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By Rear Admiral Brent Baker, U.S. Navy
[n his book How CNN Fought the War (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1991), retired Air Force Major General Perry Smith makes the following observation:
• • • the Center of international media is no longer in New York, London, Washington, Tokyo, or Paris. It is ln Atlanta, Georgia. When the chief mili tary correspondent for CBS spends the day watching CNN and when newspaper reporters from around the world write their stories while watching CNN, the Way the news is reported to the world has changed dramatically.”
work broadcast the first live television satellite reports ot the War in the Gulf in January 1991. Its live reports were fed not only to the United States, but also to 170 countries throughout the world. This combined communications firepower of computers, satellites, and CNN global television has moved us dramatically closer to
Any leaders or institutions ignore this one asic and important change at their own Peril. This change is part of our 1990s in- 0rmation-age lifestyle and has greatly impacted the decision-making process. Even 0ugh it is before our eyes every day, we Cannot really see its social, political, and ^eonomic impact. We do not teach tomor- w s leaders the skills necessary to un- o^r^and and deal with it. Its power to help r hinder an institution cuts across all dis- P ines of learning. Its dramatic character- 24'^ *nc^uc^e 'nstanb real-time reporting, r 'nour-a-day data availability, and global j cn. We all have become prisoners of it a crisis or while watching major events w0 d- In underdeveloped countries, its a . and images have lifted poor people’s
thatlrat*°nS—t0 ^aVe t*ie Quality of life
r °thers have. Some say its content has encouraged j 0 ution and distorted events. The change agent here 'Vorldwide satellite television. jnn '921, young inventor Phil T. Farnsworth, working fir a ^ar^eneci San Francisco apartment, transmitted the a d |t|e*ev's’on image without wires. His test pattern was Sj0°, ar s'§n- which was prophetic, considering televi- n s present economic impact on American society.1
Jn 1980,
HEU0, CNN? APE YOU
INTERESTS?' IN ANOTHER SEASON?
SJ
ignoring many in commercial television who
fir^’ h won’t last,” impresario Ted Turner began CNN’s s roadcast from Atlanta. Eleven years later, the net-
D. FEDLER— THE STAR. JOHANNESBURG
media guru Marshall McLuhan’s vision of a “global village.”
What does this change mean to high government officials? In a speech to the American Political Science Association after the War in the Gulf and after the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney told what it means to him:
“As an administrative official, it’s gotten increasingly difficult to sort out what we know from intelligence and what we know from CNN. I don’t mean to give
them an unwarranted plug. The last time I did that, they ran a commercial around the world for weeks of me endorsing CNN. But it clearly is a factor now in the way we do business.”2
CNN is the dominant factor in all news media today. The network instructs its employees that it is a worldwide news and information network—not just an American network. This raises an important issue to U.S. military, government, and business leaders. When covering combat or global economic-competition stories, whose side is CNN on?
Television, and CNN in particular, has become the medium of choice for some very important diplomatic dialogue. On countless occasions over the past two years— amid dramatic changes in the Middle East and in the former Soviet Union—government spokespeople from Washington, Riyadh, Baghdad, Tel Aviv, and Moscow have delivered a statement, proposal, or response on live television. As commentator John Chancellor told his NBC audience just after the War in the Gulf began, “Saddam has found a way to continue politics during war; he has found CNN.”’ Russian President Boris Yeltsin and other leaders have discovered CNN’s global power as well.
From a military point of view, diplomatic notes, under the Geneva Convention, did not tell the United States whom its prisoners of war in Iraq were. Instead, CNN reported words and images from Baghdad that quite often were shocking. Nonetheless, military families, the government, and the general public got the first word on U.S. POWs from CNN, which in almost every case beat out any official word through government channels.
This global real-time communication has become real and personal for military families. During the War in the Gulf, all services maintained 800 numbers, 24 hours a day, for next-of-kin ’calls concerning loved ones. Navy-Marine Corps numbers handled more than 450,000 calls during Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Most of them were clearly in reaction to CNN reports about specific actions or incidents. In the Navy’s 24-hour phone center, televisions were tuned to CNN. If the report was about a Navy ship hitting a mine, the Navy lines would light up.4 If a Marine unit was reported under fire, the Marine lines would light up. All this indicated just how far the age of instant communication has gone in touching people’s lives.
Americans now have the technology to see far-away events live or in near real-time. They can call and demand that their government or employer answer their questions now, not a day, week, or month after the event—• now—minutes after the event.
What does this mean to our society? What does this mean to how we run business and government? In a Chicago Tribune article with the headline “Decisions at the Speed of Satellite,” Tim McNulty wrote:
“Television has communicated across the world’s borders for years, but in just three days last August [1991, when Nikolai Lenin’s statues were toppling in Moscow as the Communist Party fell] it was evident that live
television via satellite had become something more; it turned interactive and provided the stage on which world television viewers, whether private citizens, presidents, or prime ministers, became the actors in a global cinema verite.”5
More and more in government and business today, CNN will not only drive the timing of decisions or responses, but will get inside the decision cycle, with dramatic impact. CNN is not just a passive medium in a crisis or major event. It is a major player.
For a government spokesperson, working daily with both the highest government officials and the news media, the major impact is that of speed and compression of response time. Competitive news pressures in the electronic media are moving us past the speed limits of common sense in government-media relationships. Instant television reports and so-called instant analysis are driving down the quality of the news reports on complex events.
But in the real world, information is power, and getting the information on the air first is all-important to television reporters and producers. Nobody has time to think. Government and military officials learn of an event on satellite television and must react via satellite television within minutes.
Speed of reply puts most democracies at a disadvantage in the war of words and images. The democratic process is one of bureaucratic coordination and determining consensus on an answer. Elected or appointed government officials have more trouble responding quickly than unnamed (or even named) news sources outside government or in a dictatorship. So, special-interest groups (such as Greenpeace or the Center for Defense Information) and dictators (such as Saddam Hussein) can easily get their views out first and fast. Some call it win- nmg the battle of the first perception. Everyone knows how difficult it is to change an initial perception. Those who have worked in crisis management also know the first report is usually incomplete at best and wrong at worst.
In January 1992, the Navy Office of Information surveyed its news media customers to find out if it was serving their daily information needs. The survey found the key factor in determining the media’s confidence in the service to be response time. On a scale of one to ten, the media customers rated the Navy news desk people a nine for professionalism and courtesy. But some of the other ratings were startling:
- Honesty—8.3
- Accuracy—7.6
- Timeliness—6.7
Many times we simply cannot meet the media’s dead' lines for various proper reasons. With more instant tele' vision communications, the demand goes up for faster and shorter answers, even to complex questions. This neW CNN-driven communications race is a challenge. And we all must be prepared to meet it.
Ben Bradlee, the recently retired executive editor of Th* Washington Post, has stated that “News is the first rough draft of history.” I believe that is true. But the real ques-
A Media Survival Guide
In this instant CNN news environment, we hope the Navy has learned some lessons from the Gulf War. On the technical side, we learned that the lack of video mission recorders on naval aircraft nieant we lost the television air war to the Air Force, which had state-of-the-art video mission recorders. Regarding military attitude, remarks at an annual naval aviation symposium, as reported in the 9 May 1992 Pensacola News Journal, were enlightening. Panelist Lieutenant Commander Mark Fox,
U-S. Navy, said he and an- °ther pilot from the USS Saratoga (CV-60) initially reused to be interviewed by CNN about downing a pair of "■lids. Under prodding by Navy officials, he agreed on the condition his picture not e used. "‘Public relations is ?ot my forte,” he said, “I’m happy to put my bombs on target. . . and I don’t need to teH anybody about it.”
We in large institutions must seek s°me balance in dealing with the instant CNN news process. If we feel sPeed is adversely affecting accu- rauy, we must insist on explaining 'vhy we need more time to reply. In a etter he wrote to me, Peter raestrup. Director of Communica- l0ns for the Library of Congress “tlf 3 *orrncr newsman, said that e politicians should not feel mrced to respond to TV news.”
Following are nine recommendations that may help in spreading the word, without compromising security.
► Generally, it is in the institution’s interest to deal honestly and in a timely manner with the media. If you do not play, you surrender to your critics who will be eagerly at hand.
- Understand the media’s obsession with speed, and through daily contact, keep working to win the battle of the first media perception.
- Leaders must learn to take time to articulate their positions to the media. They must use short, simple language that the media will use and the public will understand.
- Use the media to inform the public proactively, not just to react to critics.
- Understand that the news is almost always skewed toward the side of those willing to talk to the media, and against those who say, “No comment.”
► Remember that CNN will often correct the television record, while other networks rarely will do that because of time constraints.
- Realize there are reporters who do want to be accurate and have balanced stories. Too often editors or television producers get in the way and interject the political or budget spin on an otherwise positive story about our people. Getting reporters out to the fleet, field, or factory floor is a beginning. We need also to educate some Washington-, New York-, and Los Angeles-based editors and producers who put that final spin on reporters’ stories.
- Play the media game. Understand there are times for a low profile, but more often, a media opportunity to tell your story should not be lost because of fear. We need to tell people, through the media, what we are about.
- Don't be thin-skinned. We will not win every media engagement, but we must continue to communicate to our own people and to the public.
B. Baker
.‘on is, as we move faster and faster in the CNN global ormation race, whether we get an accurate and objec- lve view of the truth.
or f 6 c*lan§'n8 world is not simply a black-or-white, true- jsa*se situation. Some say, don’t worry—print joumal- taT °r ^'stor*ans wiH save the day with later, more de- 1 ed and objective reports. But television, with its fast iou 6 3n(* 'nstant images, has had its own impact on print fir ?la^sm" The fact remains that most Americans get their s news and perceptions—right or wrong—from radio dnd television.
reifPCed ^aS raced past accuracy and objectivity in news .^Porting today and is the root of much of the problem §0vernment-news media relations. Indeed, in the Gulf
War, speed in getting the newspeople to the battlefield and their products back from the field was a major concern. Delay of news reports became as evil to them as censorship.
So what is the answer for a democratic society that needs both timely and accurate information?
We cannot go back to yesterday’s slower pace in today’s fast-track world. We must somehow get the right information out faster. The information stakes are getting so high that leaders must overhaul the way we do business to put higher priority on dealing with the news media in a timely fashion. This is not to say that all parts of our society must bow down to the “instant this and quick that" trend. Sometimes we must simply slow down.
Pr»ceed
Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite testified before Congress in February 1991 that television cameras should be allowed on the battlefield, but satellite up-links should not. Few of his colleagues agreed.
In February 1991, Congress held hearings on how the military was handling the news media in the Gulf War. Those hearings made it clear that we in the mil itary are constantly concerned that live or near real-time media reports will compromise troop safety and operational security. Most news people share those concerns. But disagreement continues between the media and the military about how to handle so-called military security review of media products. The media consider security review to be censorship, which it is not. The issue of security review is fueled mainly by the perceived need for speed in transmitting media reports.
On the issue of live television briefings from Saudi Arabia or the Pentagon, one witness—among several government officials, newspeople, and members of Congress— said:
“I really don’t see any real necessity for the briefings to be covered live by television. I think that maybe they could be delayed a while, too. It is a nice service to render. It has some advantages I can see, but on the other hand the briefing officer must be terribly constrained by the fact he is also briefing (Saddam) Hussein.”
On the issue of live war coverage, the same witness said:
We now have the 1990s electronic equivalent of the days when newspapers competed for sales with extra editions. Even the old traditional American television networks have so-called news breaks, and we have all-news radio and television. Cable television, with its hundreds of specialized channels, adds to that new electronic highspeed competition.
Someone in the news media or government needs to put some speed bumps” in the electronic global news process. Walter Cronkite was right; we do not have to go live with everything.
Too often a reporter tells me, “I can’t wait for your answer, or if I wait I’ll get scooped,” or “I’m going to do a radio beeper report as a marker against CNN, until I can get a report on tonight.”
It is clear that leaders in government and business, if they are to be in the 1990s information race, must learn to deal in a faster pace with global television, and CNN in particular. This is not always easy.
Today, military leaders do understand the importance of satellite media technology. As author Ben Wattenburg has said, The most important new weapons of war are lightweight television cameras and television satellites. The new rules of warfare concern the way they are used nowadays.”7
When questioned by The New York Times about how tec nology had impacted field commanders, General Colin L. Powell, U.S. Army, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it this way: “It isn’t like World War II when George Patton would sit around in his tent with six or seven reporters and muse, with the results transcribed and
reviewed for eventual release------------ If a commander in
Desert Shield/Storm sat around in his tent and mused with a few CNN guys and pool guys, it’s in 105 capitals a minute later.”8
It I could run an ad in the journalism trade press, it wou d read: Wanted, a return to information accuracy and objectivity. Slow down, we are going too fast— making decisions at the speed of satellites.”
. If LC0U,ld talk t0 a11 senior military officers and civil-
^xTMfflC'a S’1 W°uld Say: <We must learn to deal with the CNN race, cut through the bureaucratic slowness, and win the battle of the first perception.”
Rear Admiral Baker is the Chief of Information for the U.S. Navy.
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P0'i,ieal SdenCe ASS°dati0n’ VanC°U‘ "RtmChRr''R°rl'‘C<;r,e"^'" NBC Nigh"y News• 29 January 1991.
NetWare f,akerDUS ’ 'Desert Shield/St°™. The War of Words and Images," Naval War College Review, Autumn 1991, p. 60.
Timothy J. McNulty. '‘Decisions at the Speed of Satellite: TV Images Shape Lead- tYon *eSP°nSeS ‘° rld EventS ” The Chka8° Tribune. 22 December 1991, Sec-
‘Wtdter Cronkite, Pentagon Rules On Media Access to the Persian Gulf War,"
“moY b.f°re'he Comm“'<* on Governmental Affairs. U.S. Senate, 20 Febru- tuy 1991 U.S. Government Pnnting Office, Washington. D.C., pp. 24-28
anYschl"^ P.m^^ ” "* ,f W™* <New Sim°°
"Jason DeParle. "Long Series of Military Decisions Led to Gulf War News Censorship: Covering the War,” The New York Times, 5 May 1991, p. 1.
The witness quoted was Walter Cronkite, who was quick to say he did not speak for CBS. It was very clear in the hearing that Cronkite was alone in his opinions.
“I think that you handle that by letting the television cameras go where they feel they should go, but you do not permit the satellite up-link with live coverage of what they are taping. What they tape goes back through the censorship channels even as motion picture did in World War II from the newsreels, and that worked perfectly well. It didn’t get out the same minute, it didn’t get out the same hour, sometimes it didn’t get out the same day. ... I don’t see what this rush to print or rush to transmit is all about. Rush to print is an old concept of the days of competitive newspapers when we were fighting for newspaper sales.”6