The daily e-mails to his editors from Ron Martz in Kuwait probably resemble those from the troops he is assigned to cover — Fort Stewart’s 3rd Infantry — to their friends and family back home.
Martz, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s military affairs writer, usually offers a little news on the latest talk about war and some updates on how his equipment is working and what he needs to do his job better. Some days he relays instructions about something that needs to be handled at his home in Roswell.
Like the troops they live with, Martz, in Kuwait since Thanksgiving, and AJC staff photographer Brant Sanderlin, who recently joined him there, are waiting for war. If it comes, they will be with the 3rd Infantry on whatever mission it is ordered to complete.
Not since Vietnam has the American military allowed journalists inside the tents and around the front lines with troops in combat. Not since Vietnam has it ever been so important that they are there.
In a move unprecedented in scope, Defense Department officials have decided to allow 600 working journalists to live and travel with the 300,000 military personnel stationed in the Persian Gulf region waiting on command to move against Iraq. Correspondents from more than 200 news organizations are in place — “embedded,” to use the Pentagon’s jargon — with military units in land positions as well as at sea.
Besides Martz’s dispatches and Sanderlin’s photos, Journal-Constitution and ajc.com readers will get on-the-scene reports from seven other journalists posted with military units around the region.
That’s happening because the newspaper has teamed up with CNN correspondents in the field to provide additional print and online coverage from Army, Marine, Air Force, Navy and General Command positions in the Middle East. The CNN reporters have begun filing dispatches for the AJC, ajc.com and other Cox newspapers, as well as TV reports for CNN and CNN interactive. Two other Cox newspapers’ reporters are assigned to Army and Marine units in the area as well.
In addition to those stationed with military units, the Journal-Constitution has access to six Cox newspaper reporters in other parts of the region, including two correspondents in Baghdad. They are not considered “embedded” with the military and, as such, will be moved around wherever they are needed to cover military and diplomatic developments.
During the 1991 Persian Gulf War and in 2001 in Af-
ghanistan, Defense Department officials kept journalists great distances from the action and gave briefings about what happened rather than allowing firsthand observation or contact with fighting personnel.
The result was a sanitized version of the war, minimizing reporting about civilian deaths and injuries while at other times fueling exaggerated claims of such “collateral damage” from political and military opponents of the American war effort. Confirming such information was almost impossible because there were no independent observers near the conflict.
Under the current arrangement with the military, some opponents of the war question whether journalists working so closely with the combatants will be able to objectively measure how the war is progressing. Will their military overseers allow truly unrestricted access, or will they clamp down on allowing them to file stories the brass determines are too “sensitive” to be released?
The truth is we don’t know how restrictive the military will be until it happens. In making the agreement with the Defense Department, news agencies recognized the need to give commanders in the field some discretion over information about troop movements and future plans.
But the military may finally realize that allowing journalists to chronicle what happens to the men and women America sends to fight its wars is not only good public relations, but also good public policy — even if ultimately the television reporting in the last years of Vietnam mobilized opposition to the conflict back home.
At a time when support for a war such as this has deeply divided the public, having journalists on hand to assess the costs — human, financial and political — will help provide the information Americans need to decide whether the sacrifice is worth it.
This country took too long to decide how it felt about the cost of Vietnam. We can’t afford the same indecision in Iraq.
