Information Operations and Embedded Journalists

Rod Nordland of Newsweek is getting a bit of attention for his frank evaluation of the evolution of embedded journalism in Iraq:

The military has started censoring many [embedded reporting] arrangements. Before a journalist is allowed to go on an embed now, [the military] check[s] the work you have done previously. They want to know your slant on a story—they use the word slant—what you intend to write, and what you have written from embed trips before. If they don’t like what you have done before, they refuse to take you. There are cases where individual reporters have been blacklisted because the military wasn’t happy with the work they had done on embed.

Ken Silverstein chimes in that

Many embedded reporters have managed to do fine work from Iraq, but there are significant obstacles for even the best and most determined journalists. I recently spoke with a former senior TV producer for Reuters who worked in Iraq between 2003 and 2004. The producer, who asked to speak off the record, arrived in Tikrit soon after the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003, and was embedded with American troops for 45 days. She told me that, over the years, she has worked closely with the French army, NATO troops in the Balkans, and UN peacekeepers in covering war and conflict, but she said had never faced the sorts of restrictions imposed by the Pentagon on journalists in Iraq. “I was,” she said, “a mouthpiece for the American military.”

Some interesting perspective on this can be found in a remarkable essay by Col Ralph Baker, just published by Military Review.  Baker is currently the Division Chief,  J5, Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate-Middle East, under the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, and in Iraq he commanded the 2d Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad.  Baker offers a frank and insightful commentary on the role of Information Operations in Iraq overall.  On the subject of embedded journalists, he has this to say:

Everybody thinks embedded media is a great concept. I do. I had James Kitfield from the National Journal embedded  in my unit for 3 months during my tour in Iraq. That is an embed-somebody who stays with the unit long enough to understand the context of what is going on around them and to develop an informed opinion before printing a story. Unfortunately, as Phase IV of the operation in Iraq began, the definition of what an embed was for some reason  changed to mean hosting a reporter for 3 or 4 days or even just  1 day. That is risky business because a reporter cannot learn about or understand the context of the issues Soldiers face and, consequently  has a greater propensity to misinterpret events and draw inaccurate  conclusions. Realizing this, I made it a brigade policy that we would not allow reporters to live with us in the brigade unless they were going to come down for an extended period of time.

Reporters who wanted to visit us for a day or two were welcome, but they had to go home every night because I was not going to expose them to, or give them, the same kind of access a true embed received if they did not want to invest the time needed to develop a sophisticated understanding of the environment the Soldiers faced, the decisions we were making, and the context in which we were fighting. Therefore, my seventh IO observation  is that reporters must earn their access.

Unfortunately, it is also my experience that some reporters come with a predetermined agenda and only want to gather information to support some particular political or personal slant for a story they are already developing. However, I learned by experience who those reporters were and what to expect from them. No matter what we do, we are not going to change some reporters' or publications' mindsets. The best way to work around a biased and unprofessional journalist is by being more professional than  they are and by developing a plan to deal with them.

"Must earn their access"... "predetermined agenda"... "I learned by experience who those reporters were."   That sounds to me to be fairly consistent with Nordland and Silverstein's description - especially when paired with this remark of Baker's elsewhere in his essay:

Most news that Soldiers  typically received came from watching CNN, the BBC, or Fox news.  Soldiers were getting the same inaccurate, slanted news that the American public gets. With a significant amount of negative news being broadcast into their living quarters on a daily basis, it was difficult for Soldiers to realize they were having a positive  impact on our area of operations.

I'm much less interested in the embedded journalism question, however, than I am in the bigger question of the military's conception of Information Operations, PSYOPS, and engagement with the Arab media. On those issues, Baker's essay is frank, fascinating, and must-reading for anyone concerned with those topics. 

Baker is a strong advocate of a field-based conception of Information Operations, relatively freed from central control or oversight, and has little use for Cold War era regulations or laws. Information Operations are a crucial part of his military mission (he estimates that IO is an astonishing 70% of the mission), and should be treated as such:

Good reasons exist for some central control over IO themes and products under some circumstances, but information operations are Operations, and in my opinion that means commander's business. IO is critical to successfully combating an insurgency.  It fights with words, symbols, and ideas, and it operates under  the same dynamics as all combat operations. An old army saw says  that the person who gets to the battle the "firstest" with the "mostest" usually wins, and this applies indisputably  to information operations. In contrast, a consistent shortcoming I experienced was that the enemy, at least initially, consistently  dominated the IO environment faster and more thoroughly than we  did. Our adversary therefore had considerable success in shaping and influencing the perceptions of the Iraqi public in his favor. The ponderous way in which centrally managed PSYOP products were developed, vetted, and approved through bureaucratic channels meant  they were simply not being produced quickly enough to do any good.  Just as important, they were not being tailored precisely enough to influence our diverse audiences' opinions about breaking events.

Faced with bureaucratic friction and cumbersome policy, and thrust into an IO arena quite different from that for which most of us had been trained, I had to make decisions concerning IO matters based on common sense and mission requirements. To this ion as we saw it, though in a manner such that those who wrote the original regulations and guidance probably had not intended. This was necessary because Cold War regulations and policies were holding us hostage to old ideas and old ways of doing business. They were simply no longer valid or relevant to the challenges we were facing in this extremely fluid, nonlinear, media-centric COIN environment that was Baghdad circa 2003-2004.

Of course, such an approach made some people  uncomfortable. As a rule, if our application of IO techniques was  perceived to violate a strict interpretation of policy or regulation,  I asked myself: is it necessary to accomplish our mission, and is our tactic, technique, or procedure morally and ethically sound?  If the answer was yes, I generally authorized the activity and informed my higher headquarters.

We were not a renegade operation, however.  If what we thought we had to do ran counter to written policies and guidance, I kept my division commander informed in detail of what, when, and why we were doing it.

Who was the target of these Information Operations?  Baker gives what may be an unintentionally revealing answer:

Although the international press is an integral component of our IO effort, they were not our top media priority. While higher headquarters viewed U.S. and international media as their main media targets, our priority was more parochial: We regarded the Iraqi and Arab media as our main targets.

Think about that for a moment:  "higher headquarters viewed U.S. and international media as their main media targets." As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, blowback - the entry of foreign propaganda back into the American public realm - really was policy, not an unintended outcome.   That Baker was more focused on the Iraqi realm is to his credit.  That his superiors were not should be deeply troubling.

On the subject of engaging with al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, and the Arab media in general, Baker might as well be channeling Abu Aardvark:

you have no influence with the press if you do not talk to them. Moreover, trying  to ignore the media by denying them access or refusing to talk can result in the press reporting news that is inaccurate, biased, and frankly counterproductive to the mission. Not talking to the press is the equivalent of ceding the initiative to the insurgents, who are quite adept at spinning information in adverse ways to further their objectives.
....

What most people were viewing on their new satellite TV dishes was al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, not CNN, the BBC, NBC, or FOX. From my perspective, I was competing with the insurgents for the opinion of the silent majority, the wavering mass of Iraqi citizens who were undecided in who they supported and who constituted the most important audience we needed to influence.

....

To focus our efforts and to determine which venues the Iraqis received their news from, we conducted surveys and ascertained which newspapers were read and which TV programs  were watched in our battlespace. We then hired two Iraqis to be  brigade press agents. Their main jobs were to facilitate attendance at our press roundtables and to promote the publication of our messages. They would go out, visit with various newspapers, and invite reporters to our press conferences.....

It was not unusual to have anywhere from 8 to 10 newspaper reporters attend these meetings, among them representatives from Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and one of the Lebanese satellite TV  stations. After the press huddle I usually did offline interviews with the Arab satellite stations.

Note what isn't mentioned here, or engaged with, after Baker's team conducted their intensive study of what sources Iraqis watched and trusted - the American al-Hurra.  Wonder why?

Al Jazeera  and Al Arabiya, for the most part, enjoy a justifiably bad reputation  in the West because of their biased reporting style. But the fact is they report to the audience we need to influence, so why not develop a rapport with them so that maybe we can get some of our messages across to the Iraqi public?

When Al Jazeera reporters first came to one  of our press huddles, they were distant. However, after three or four meetings they began warming up to us and later, they became  just as friendly as any of the other reporters attending. We can, if we put enough effort into it, develop a good working relationship with almost any reporter as long as we are truthful and honest. They cannot help but respect us for that and, much of the time, respect is rewarded with fairer and more balanced news accounts because reporters know they can trust what we are saying.

It is a mistake not to allow Al Jazeera and other Arab media access simply because we do not like much of what they report. We need to work with them specifically if we want more accuracy and balance. We cannot just censor them, deny them access, or fail to respect them because, ultimately, they talk to Arab peoples in their own language and are the most likely to be believed. Not to engage them or work with them is to miss tactical and strategic opportunities.

Baker's essay is a must-read for those interested in the evolution of military thinking and practice on information operations, as well as for how that played out in Iraq over the last few years.  It helps explain the need for prior skepticism about all sorts of information coming out of the Iraqi theater.  Written by a professional for other professionals, it should give food for thought for people on all sides of the various partisan debates on the issue.

Comments

[hk]

This is fascinating: could things possibly come to the point when US military might be wiling to let an al-Jazeera journalist "embed" with them (and I mean in the sense in which Colonel Baker uses the term, i.e. letting them stay with a unit for 2-3 months.)? If an Arab journalist is granted a near all-access look at the operations of a US military unit in Iraq, it could be an enormous coup, both for the image of the US in the region and for reforming the regimes in the region, if the US personnel can show themselves to be earnest, honorable, and respectful in their deeds. Of course, the question is, whether this is at all feasible--i.e. the laundry isn't already so soiled that nobody sane would dare show it off without tons of red tape.

[Luke]

Hmm.

It appears, I suppose, that the US military is learning.

Anthony Shadid, unembedded, wrote "Night Draws Near" while embedded George Packer wrote "Assassin's Gate" and both came out, well. Read them.

More to the point, given the current administration's hostility to Al-Gizerah. Though Al-Arabiyyah is viewed moderately more favorably, I can't imagine that it'd be such a coup to tag along in the form described by any of the Western journalists. Obviously, an Arab journalist would face even further reduced opportunity, if they were to embed.

I suppose that the Administration could hire out some of its favorite 'journalists' from the puppet papers of the Saudis, perhaps. Or maybe whomever survives the purges here in Egypt--I'm sure that there'd be a sufficiently docile 'journalist' to be sent with some unit, who could 'report' the news that Lara Ingraham thinks is missing so badly.

OTOH, it takes almost no imagination to guess what a complete and utter cluster-F**k that the country has become.

Personally, I'd love to see Rummy embed a half-dozen journalists from Fallujah, Ramadi, and Telafar, with a few sprinkled in from the various parties that aren't 'ruling' 'soveriegn' Iraq. Or al-Manar.

I suppose it's no surprise that this sort of thing is being done--the people running the show do recall the Tet Offensive. They're Nixonites, after all.

[Nur al-Cubicle]

The military intelligence domestic spying scandal breaking in Italy is marginally related.

The Italian Government has arrested a number if SISMI agents: Northern Italy chief of operations General Gustavo Pignero; former Trieste Station Chief Lorenzo Pillinini; Former Padua Station Chief Marco Iodice; Milan Station Chief Maurizio Regondi; Deputy Director Marco Mancini, Mancini's aide Giuseppe Ciorra, and Pio Pompa, aide to SISMI Director Niccolò Pollari relating mainly to an illegal joint SISMI-CIA extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar. But it' only the tip of the iceberg.

Mancini ran a domestic black ops operation (as well as surveillance of persons on his "Enemies List") targeting Premier Prodi. The newspaper Libero was paid by SISMI to print a story claiming Romano Prodi had authorized the CIA prison flights while serving as European Commissioner. He also have several investigating magistrates under surveillance as well as the pair of reporters who broke the Yellowcake forgeries story.

Putting 2 and 2 together, it is likely that the DoD runs a similar psy-ops operation in the United States.