Publishing a newspaper is like handling a loaded gun: If your aim is bad, you can hit the wrong target.
And, particularly during wartime, you must take special care not to hit your protector. Some readers think that’s what we do in writing about the military.
“I get so angry at you newspeople for giving out information that can tell our enemy about troops, strength and equipment,” one electronic message read last week. It was signed, “Bob Richmond, First Sergeant, U.S. Army Retired.”
He implored the Sentinel: “Stop releasing information that is helpful to the enemy.”
That’s a legitimate concern, but I assured Richmond, in a return e-mail, that information available to the newspaper — in this age of the Internet, Global Positioning Satellites and worldwide cable television — also is available to the United States’ enemies. Publishing it just puts readers on equal footing with those who would deny them their constitutional rights — such as the right to be informed.
The next day, though, the Sentinel discovered that modern technology does not keep it from making the sort of error of which Richmond warned.
At Patrick Air Force Base in Brevard County Tuesday to write about a husband-and-wife team expected soon to ship out, reporter Kate Santich, along with other journalists, received a briefing and a set of rules for covering troop deployments.
Reminding reporters of the Sept. 11 act of domestic terrorism against the military at the Pentagon, U.S. Air Force Major Michael Rein said the rules were necessary “for the security and safety of our people.”
Among the rules were a prohibition of “live” — which Rein explained included Internet — coverage of the notification of troop deployment and an alert that reporters would be held on the base for 15 minutes after the troops had departed.
Once back at the Sentinel, Santich found that the editors who would need to know about the new rules had gone for the evening. She dutifully left copies for two key editors, then wrote her article and left.
She had no idea that the rules would be needed before those editors returned to work.
When the call came shortly before midnight that troops were about to be deployed, reporter Pam Johnson began the 90-minute drive to Patrick while editor Frank Stanfield began interviewing Air Force public information people by telephone.
Before Johnson even arrived at the base, editors Jim Robison and Jon Rodeheffer had taken what Stanfield had learned and placed it atop Santich’s article. They then sent it to Grant Heston, who posted it on the newspaper’s Web site.
That was routine. Unfortunately, it also was in violation of the Air Force’s coverage rules.
The editors had copies of the rules — which make no mention of the Internet. What they didn’t have was knowledge of what Rein had told Santich’s group earlier in the day: Nothing was to be posted on the Internet until troops had cleared the base.
The Sentinel’s article hit the Web well before the troops’ 3 a.m. departure.
The Air Force understandably was displeased.
The newspaper’s breach of the rules, of course, was inadvertent, but it brought to mind Richmond’s grim e-mail: “During World War II we had a saying — ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships.’ ”
The Sentinel will continue to keep readers informed of developments in the war on terrorism, but, particularly after last week’s experience, it will take special pains to avoid doing anything that could compromise the safety of people in uniform.
