TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/091090/0910220.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.5 KB | 116 lines

                                                                                PRESS, Page 67

The First Casualty


In the post-Vietnam era, reporters get a shorter leash

By STANLEY W. CLOUD/WASHINGTON -- Reported by Ratu Kamlani/New
York and Jay Peterzell/Saudi Arabia


    A famous saying has it that truth is the first casualty in
any war. Not only do national leaders like to employ overblown
rhetoric to justify their decisions to send troops into combat,
but once the shooting begins, those who must pull the triggers
or staff the home front seem to prefer heroic mythology to the
reality of fire and death. Understanding this, war
correspondents from Homer to Ernie Pyle have tended to rein in
their normal skepticism, serving up instead what both the
government and the public want to hear.

    That tradition changed somewhat during the Vietnam War, with
its confused purposes, enterprising reporters eager to roam in
harm's way in search of the truth, and absence of military
censorship. In fact, there are those who argue that Vietnam was
lost in the living rooms of America, that the nightly TV
footage of body bags and burning villages turned hearts and
minds against the war. Hardly surprising, then, if the Pentagon
should try to avoid the pattern of Vietnam by keeping the press
on a short leash whenever American troops go into action.

    To some extent, the press, chastened by public hostility,
is less confrontational about American military policy than it
used to be. In addition, reporters face systematic constraints
on their efforts to cover U.S. military operations that they
would never have tolerated in Vietnam. Partly to blame is the
pool system, set up after the Grenada invasion, in which a
small group of correspondents, under the Pentagon's rules, is
permitted to cover the initial stage of any military action
involving U.S. troops. Every time the pool has been called up
to report on a real crisis, its work has been severely and
unnecessarily thwarted.

    In Saudi Arabia the pool members weren't delivered to the
area until at least five days after the U.S. deployment began.
Pentagon "escorts" sat in on interviews. The pool had to abide
by a long list of rules, including a ban (later rescinded) on
using the name and hometown of any soldier interviewed.

    The Defense Department blamed much of the trouble on the
sensitivities of the Saudis. But many journalists suspect that
the unstated purpose of the pool is to prevent serious
coverage, at least in the early stage of any military action.
Says Jonathan Wolman, the Associated Press's Washington bureau
chief: "The Pentagon doesn't want this thing to work. If they
can send in tanks, planes, ships and thousands of troops, they
can send in 11 reporters and photographers at the start of an
operation." Washington Post managing editor Leonard Downie Jr.
calls the pool "absolutely useless." He believes restraints on
the press were created in an attempt to emulate the British
government's success at controlling the press during the
Falklands war.

    If so, the tactic seems to have worked. The normally feisty
press has hardly ruffled a feather in protest. Worse, as former
network correspondent Marvin Kalb wrote last week in the New
York Times, there is "a certain whiff of jingoism on the
airwaves and in print." Nor did the situation improve when the
Pentagon pool was supplanted by the 300 or so "unilaterals" --
nonpoolers -- who have been admitted to Saudi Arabia since the
crisis began. For one thing, the rules and limits on access
that applied to the pool have largely remained in effect for
all journalists. Reporters had neither the freedom nor
logistical means -- nor, it sometimes seemed, the Vietnam-era
gumption -- to scour the potential battlefronts in search of
stories. For another, even in the 110 degrees desert heat, a
different sort of media circus seemed to be opening. At one
point, TV crew members shoved aside Senator Sam Nunn during his
visit to a Saudi air base in order to get a better "visual."
Said a U.S. military official to a reporter afterward:
"Sometimes you don't do yourselves any favors at all with some
of this ragtag, rat-pack journalism."

    Doubtless there are those in the Pentagon, including Defense
Secretary Dick Cheney and his press spokesman, Pete Williams,
who support the role of a free press during a military
operation -- in theory anyway. But many officers see reporters
as just another enemy. The "irrational" military code, says
retired Marine Lieut. General Bernard Trainor, is "duty, honor,
country -- and hate the press."

    Finding ways to control the press -- and the truth -- has
become an important element in the strategy of both sides in
the current showdown, as Saddam Hussein's clunky attempts to
become a media superstar have shown. His TV appearances with
the hostages were intended to tug at the heartstrings of
foreign viewers and create a high-minded, peace-loving image.
Saddam last week granted CBS's Dan Rather an interview in the
presidential palace in Baghdad and, among other things, tried
to justify his invasion of Kuwait. "The Kuwaiti rulers were
actually trying to destroy Iraq," Saddam asserted. His
self-serving declarations surely failed to convince most of his
Western audience. But his efforts to win the hearts and minds
of world opinion showed that he too knows that media
manipulation is an important element of any showdown in the
post-Vietnam video age.