September16, 2012:
On September 6th, at the U.S. Democratic Party convention, a tribute to
military veterans featured a retired admiral giving a speech while behind him
was projected an impressive image of four warships coming towards the audience.
What most people viewing this scene did not realize was that the ships on that
screen were Russian, not American. Such an error should not have been a
surprise.
This
sort of facile military reporting and media presentation of the military has
become increasingly common. It goes beyond calling all warships (except
carriers and subs) “battleships” (a class of ship that went out of wide use
half a century ago) or calling self-propelled artillery (or even infantry
fighting vehicles) “tanks” simply because they all have turrets (but very
different uses). The bad reporting
extends to many other basic items of equipment, training, leadership, tactics, and casualties.
It all
started back in the 1970s, when conscription in the United States ended and the
many World War II veterans in journalism, public affairs, and advertising (all
of whom help out at major political events) began to retire. The end of
conscription meant new journalists were much less likely to have any knowledge
of military affairs. It became increasingly easy to make stupid and embarrassing,
mistakes.
The
new ignorance also caused safety issues for reporters. Thus a decade ago, after
years of being urged to establish a "boot camp" for journalists, the
Department of Defense finally did so. A week long course was offered, free (at
various locations the journos had to get to). The course not only helped make
reporting more accurate but also was intended to help save journalists lives.
Basic
battlefield common sense was taught, as well as some first aid and what to do
in the event the enemy used nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. On the reporting
side, the students learned "military customs" (who is who, what the
jargon means, and why the troops do certain things in and out of a combat zone). Also taught was the concept of "rules of engagement" and what the
various weapons used were (sort of a show and tell). The trainers were also
prepared to answer a lot of questions. The Gulf War saw the first calls for
this kind of course, for it was then that it was realized that most new war
reporters had no military experience (the draft ended in 1972) and were prone
to misidentify and misinterpret things in a way that put the military (and
sometimes the media) in a bad light.
Despite
these efforts to educate battlefield journalists, there are still so few media
specialists with any military knowledge that media disasters like the one at
the Democratic Party convention will continue to occur. It's not just that
fewer people serve in the military (about one percent of the population,
compared to 12 percent during World War II and 3-5 percent during the Cold
War) but growing hostility in the media towards the military and anyone
associated with military affairs. Without many people really noticing it,
military knowledge in the mass media largely went away over the last 40 years
and the damage this has done to the quality of reporting on military affairs is
increasing.