Jennings and Sam Donaldsons who will one day be editing the newscasts and facing the American People through their TV sets.
They have been brought up in the Liberal Journalism schools and trained under the Liberal Media Systems where everything is slanted toward the Left. Now they are getting an entirely different education, away from their Liberal mentors.
They are in the field with the troops, sharing the dangers, living with them intimately, observing them closely and having long conversations with them in the dark of night. In other words, they are seeing these troops as people - dedicated to America, brought from the solid core of America, and proud in their military traditions, training and objectives. As most military people tend to be politically conservative and decent, they are seeing a view of America they have either never known or forgotten. No doubt many will have their leftist attitudes changed and presuppositions forever changed by this intense experience.
These young journalists - who are the future of the Mainstream Media - may well be the ones that eventually bring the Media back to an American perspective from it's present socialist and one-world perspective. They may be just the seedbed needed to help turn the Media industry back to the right, from within! These are not the clueless dopes sitting at the Pentagon and White House Briefings today, churning out biased news. Instead, they are the rising stars and will be the ones who tomorrow who will run the industry.
This is a blessing in disguise - for America and the Mainstream Media!
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB104820530891739700,00.html Here's How a Pentagon Aide
Manages to Spin the War
By MATTHEW ROSE and GREG JAFFE
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
For weeks, newspapers, magazines and TV networks have been carrying stories about gruff generals besting their troops in push-up contests, features that marvel at the Pentagon's high-tech weapons and sympathetic portraits of fathers and mothers in military camps.
Chalk those up as wins for Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon's assistant secretary of defense for public affairs and its chief image maker.
But now, with the real fighting under way, some wonder whether Ms. Clarke will be able to keep up the run of favorable press that has flowed ever since the Pentagon began "embedding" more than 500 reporters alongside troops.
Ever since Vietnam, relations between the Pentagon and the media have been characterized by mistrust and dislike. In the first Gulf War in 1991, restrictions were tight and relations between the two sides poor. In Kosovo and Afghanistan, wars that were largely conducted from the air, there was no concerted effort to put reporters near the fighting and the press complained bitterly that the Pentagon was slow to confirm events on the ground.
This time around, Ms. Clarke is running the Pentagon's public-affairs effort much like a political campaign -- tapping her years of experience in public relations and representing politicians.
"If you had hired actors you could not have gotten better coverage," said Kenneth H. Bacon, a former Pentagon spokesman and now chief executive of Refugees International, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group.
Ms. Clarke's appointment in spring 2001 raised eyebrows when she freely acknowledged knowing next to nothing about the military. She also had little knowledge of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It was a big change from predecessors such as Mr. Bacon, who covered the Pentagon for The Wall Street Journal.
Apart from a brief stint at the now defunct Washington Star, Ms. Clarke, who is in her early 40s, also had little journalism experience. She got her start as a press assistant for then-Vice President George Bush in the early 1980s and worked as press secretary for his 1992 presidential campaign. She also handled press relations for Sen. John McCain.
Decker Anstrom, former president of the National Cable Television Association, says Ms. Clarke was instrumental in getting the cable industry to address its terrible reputation for customer service when she was the group's vice president for public affairs in the 1990s. Ms. Clarke instructed the industry that "you are a lot better if you are consistently available and out front and willing to take the shots," said Mr. Anstrom, now president and chief operating officer of Landmark Communications, owner of the Weather Channel.
That approach has informed her work at the Pentagon, say people who work with her. Ms. Clarke quickly won over the press corps, especially at the bureau-chief level, by handing out her home phone and pager numbers and by being accessible for questions and problems. She also earned Mr. Rumsfeld's trust; she is present each morning at 7 a.m. when he and two dozen staff members get briefed on events around the world. Pentagon officials say she has as much or more influence in the department as any of her predecessors.
She hammers home the Pentagon's messages by putting the secretary front and center, rarely holding press conferences herself. Mr. Rumsfeld has appeared before reporters more than any secretary in recent history. Ms. Clarke also is highly protective of her boss, displaying clear irritation at negative media profiles of him.
During the Afghanistan war, relations with the press were poor in part because Pentagon public-affairs officers on the ground were reluctant to speak until the defense secretary briefed the media. As a result, there was frequently an information vacuum that reporters filled by interviewing civilians on the battlefield. That meant initial reports often overstated the number of civilian casualties, and the Pentagon often failed to counter these assertions.
During one briefing in October 2001, a bureau chief said the Pentagon seemed "mean-spirited" by not confirming military actions that everyone on the ground knew were taking place. By embedding reporters Ms. Clarke and the Pentagon hope to better portray their side of the story and get broader coverage of the military's achievements.
Reporters have long complained about the tight control of information at the Pentagon. Mr. Rumsfeld in particular has cracked down heavily on unauthorized leaks. At a press conference Thursday, he made it clear that there were limitations on what he would discuss. "I'm not into the tick-tock of every hour and every minute," he told the Pentagon press corps.
Ms. Clarke tends not to mire herself in the details of military campaigns. Her focus on "message" was particularly apparent when she moved James Wilkinson, a White House spokesman, to U.S. Central Command headquarters, which oversees the Iraq war, to be the command's spokesman. During the Afghanistan war, that position was held by an admiral.
"She brings spin control; that's her major contribution," says Patrick Sloyan, who won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the first Gulf War for Newsday.
In the current war, the Pentagon has shifted its stance and is allowing reporters to live and sleep alongside military units in the battlefield. There are more than 500 reporters from all kinds of media in the Gulf. These reporters had to agree to ground rules and are discouraged from roaming outside of their units.
Ms. Clarke couldn't be reached for comment. Her deputy, Bryan Whitman, said the point of the restrictions on reporters is to maintain "tactical surprise and insure the success of the mission."
Until the war started, coverage of the Iraq campaign largely had been uncontroversial, focusing on day-to-day military life. But the true test of Ms. Clarke's relationship with the media will come with the big battles -- especially if all don't go as the Pentagon hopes. Already there have been signs of tension. On Tuesday, Ms. Clarke told a conference call with Washington-based bureau chiefs that she had to warn a few media outlets for revealing too much information about upcoming operations. So far, though, some local military commanders are potentially causing friction by giving out more information than Ms. Clarke might like.
"People in Washington and the bureau chiefs spent a lot of time" figuring out the how the embedded process should work, said Charles J. Lewis, Washington bureau chief for Hearst Newspapers. "How it plays out in theater is a different question."
Ultimately, said Mr. Bacon, the former Pentagon spokesman, the success of Ms. Clarke's strategy will be determined by progress on the battlefield. "In the end, you cannot spin a war and it is foolish to try and do it," he said. "If the troops do well and we achieve our objectives with minimal casualties, you can't put a bad face on that. Alternately, if we fail, you can't put a good face on it."
-- Joe Flint contributed to this article.
Hear, Hear. Let's make sure that the various networks know how much we appreciated the efforts of the embedded journalists!
