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It looked like a sleazy drug bust, this interception of an ABC news team on a Grenada airstrip for violating the news blackout. But this mournful tableau raises two questions: (1) to whom is the press responsible, and (2) can an irresponsible press hope to remain free?
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On 25 October 1983, in a predawn operation, combined forces of the U. S. military began an assault on the tiny island of Grenada. The planning and initial execution of the mission had been conducted in such secrecy that its public announcement shook not only the world but the American news media as well.
From this invasion of Grenada emerged a controversy that had been festering for years—a controversy that came to a head by the military’s exclusion of the American news media from accompanying the assault forces during the first two days of the operation. Does the public via the media have a right to be informed of unfolding events during a military operation? This question encompasses many concepts, including freedom of the press, national security, operational security, public image of the media and military, the Freedom of Information Act, and source credibility.
Throughout U. S. history, news correspondents have been accompanying military units on operations. The practice can be traced back to the Revolutionary War; however, it is better documented during the Civil War, which also marked the emergence of the American war correspondent. The writers, photographers, and artists who covered the war between the states enjoyed extraordinary freedom. Many traversed easily from one side to the other.
Of course, by modem standards, their accounts were less than what might be considered objective. In most cases, their reports were the mere reflection of the military’s version of the situation. For instance, the atrocities of the military hospitals and prisoner of war camps received almost no attention in the press. Nevertheless, some reporters earned the hatred of some of the top-ranking Union soldiers. General William T. Sherman, for example, who led the infamous march through Georgia, complained bitterly about correspondents “picking up dropped expressions, inciting jealousy and discontent and doing infinite mischief.”1
During the Indian Wars following the Confederacy’s surrender at Appomattox, relations between the media and military improved, but this was largely because there were so few reporters on the scene. Flowever, some reporters did ride with General George A. Custer, and in their writings, they echoed the popular sentiment of the day that “the only good Indian was a dead Indian.”2
Relations deteriorated during the Spanish-American War, primarily because of the disposition of Major General William R. Shafter, commander of U. S. troops in Cuba, who had little use for reporters. Famous war correspondent Richard Harding Davis, who supported the government’s position, was one of Shafter’s least favorite reporters. Davis had painted the picture that Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, who was known for his pampering of the press, had won the war.3
World Wars I and II furthered the rise in the war correspondent. War correspondents accompanied U. S. troops worldwide during World War II. Generally, the relationship between the media and military was productive, even though journalists had to submit their work to military censors prior to being released. As former war correspondent Drew Middleton stated, “There were reasonable men on both sides . . . ,”4
The decaying relations between the media and military/ government can be attributed to several events occurring since World War II. However, before discussing these specific events, it is important to understand the mindset of American journalists.
Traditionally, American journalism has been close to, dependent on, and cooperative with official sources. This arrangement has been both a problem and a strength f°r journalism. It maximized the openness and flexibility of the U. S. Government and the amount of information available to the people. However, during the past 25 years, a growing number of journalists have begun to re' vise this relationship of cooperative spirit by assuming 3 position of greater independence and less cooperation-
“Daily” journalism is the business of publishing a current account of current events. Three questions arise tha( help explain the nature of journalism. How, where, and on what basis is information to be found? From what point of view are events to be surveyed and characterized? Which audience is to be addressed and what is the basis for its aggregation? Daily journalism falls into two forms: the “partisan” and the “liberal.”[1]
Partisan journalism is common in many European countries. In the United States, partisan journalism has been represented by the “journal of opinion,” rather than the newspapers. It begins with a political point of view and Is considered ideological journalism. It aims at assembling an audience that shares its point of view. Such joumalis111 is not concerned with information so much as with elaboration and maintenance of its viewpoint.
The liberal tradition, on the other hand, prevails in the English-speaking world and is characterized by a preoccupation with facts, figures, and events. It tries to avoid 3,1 ideological point of view. Instead, it aims to appeal to 3 universal audience on the basis of its objective point 01 view. Throughout the 20th century, American journalist have belonged to the liberal camp.[2]
Two tensions arise from the nature of liberal journalist The first is that which exists between access and autonomy—the journalist seeks maximum access to the actofS but with maximum independence from them. The secoU1 is the journalist’s desire to avoid a political point of vic^ that conflicts with the point of view that is perceived fr0111 describing the events.
The relationship of media and government under tbe liberal tradition has been one of structured interdepend ence and bartering coupled with amiable suspicion. Eac side knows its role. The government and its officials ad- entitled to define policies and to shape the news in tb3 direction. But the government is also expected to be acceS. sible and provide information to the media, and it shoU1 do so more freely than is required by law. It is in this latte point that the U. S. Government differs greatly from Euf0 pean governments. American journalists not only h^( access to official press releases and announcements
’he public official and the government. They are expected to cooperate with them to the greatest degree that professionalism allows.
The press is expected to have no strong ideas about the shape of public affairs. Its main task is to gain as much ’^formation as possible and circulate it. It has the right to exPose mistakes and corruption.
On the day-to-day level, the relationship between the *^edia and the government is not well defined and is h'ghly variable. There are, however, a few rules of prac- tlce that all parties are expected to observe. Officials should not lie or deceive newspersons and the public. Nor should they use their official powers to coerce or harrass ’he media. Newspersons, on the other hand, should not editorialize in their reports and should give accused persons in a story a chance to present their side of the matter. Likewise, the media should not publish the unmentionable S'de of an official’s private life, which has no particular relevance to public policy.
This kind of journalism is easily manipulated, by both ’he government and the media. During the past 50 years,
explaining the consequences of such remarks.
The government is guilty also of creating pseudoevents. In the 1950s, Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) knew how to maneuver his way into the news, even if he did not have any facts to disseminate. He would call a news conference in the morning to announce an afternoon news conference at which he would promise to reveal a startling piece of news. Thus, the afternoon papers would run such headlines as: “New McCarthy Revelations Awaited in Capital.’’ Afternoon would arrive. If McCarthy had anything, he would disclose it to the reporters. If he did not, he would simply say that he was not quite ready, that he was having difficulty in obtaining some “documents,” or that a “witness” was playing hard to find. The next morning’s headlines would read: “Delay Seen in McCarthy Case—Mystery Witness Being Sought.”6 * [3]
These manipulative actions are an attempt by the media and government to form an image. They seek to portray events with a different importance than they really have. It soon becomes impossible to distinguish between sham and reality. The reader can never really be sure that what he is
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"All the News That’s Fit to Print"
LATE Cmr EDITION
VOL. CIII.N*. 35,112.
NEW YQRX. SATURDAY, MARCH U, 1954.
FIVE CENTS
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reading accurately reflects the reality of the event. H clever, it is important to remember that the basic miss'°na journalism as defined by the liberal tradition is to pubb current account of current events for the public.
Both the government and the media have contribute the decline in cooperative spirit between the two du j the past 25 years. The press’s image of itself is somcvVof incongruent with reality, though some of the element*^ this image are accurate enough. For instance, the P ^ believes it performs three different functions for the P
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*'c: (1) it acts as neutral finders and conveyors of information, (2) it is the watchdog of the government, and (3) at hmes, it advocates the reform of noted inequities. But, in some respects, as in the relationship between the media and government, the image is fiction at best.9 To hear the traditional journalist tell the story, a person would think the media is completely independent of government in its ^Uest for news and that it is constantly unearthing vast amounts of hidden and guarded information by defying Persons in high offices. The journalist portrays himself in a romantic image as the day-in/day-out adversary of the Establishment” and the faithful defender of the “Peo- Pte-” The media have increasingly drifted toward being an adversary media.”
Excluding the Vietnam War and Watergate, both extremely significant in destroying media-government rela- tlons, there have been three historical events that were Cfitical in creating dissatisfaction with the existing media- 8°vernment relationship: McCarthyism, the U-2 incident, and the Bay of Pigs invasion.10 Each incident discredited Cold War and the manner in which government was e°nducting it. Together, they caused the press to alter its °Pinion of U. S. institutions and its relationship to them.
In 1954, McCarthyism was a powerful nationwide movement, which used the media as a sounding board. In °e aftermath of the McCarthy era, the media agreed that hey had allowed themselves to be used irresponsibly. The Senator had abused the power that the objective tradition ^ave him over the media. In turn, the media became more v'§ilant and critical. They exercised more discretion about ^hat they printed in connection with demagogues, espe- c'ally those in high public offices.
In May 1960, a U. S. photo reconnaissance plane was downed over Soviet territory. Various government agents initially reported that the U-2 flight was being made °r Weather research and not espionage. The plane had Pfesumably strayed off course. Later, the government Agencies reported the flight was for espionage, but that resident Dwight D. Eisenhower had not been aware of it. later still, after the U-2 pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was on trial in the Soviet Union, President Eisenhower jitePped forward and publicly announced that he had in act known about the flight and had approved the program. (,s a result of these conflicting reports, the credibility of e government had plummeted. There was a definite lack
■ character in the way the Eisenhower administration
ha- - JeuEa. After three days, the invasion at the Bay of Pigs n<Je<J jn disaster. Before the invasion. President John F. e,inedy had persuaded The New York Times, on the founds of national security, not to print the story con- ifiling the preparations for the invasion. Following the Vasion and its failure, he stated publicly that the newspa- ^Cr should have printed the story because he would have oe.n forced to cancel the operation, thus sparing the lited States one of its worst foreign policy fiascos in P'story.n
^Eese three events marked the beginning of the “credibility gap” theme in public affairs reporting and an ever increasing truculence by the media toward the government. The term “credibility gap,” popularized in the 1960s, refers to a situation in which the government states one thing, and, later, press reports indicate that it is doing something entirely different.12
As previously mentioned, the Vietnam War and Watergate did more harm to the relationship between the media and the government than probably any other events in the 20th century. Vietnam was the nadir of media-military relationships. Because of space age technology, which was not available during World War II, Americans could sit in their living rooms and watch events in Vietnam that had occurred only 24 hours before. The immediacy was shocking. Some analysts believe that the recent exclusion of media from Grenada was largely a result of the media coverage in Vietnam.13 The media, in their coverage of the Vietnam War, have been accused of making a situation look worse than it really was through the technique of selective editing. The photograph of a naked Vietnamese girl running down the road after having had her clothes burned off in a napalm attack is one such example of graphic journalism that drove home a strong point— perhaps too strongly.
The agenda-setting power of the media was unmistakable during the Vietnam War. In agenda-setting, the media influence public opinion. As political scientist Barnard Cohen stated, “It [the press] may not be successful ... in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.”14
In the early 1970s, a survey was conducted to discover what the American public viewed as the most important problems facing the United States. The results of the research indicated there was a strong connection between media attention to certain issues and the public’s perception of those issues as the most important problems. Not only was there evidence to support the agenda-setting hypothesis, but the research also indicated that media coverage and the public’s perception of the world had more in common than either did in the real world.15 For example, press attention and public opinion on the issue of the Vietnam War reached their peaks well before the war reached its historical climax in the actual environment.
However, in fairness to the media, it is important to realize that during the Vietnam War, the media proved their credibility on more than one occasion by preserving the security of military actions and landings. Journalists routinely exposed themselves to dangerous situations while covering conflicts involving U. S. troops.16 Nevertheless, some military officers who served in Vietnam believe they were “burned” by the media and that the media worked against them in an adversarial manner. The majors and lieutenant commanders who served in Vietnam are now influential generals and admirals, who still regard the media with suspicion.
During the Watergate era, the Nixon administration was the aggressor in escalating hostilities between the government and media. The administration launched FBI investigations of media persons who were considered hostile and deprived the press of traditional forms of access, such as
of
any other democracy in the world is that the founders
the casual telephone conversation with government officials, the press conference, and the cocktail party. The administration threatened several television stations with the loss of their licenses. The media retaliated with heavy coverage of anti-Nixon elements and by publicizing secret government documents (the Pentagon Papers and Anderson Papers), which would have never been made public ten years earlier.17
Thus, both the media and government are guilty of provoking hostile feelings between each other. However, to answer the question, “Does the public have a right to be informed of events via the media during a military operation?” several other issues must be considered. These include operational/national security, freedom of the press, and the public’s right to know.
The founders of the U. S. Constitution wanted not only to guarantee “free press” but “provide for the common defence” of the nation. The invasion of Normandy during World War II would not have been so successful had the press been allowed to report the details of the invasion before it occurred; censorship and secrecy played a large part in the success of the invasion. The Allies employed diversionary tactics, throwing the Germans off their plan. If the press had leaked the Allies’ plan, Hitler’s army would have caught wind of it, and many more lives probably would have been lost in the invasion as a result. During the Normandy invasion, reporters were permitted to accompany U. S. troops ashore, but they were not allowed to file their stories prior to the invasion. After the invasion had begun, they were permitted to send stories to the United States, but the first stories to arrive, with the exception of radio reports, took anywhere from 28 hours to four days. The reason for the delay was not censorship, but logistical problems. Hence, did the public have a right to know about the Normandy invasion beforehand, even though such a disclosure might have damaged the operational security of the mission?
For a number of historical reasons, including the Vietnam War and Watergate, the notion of government secrecy has become very much out of fashion. But the areas in which government secrecy tend to be most publicly suspect, the hardest to preserve, and the most difficult to protect by enforceable statutes are those in which the government’s right and need for secrecy have the greatest degree of traditional support. These areas include military matters, diplomacy, and intelligence.18 Because of satellite communications and the speed of modem communications, it is impossible to report any information to the American public without that information being known almost simultaneously to every interested government around the world. Nor is it possible for any government, including that of the United States, to have the sensitive intelligence information it needs unless it can protect three things: (1) the fact that it has such intelligence, (2) the source that provided the information, and (3) the methods of acquiring the information. It was through intelligence information that the Reagan administration was able to confirm that there were Cuban troops on the island of Grenada as well as determine a proper landing site for the invasion.'11 If the media had been informed of the Reagan administration’s secret diplomatic negotiations with Grenada’s six neighboring states, keeping the invasion plans a secret would have been impossible, thus jeopardiZ' ing the operational security of the mission.
But what makes the U. S. Government different from
the Constitution were concerned with the notion “checks and balances.” One of the balances they d®' signed in to the Constitution was “freedom of the press.
To ensure the government did not act capriciously in regard to withholding information from the public, Presi' dent Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Freedom of Inform3' tion Act in 1966. This act establishes “the right to know and abolishes the requirement that seekers of informati°n about government affairs demonstrate “the need t0 know.” The Freedom of Information Act requires that the government will respond to a citizen’s request for inf°r' mation concerning the government, unless that inform3' tion falls into one of nine categories:
► Information established by executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign polity or information properly classified pursuant to such exec3' tive order
► Information related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency
► Information that is specifically exempted by statutes
► Information concerning trade secrets and commercial of financial information that is privileged or confidential
► Inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters that would not be available by law to a party other than 3tl agency in litigation with the first agency
► Personnel and medical files or similar files the disd° sure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted inv3' sion of personal privacy
► Investigatory records compiled for law enforcemeri purposes under certain situations
► Information contained in or related to examination, °P
erating, or condition reports prepared by, on behalf of- 0 for the use of an agency responsible for the regulation 0 supervision of financial institutions . _
► Geological and geophysical information and data, in eluding maps, concerning oil and natural gas wells
There has been an uproar in the media recently over Reagan administration’s attempts to stop leaks of d3 . fied information from government employees, and 3 tional proposals that would cripple the Freedom of m mation Act. On 11 March 1983, President Ronald Re3®' j signed a presidential directive known as the “Nati°°jj Security Decision Directive ’84,” which requires that ^ persons with access to classified information s*®.n nondisclosure agreement and agree to publication revl jjj The directive also stipulates that government agencies devise policies for regulating contacts with the med*3.^ discourage leaks. The original draft required that ncvV < vestigative procedures be developed to trace leaks,m® ing forced use of polygraph tests on employees who access to classified information.20 Robert Lewis, a w ington correspondent for Newhouse News Service- leged that the Reagan administration sought to weak®3 Freedom of Information Act by proposing cripP
aniendments in Congress and ordering a cutback on fee Waivers for documents supplied to journalists, scholars, 'lntl public interest requesters. This cutback would be contrary to the Freedom of Information Act, which calls for a Waiver of charges in cases that “primarily benefit the genial public.”21
. However, for all the uproar by the press that it is losing lts freedoms and that the government is trying to control lts activities, the general American public does not seem ^°ncerned. In fact, following the exclusion of the media r°rn the initial invasion of Grenada, a survey was contacted that revealed that only 14% of the public had a §reat deal of confidence” in the media.22 The New York "rces Editorial Page Editor Max Frankel stated, “The ^cst astounding thing about the Grenada situation was the ^u'ck, facile assumption by some of the public that the Pfess wanted to get in, not to witness the invasion on be- alf of the people, but to sabotage it.”23 In a Nightly News r°adcast following the Grenada invasion, NBC commen- at°r John Chancellor said, “The American government is .,°lng whatever it wants to, without any representation of e American public watching what it is doing.”"4 How- ,Ver> many of Chancellor’s audience did not agree with r's Premise that journalists represent the people, and NBC Reived 500 letters and telephone calls from viewers supping the press ban in Grenada by a margin of five to One.
j ^hy did the public not support the press in the Grenada Relent? Some believe it is because the press has become o°° self-righteous and has been for a long time the bearer bad news. Robert Maynard, Editor of the Oakland Trib- stated, “When people see a TV person shoving a l*e in front of a grieving relative, all of us in the press
appear to be boorish and ghoulish.”25 The Grenada invasion fell on the heels of the terrorists’ bombing of the U. S. Marine barracks in Beirut. At Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, a television crew reportedly paid children to go door-to-door in areas closed to the press to find out which families were awaiting the probable word that a relative had been killed in Beirut. One of the most tasteless pieces of journalism was the CBS taping of the actual moment Marine officials arrived at the parents’ home of a Marine corporal to tell them their son had been killed. The sequence was played on Morning News of the CBS network.26
Another instance questioning journalists’ ethics in reporting is the filming of the man setting himself on fire in Jacksonville, Alabama. Two television cameramen from WHMA-TV in Anniston, Alabama, had received four calls on 4 March 1983 from a 37-year-old unemployed roofer, who was threatening to set himself on fire. The station called the police who searched the area without finding the man. Subsequently, the cameramen arrived at the scene and were approached by the man. The cameramen said they believed the police were still in the area and would intervene. However, the man doused his pants and boots with charcoal lighter fluid and lit a match to them.
Flames engulfed his body. Thirty-seven seconds after filming the incident, one of the cameramen, at the insistence of the other, attempted unsuccessfully to extinguish the fire. Firemen eventually doused the fire. The man survived the ordeal.27 Were the cameramen following their code of ethics?
The Society of Professional Journalists adopted a Code of Ethics in 1926, which was revised in 1973. A portion of the code states, “The news media must guard against invading a person’s right to privacy. The media should not pander to morbid curiosity about details of vice and crime.”28
Are there any solutions to the impasse between the media and the government? Several journalists think so. A government-sponsored committee, the Sidle Commission, investigated the problem. According to Richard Halloran, a defense correspondent for The New York Times, what is needed for future military operations is an agreement between the Defense Department and each news organization. Halloran stresses that news organizations should promise to observe operational security under an embargo and release the government of any responsibility for the reporter’s safety. The Department of Defense should permit a pool of reporters to accompany troops at the beginning of an operation, lift the embargo as soon as surprise has been lost, and open the operation for full coverage as soon as the embargo has been lifted. The government would be under particular obligation not to hold an embargo for political reasons.29
On 1 November 1983, the presidents of the American Newspaper Association and the American Society of Newspaper Editors sent President Reagan a letter calling for a meeting between press executives. On 1 December 1983, the journalists sent the president another letter after they had not received a reply from the first. In their second letter, they reiterated “that our concerns have not diminished.” They also, once again, called for a small substantive meeting to “discuss very serious and increasing concerns which are shared broadly throughout the U. S. news media.”30
On 12 December, Army General John W. Vessey, Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked the American Newspaper Association to appoint one of its members to a commission the Pentagon was forming to study press-military relations after the Grenadian news blackout. Vessey explained that the commission would make recommendations to the Pentagon on “how the military should handle the media during future military operations.” Also asked to appoint representatives to the commission were the National Association of Broadcasters, the National Press Club, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Newsweek, Time, United Press International, and U. S. News & World Report.31 Winant Sidle, a retired Army Major General and the former military information chief in Vietnam, heads the commission. But several of the organizations and groups who were invited to participate in the Sidle Commission turned down the offer; among these were the American Newspaper Association and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. However, these organizations did participate in a 17 January 1984 meeting with top
White House aides to discuss press coverage of future mil' itary activities.
During the session, they declined to nominate anyone to the commission but pledged to cooperate with and testify before it. They also presented their “Statement of Principle on Press Access to Military Operations,” which was prepared after the government denied initial access to public independent media during the Grenada invasion. The statement was developed by a special committee of senior representatives from the American Newspaper Association, American Society of Magazine Editors, American Society of Newpaper Editors, Associated Press Managing Editors, National Association of Broadcasters, Radio-Television News Directors Association, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Society of Professional Journalists (Sigma Delta Chi), Associated Press, and United PresS International. The statement makes the following points-
► The highest civilian and military officers in the government should reaffirm the historic principles that American journalists with their professional equipment should be present at U. S. military operations. The news me"18 should reaffirm their recognition of the importance 0 U. S. military missions’ security and troop safety. When essential, both groups can agree on coverage condition5 that satisfy safety and security imperatives and that, '" keeping with the spirit of the First Amendment, perm1* independent reporting to U. S. citizens.
► The highest civilian and military officers of the government should reaffirm that military plans should include planning for press access in keeping with past tradition5- The expertise of government public affairs officers during the planning process of the recent Grenada operation5 could have met the interests of both the military and the
press. ,
► The military study group (Sidle Commission) shou closely consider the above two points. The study gr°u^
should also consult with military operations experts
and
make recommendations on how to ensure both miss'011 security/troop safety and prompt media access. .
► The appropriate committees of Congress should ho hearings to develop the historic record of media-mil"3 ' relations more fully, including accumulation of relev3 documents, develop the facts of the government’s h3" dling of media access in Grenada more fully, and dem°n strate how leaders can satisfy the joint imperative of effeC five military operations and the timely flow of indepe" dently obtained information by a free press to Tl- citizens.
In their statement, the members of the committee
als°
lists
pointed out that since the Revolutionary War, journal' have been permitted to accompany U. S. troops on n" tary operations, even when those actions depended on element of surprise. Such access has proven to be in public’s interest because it provides independent accou
the
the
of the actions of our uniformed men and women m bat, and mission security and troop safety interests
con1'
have
vvh3t
been protected.
Legal foundation in answering the question about the public has a right to know during military operation^ found in the case of the published Pentagon Papers-
13 June 1971, The New York Times and then other newspapers began publishing a series of reports that were based °n a classified study by the Department of Defense called "History of U. S. Decisionmaking Process on Vietnam.” The study indicated various facts to the contrary of those reported to Congress and the public by successive presidents and military officials. The government sought temporary and permanent injunctions against the continued Publication of the study on the grounds that publication Would seriously impact national security, concurrent diplomatic negotiations, and, consequently, future military °Perations. A district court refused to issue a restraining 0rder, but the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Ihe decision. On 30 June, in The New York Times Company vs. the United States, the Supreme Court, having heard oral arguments, reversed the Circuit Court of Appeals decision by a vote of six to three.[4] Supreme Court ■Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas explained Iheir reasons for voting to vacate the injunction: | unfolding events during military operations. ‘Drew Middleton, “Barring Reporters from the Battlefield,” The New York Times Magazine, 5 February 1984, p. 37. 2Ibid. 3Ibid. 4Ibid. p. 61. 5P. H. Weaver, “The New Journalism and the Old: Thoughts after Watergate,” The Public Interest, Spring 1974, p. 80. 6Weaver, p. 69. 7Weaver, p. 70. 8D. J. Boorstin, The Image (New York: Atheneum Press, 1977), p. 22. 9Boorstin, p. 22. l0Weaver, p. 75. "Weaver, p. 76. ,2M. Burgoon, Approaching Speech!Communication (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1974), p. 30. I3Middleton, p. 37. 14B. Cohen, The Press and Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 13. 15G. R. Funkhouser, “The Issues of the Sixties: An Exploratory Study in the Dynamics of Public Opinion,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Spring 1973, p. 73. 16Middleton, p. 37. "Weaver, p. 79. ,8G. A. Carver, “National Security: The Limits of Public Information,” L. M. Helm, et. al. (eds.), Informing the People (New York: Longman, Inc., 1981), p. |
Only a free and unrestricted press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities in a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the ‘New York Times’, the ‘Washington Post’, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.”[5] | 92. 19E. Magnuson, “D-Day in Grenada,” Time, 7 November 1983, p. 27. 20T. Mauro, “Reagan Imposes Iron-Clad Grip on Words by Government Employees,” Freedom of Information: A Report from the Society of Professional Journalists (Chicago, IL: Society of Professional Journalists, 1983), p. 3. 2,R. Lewis, “And About This Report,” Freedom of Information, p. 2. 22W. A. Henry, “Journalism Under Fire,” Time, 12 December 1983, p. 79. 23Henry, p. 76. 24Ibid. 25Henry, p. 77. 26Henry, p. 84. 27L. Hodges, “The Alabama TV Incident,” 1983 Journalism Ethics Report (Chicago, IL: Society of Professional Journalists, 1983), p. 10. 28Code of Ethics, 1983 Journalism Ethics Report, p. 16. 29R. Halloran, “How the Pentagon and Press Can Call a Truce,” Washington |
Although this quote does not illustrate perfectly the di- *ernma that faces the government and media during a military operation, it does show that a free press has certain responsibilities to society. Thus, it should be obvious that the U. S. Government is responsible to the people for its actions during times of Military operations that involve U. S. troops. Moreover, toe public is entitled to knowledge concerning those oper- at'ons, and, as history demonstrates, the most reliable reports have originated from sources independent of the 8°Vernment, that is, the media. Therefore, if operational/ Motional security and troop safety can be protected, then toe public has a right to be informed via the media of | Journalism Review, January-February 1984, pp. 22-23. ■^“Press Leaders Again Ask Reagan for Meeting on Grenada,” Presstime, January 1984, p. 42. 31 Ibid. 32D. H. Ginsburg, Regulation of Broadcasting: Laws and Policy Trends Toward Radio, Television, and Cable Communications (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co., 1979), pp. 428-429. 33Ginsburg, p. 429. Lieutenant Smith was commissioned in 1977 through the advanced NROTC program at the University of West Florida. He was designated a public affairs specialist in the USS Forrestal (CV-59) and was public affairs officer for the U. S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels. Lieutenant Smith is currently the deputy director at the Navy Office of Information in Dallas, Texas. |
[1] media and the government have become masters of the
i^udo-event. Because of the excessive amount of media ^ ’he world and because of today’s nonstop news, ^spersons sometimes “create” news. We have become
[3]°ciety that thrives on having commentators and edito- K,a inters tell us what the news really means. For exam- (e> after the President of the United States gives a speech, ^evision commentators will spend almost as much time ’he president did, telling us what the president said and
_____________________________________ A Pointed View _ ________________________________
San Diego Union columnist Tom Blair, commenting on news crews being excluded from covering the Grenada invasion (or rescue effort), pointed out that President Ronald Reagan was simply borrowing a page from Admiral Ernest King’s press policy book. “Back in 1943,” remarked Blair, “the then-chief of naval operations made his policy clear: ‘Don’t tell ’em anything. When it’s over, tell ’em who won.’”
Herm Albright
(The Naval Institute will pay $25.00 for each anecdote published in the Proceedings.)