Quote:Now, he said the situation is nuanced and unpredictable. Generally, he said, the access reporters get "very much depends on the local commander."
...sections 14 (h) and (o) of the embed rules, which state that no information can be published without approval, including material about "any tactics, techniques and procedures witnessed during operations," or that "provides information on the effectiveness of enemy techniques."
...a catch-all phrase which could be applied to just about anything a journalist does,"
Increasingly, photographers say the military allows them to embed but keeps them away from combat. Franco Pagetti of the VII Photo Agency said he had been repeatedly thwarted by the military when he tried to get to the front lines.
In April 2008, Mr. Pagetti tried to cover heavy fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City. "The commander there refused to let me in," Mr. Pagetti said. "He said it was unsafe. I know it's unsafe, there's a war going on. It was unsafe when I got to Iraq in 2003, but the military did not stop us from working. Now, they are stopping us from working."
James Lee, a former marine who returned to Iraq as a photographer, was embedded with marines in the spring of 2008 as they headed into battle in the southern port city of Basra in support of Iraqi forces.
"We were within hours of Basra when they told me I had to go back. I was told that General Kelly did not want any Western eyes down there," he said, referring to the same Marine general who barred Mr. Miller.
Military officials stressed that the embed regulations provided only a framework. "There is leeway for commanders to make judgment calls, which is part of what commanders do," said Col. Steve Boylan, the public affairs officer for Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq.
Concerning this issue compared to Civil War times, Grant said, "The distant rear of an army engaged in battle is not the best place from which to judge correctly what is going on at the front."
At Pittsburg Landing, even respectable journals like
Harper's reported wildly inaccurate accounts of the battle as seen from the safety of the river.
Irresponsible journalism from the distance described Grant as being surprised by Confederates because of his carelessness and lack of military training, a red herring. Being surprised in matters military include Wellington not expecting Napoleon to attack, June 1815. Grant had disposed his forces well so they could deal with whatever developed resulting in a substantial victory. Similar reporting of accounts came from Shiloh, another Union victory of his. It took years for history to clear up the mess from distant reporting. In a first battle of the Civil War, people dressed in their Sunday best and arrived in carriages with picnic lunches to watch, only to be horrified by the reality exposed to them.
I've seen enough pictorial books and documentaries of WWI and WWII to forever fill any appetite for the brutality of war and personally don't need them on any front page as a reminder.
Had there been a reporter alongside the sonar screen in the Gulf of Tonkin to say what actually happened, it would probably have been suppressed or denied anyway, the roots for involvement were already well established.
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The New York Times (Read 2006 times)
