Media Channel

One step forward, two steps back, in the U.S. military’s information war.

For years, the Pentagon has come under harsh criticism for its brain-dead approach to handling the media, broadly defined. From clamping down on bloggers to chucking out embedded reporters to banning digital cameras to quaking in fear of web developments, the military’s press operators seemed to miss no opportunity to shoot themselves in the collective foot, repeatedly. All this, while insurgents trained potential terrorists online, advertised their martial prowess on YouTube, even sold t-shirts over the ‘net.

Yon_new_work_situation
But recently, things have begun to change. The Defense Department’s Pentagon Channel started posting YouTube-esque videos. Bloggers have been called into more and more conference calls with senior leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan. Multi-National Force-Iraq set up its own YouTube channel.

Now, the Army has set up shop on content-sharing sites like Flickr, del.icio.us, and YouTube. The material is pretty awful — like the stilted, propaganda-like reports, straight from the Armed Forces Network. It’s a start, though.

But the military is a huge organization. And not everybody gets with the program, at an equal pace. A general is threatening to boot Michael Yon, the special-forces-soldier- turned-milbogger-supreme, out of Iraq — again.

The first time the Army threatened to kick me out was in late 2005,
just after I published a dispatch called "Gates of Fire." …In the events described in that dispatch, I broke some rules by, for instance, firing a weapon during combat when some of our soldiers were fighting fairly close quarters and one was wounded and still under enemy fire. That’s right. I’m not sure what message the senior level public affairs people thought that would convey had they succeeded, (which they didn’t) but it was clear to me what they valued most. They want the press on a short leash, even at the expense of the life of a soldier.

The general, Vincent K. Brooks, doesn’t seem to have succeeded in getting Yon out of the country. But he’s doing his damnedest to make Yon’s job as difficult as possible.

…this eviction notice I received last week, ostensibly because of the surge, but in fact I was told the order came from Brigadier General Vincent K. Brooks, and there were still trailers available. General Brooks used to be the Chief of the entire Public Affairs. The man who would stand up there and give all those fancy CENTCOM briefings.(Which make for interesting reading.) Now his big office is just down the road…

My new work space [that’s Yon’s photo of it, above] has no internet capability, no surface for work, not to mention the obvious problem with secure storage for the heavy pile of incredibly expensive gear needed to cover this war the way it should be covered. Can’t run a mission AND keep an eye on it, and can’t do the work the way it needs to be done without running missions to see and hear it first hand.

(High five: TF, Glenn)

– Posted by Noah Shachtman, Wired.com

Popularity: 2% [?]

Share and save this post: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Click Here To Subscribe To MediaChannel's Newsletters and Alerts.

4 Responses to “Army Bullies Blogger, Invades YouTube”

Posted on 26 Mar 2007 at 5:05 pm by jamie

Army bullies blogger….the Army and Pentagon bully anyone trying to tell the public the truth about this senseless war, period.

When will American politics stop romanticizing war, moreover, when will the American people stop wrapping themselves in the flag while supporting war with a twisted nationalistic fervor that closely resembles the German people during Nazi Germany?

There is nothing romantic or honorable about killing people in order to steal their resources, implement a political ideology or settle a conflict.

Nothing at all.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Posted on 26 Mar 2007 at 7:14 pm by Rob Weed

>>There is nothing romantic or honorable about killing people in order to steal their resources, implement a political ideology or settle a conflict.>>

What the heck are you talking about? We are not stealing anything and we are fighting tose who have decided they want to destroy the west.

Wake up my friend. The military needs to get their message out since the mainstream media pushes the wacky left wing message.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Posted on 27 Mar 2007 at 12:47 pm by Elizabeth

Rob Weed, are you a real freeper or somebody making fun of freepers? I can’t believe you said that the mainstream media is pushing left wing messages. That is so old it is almost funny.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Posted on 27 Mar 2007 at 10:07 pm by Gerrie Spence

Corp media has long been blind to the realities of war, preferring to act as a cheer leader, with rare exceptions. But the military is incapable of dealing with truth on any level, even historically, as I was recently reminded by this blogger’s gripping photo poem -

http://www.richardneville.com.au/Satire/Satire200307.html

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed