Ernie Pyle must be rolling over in his grave.
For those of you who don’t know — or don’t remember — Pyle was the most famous correspondent of World War II, a reporter beloved by GIs because he lived with them in their foxholes, sharing the mud, fear and death that surrounded them every day.
His stories resonated on the home front because he included the soldiers’ names and home towns in the pieces he wrote about their grim fights from North Africa to Italy to Normandy.
When Pyle’s end came, it was from a Japanese sniper’s bullet in the Pacific in the closing months of the war. The GIs buried him as one of their own, and Americans mourned a man who spared nothing in telling them about the reality of combat.
In today’s war against terrorism, there are no Ernie Pyles because the White House and Pentagon won’t allow it. The civilian and military brass have made press access to troops in the field extremely restrictive — or impossible — claiming they’re protecting security.
There are cases where that’s necessary, but most of the time it’s not. What’s really going on is the government’s attempt to control information about the war, and keeping reporters away from the men and women doing the hard, dirty work is one way to do it.
The result is that the American public is being denied a full, honest look at what’s been going on in Afghanistan, a situation certain to continue if U.S. troops head into Iraq.
“The public has a right to be informed when the Pentagon and civilian leadership decides to send its sons and daughters off to fight,” says David Moniz, a military correspondent for USA Today, who describes the military’s policy as “next to no access.”
Moniz, who has covered the Afghan campaign, says that has caused an absence of front line stories that would show the “incredible heroism and professionalism” of those who are “fighting and dying and winning the war.”
This door-slammed-in-the-face practice is not new. It began during the Persian Gulf War, when the Pentagon largely barred reporters from talking to troops.
“They saw they could get away with it, so now the access is even more restrictive,” says Jim Wright, an editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer who has helped start a new organization called Military Reporters & Editors to aid journalists nationwide cover the military. “You can’t get to the people who are really doing the work in the name of America.”
When reporters are allowed close enough for interviews, the structure the military has put in place makes the chance for forthright conversations almost nil.
Public affairs officials are constantly hovering around, listening to every word in a move designed to keep everyone in line. In some cases, each soldier has even been given a laminated “Media Reference Guide.”
The cards are printed with rules for dealing with journalists, such as “Don’t use profane language” and “Above all, portray a positive image.”
Speaking the truth is never mentioned.
Neither, it often turns out, are the last names or home towns of troops who are interviewed. That twist has been added to supposedly protect their families at home from possible terrorist attack, but it’s just another way to ratchet up the control.
“What’s the likelihood of that (happening)? It’s an excuse. It doesn’t pass the test of reasonableness,” Wright says.
Moniz and others say that many in the military are frustrated about the policy, but are powerless to change it. And so it goes on, with the public seeing only rare views of GI Joe and GI Jane that are carefully sanitized and scripted.
“Actions are being taken in the name of our country,” Wright says. “We need to know what’s going on so we can participate in the democracy that those troops are out there to uphold.”
