5 ms·

The U.S. Military’s Campaign Against Media Freedom

144 points by phildeschaine 12y ago

danieltillett 12y ago
I am glad to hear from Chelsea. Does anyone's know how she is fairing?
- Ygg2 12y ago
  As a transgender person in prison... Probably, not too great.
higherpurpose 12y ago
I hope Americans can elect a president that will pardon Manning and Snowden in day one of presidency. If a presidential candidate can at least promise to do that, then we'd have a pretty good sense that he or she is going to be a pretty good president regarding government transparency, media freedom, basic rights, and so on. At the very least the question of pardoning them should be asked in a live televised debate, to see how the candidates stand. If none of them are willing to commit to that, then there's a very high chance US will continue on the dark path is currently on.
- pyre 12y ago
  Even if said President wanted to do it, I doubt that the military-industrial complex would let him/her. They would burn a lot of political bridges, and possibly end up unable to accomplish anything else of significance during their Presidency.
danieltillett 12y ago
Since I seem to be the only one awake I will comment on Chelsea's op-ed. She raises the really important point of journalists needing to be able to be able to report on what is actually going on for the American public to be able to make an informed decision. What I wonder is how we (by we I mean the greater tech community) can do to make this happen?
- clebio 12y ago
  This is the question I hoped would bubble out of this post (as opposed to the question 'why are we seeing politics on HN'). Part of the answer would be to build tools such as SecureDrop/ StrongBox: http://www.newyorker.com/strongbox/ http://www.newyorker.com/strongbox/ https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/securedrop https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/securedrop And Redphone and the various things Moxie works on: https://whispersystems.org/ https://whispersystems.org/ But that only makes communications and authenticity possible. Access -- as in embedding problem Manning describes -- and censorship or selection bias will still be a problem. Those seem more like policy issues than technology problems. Along those lines, possibly Sunlight Foundation (http://sunlightfoundation.com/ http://sunlightfoundation.com/) and of course, supporting the EFF (https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/). Those are my thoughts, but I second your question and hope others have input.
uptown 12y ago
The American mainstream media is severely dysfunctional. Cable "news" networks are biased outlets for each political party to deliver their message. Even more-traditional network news outlets like NBC News have sacrificed the appearance of a separation of the reporters from the politicians they're supposed to report on by hiring family members of recent and current political figures. On NBC's current payroll are Jenna Bush Hager, and Chelsea Clinton. On CNN's payroll is Chris Cuomo - brother to the Governor of New York. It seems that above all else, mainstream news craves access. Hiring the presidential daughters provides a network like NBC access to those presidential families in a way other networks may not have. Attending the annual White House Correspondents dinner provides reporters access to celebrities and a night out of dining and drinking with the people they're supposed to hold to account for their actions. And being complicit with the military's approach towards how a war should be reported ensures they retain their access to the war "story" - be it factual or massaged. Recall the story from the NYTimes about the military analysts that networks always put on-air whenever a military story is being covered? If not, it's worth a read: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html?pagewan... Real reporting is hard. And when media organizations elect to go along with how a story is presented rather than providing raw, unbiased accounts of things, it does an injustice to the public. And it's made even more difficult when an administration chooses to take an aggressive stance towards journalists regarding how they source and report their stories. It's never been easier to be a reporter and disseminate information to millions. I can only hope that the public seizes that opportunity and fixes the ways that news is currently broken.
- lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  I believe pbiggar of CircleCI might comment on that - his (failed) YC from a few years back was a "new news" take. Apparently it is far from clear what is going to come next - technology has provided the opportunity but not the solutions
- eli 12y ago
  Soon most people will get their news online, not from TV. The audience for TV keeps getting older and the market share for digital news keeps growing.
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
Tl;dr Iraq never had more than 12 embedded journalists covering 100,000 troops, and they had to be nice or get removed. Democracy needs transparency and journalism is one of the best means of ensuring this - and it was totally strangled in Iraq so that abuses by Pro-US Iraq groups got no criticism in US - and this leads to no criticism of our military and administration. This fails to be healthy.
- vacri 12y ago
  The US military learned its lesson about independent journalists in the Vietnam war.
- clebio 12y ago
  The piece is just shy of 1200 words. Is a tldr really needed? Would that his analysis was longer.... Back to Hedges' books.
  - Gracana 12y ago
    > his Her. Why are people still misgendering Chelsea Manning?
    - clebio 12y ago
      You're absolutely right about that, and I apologize. It was pure sloppiness on my part. I meant no disrespect towards or commentary on Manning.
- mattdeboard 12y ago
  Your tl;dr is 100% wrong. There were many, many times where there were more than 12 embeds.
r0h1n 12y ago
Is it any surprise that newspaper war stories are usually one-sided and glib, considering they are written by journalists who: a. have "established relations with the military", b. are rated by military contractors as likely to produce "favourable" coverage c. are subject to revocation of access AND blacklisting for "controversial reporting" A system that is designed to promote the army's point of view and penalize those that deviate from it will end up producing exactly that. The problem, and the solution, lies in the rules of embedding: > A Pentagon spokesman said, “Embeds are a privilege, not a right.” > If a reporter’s embed status is terminated, typically she or he is blacklisted. This program of limiting press access was challenged in court in 2013 by a freelance reporter, Wayne Anderson, who claimed to have followed his agreement but to have been terminated after publishing adverse reports about the conflict in Afghanistan. The ruling on his case upheld the military’s position that there was no constitutionally protected right to be an embedded journalist. As long as embeds are considered a "privilege" to be doled out (or rescinded) by the army based on it's own publicity objectives, it's impossible to expect neutral journalism from such a system.
- eshvk 12y ago
  From my very limited understanding of embeds, it appears that they are journalists who form part of the army team. It is not clear to me if they are protected/have access to military secrets by virtue of being part of the team; however, it appears to be implied. In such a scenario, I am not sure how the question of neutrality even ever appears. If you are embedded, you are by definition not neutral? Surely, there are other means for war journalism to exist? As was the case during the other wars of the past century?
  - revelation 12y ago
    Of course other ways exist! In these, you will have your head blown off by 18 year olds who mistake your camera for a RPG. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike
    - growupkids 12y ago
HenryMc 12y ago
The Vice documentary 'This Is What Winning Looks Like' has some great reporting on Afghanistan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI
- personlurking 12y ago
  "The documentary follows U.S. Marines as they train Afghan security forces, showing their ineptitude, drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and corruption as well as the reduced role of US Marines due to the troop withdrawal." A reddit discussion on looking at the documentary critically. http://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/25vm20/this_is_what_winning_looks_like_2013_the/chlc80w http://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/25vm20/this_i...
austenallred 12y ago
The problem extends much further than Iraq and affects all journalism. For example, the most widely read report from the New York Times on the Russia-Ukraine conflict was completely false. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-york-times-propaganda-photos-on-ukraine-exposed/5378942 http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-york-times-propaganda-photo...) That being said, the NYT is still much more neutral in its reporting than the kremlin-funded Russia Today, which is little more than a propaganda machine, including it's US arm. I've spent the last few years trying to create a Wikipedia-like system where anyone can curate and fact-check the first hand sources coming out of an event. There is incredible content coming from the people on the ground who, despite having their own opinions, are not blatantly funded by someone who is trying to twist the story to meet their narrative. It seems to be working well so far with hardcore news junkies using it (the group similar to the Wikipedia editors), but we'll have to see in a couple days at the public launch.
- omonra 12y ago
  Your point lacks credibility because the one link you cite is nothing but a Kremlin mouthpiece. Ie it's painfully blatant & appears to be written by RT staffers.
- dmpk2k 12y ago
  I assume the public launch will be announced here too?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mattdeboard 12y ago
I was the public affairs chief for Regimental Combat Team 6 (USMC), with a "territory" covering half of Al Anbar Province including Fallujah & Ramadi in 2007. I met scores of journalists and had high level visibility into the Marines' handling of journalists in Iraq. The first thing I want to say is that Manning is describing the Army's approach to journalism coverage. It is quite different from the Marines' approach, which as far as I could tell (and from my vantage point I was in a good position to have a clear understanding) was extremely open. I do not recall any cases of "blacklisting" or otherwise limiting access of journalists to events, leaders or units in our area of operations (AO). I did hear stories about how the Army was handling it and it was, in typical Army fashion, being handled very poorly. I realize this might sound like glib "Semper Fi" jingoism but you'll have to trust me there was a real difference. (BTW the Marine Corps isn't guiltless, I'm sure, but during my time I was pretty proud of our commitment to openness.) Second, about the tally of reporters. In 2010 the coverage had wound almost completely down because frankly the American people had lost interest. Even in 2007 the number of embed requests we received declined when "peace broke out" during the Anbar "awakening". There's no reason to think that the reason the official count of embeds never rose above 12 (if that's true) because of official limitations. Instead I think it's pretty reasonable to think that is because most embeds would have been quite boring at the time, relatively speaking. It was much easier to sit inside the Green Zone in Baghdad and report from there. I don't really have a punchy conclusion to put here. Basically, don't believe everything is black or white in this matter. Like everything it was/is a complicated system with a lot of moving parts, and to clump it all into some homogenous bucket is basically give up on actually understanding.
eli 12y ago
Rather easy to take potshots, now that Iraq is falling apart. If this outcome was so obvious why wait until now to write an op-ed? The pre-war coverage had some problems but I thought the reporting about the war, on the whole, was pretty decent. I read a lot about torture and about the lack of press freedom in Iraq.
- Ygg2 12y ago
  > Rather easy to take potshots, now that Iraq is falling apart. If this outcome was so obvious why wait until now to write an op-ed? It's outcome was known and obvious from the get go. You kill the dictator that repress another extremist. What did you think it was going to happen? No retaliation. America's 'Wars' from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, War on Terror (and War on Drugs) have all been, very, very, very bad. I can't think of a military campaign that accomplished their goals, unless said goals were to cause as much shit as possible and get paid shit ton for doing so. http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175854/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_a_record_of_unparalleled_failure/ http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175854/tomgram%3A_engelhardt...
  - eli 12y ago
    My point is that it's tough to say "I told you so" after the fact.
    - Ygg2 12y ago
      There were many analytic saying it will end like this (I don't have links at the moment). If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Dethroning Saddam just led to a power vacuum that installed whatever he was suppressing for the duration of his reign.
- mattdeboard 12y ago
  Like, are you questioning why Manning waited until now to publish an op-ed? I'd wager it's because Manning was going through the whole trial -> prison -> acclimating to prison thing.
Zigurd 12y ago
The same can be said about 99% of journalism about government at every level, including local government and policing. There is much too little skepticism. This is why citizen journalism, as rough as it often is, is successful, and why data-based journalism like fiverthirtyeight is the future of professional journalism.

144 points by phildeschaine 12y ago

danieltillett 12y ago

I am glad to hear from Chelsea. Does anyone's know how she is fairing?

Ygg2 12y ago
As a transgender person in prison... Probably, not too great.

higherpurpose 12y ago

I hope Americans can elect a president that will pardon Manning and Snowden in day one of presidency. If a presidential candidate can at least promise to do that, then we'd have a pretty good sense that he or she is going to be a pretty good president regarding government transparency, media freedom, basic rights, and so on. At the very least the question of pardoning them should be asked in a live televised debate, to see how the candidates stand. If none of them are willing to commit to that, then there's a very high chance US will continue on the dark path is currently on.

pyre 12y ago
Even if said President wanted to do it, I doubt that the military-industrial complex would let him/her. They would burn a lot of political bridges, and possibly end up unable to accomplish anything else of significance during their Presidency.

danieltillett 12y ago

Since I seem to be the only one awake I will comment on Chelsea's op-ed. She raises the really important point of journalists needing to be able to be able to report on what is actually going on for the American public to be able to make an informed decision. What I wonder is how we (by we I mean the greater tech community) can do to make this happen?

clebio 12y ago
This is the question I hoped would bubble out of this post (as opposed to the question 'why are we seeing politics on HN'). Part of the answer would be to build tools such as SecureDrop/ StrongBox: http://www.newyorker.com/strongbox/ http://www.newyorker.com/strongbox/ https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/securedrop https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/securedrop And Redphone and the various things Moxie works on: https://whispersystems.org/ https://whispersystems.org/ But that only makes communications and authenticity possible. Access -- as in embedding problem Manning describes -- and censorship or selection bias will still be a problem. Those seem more like policy issues than technology problems. Along those lines, possibly Sunlight Foundation (http://sunlightfoundation.com/ http://sunlightfoundation.com/) and of course, supporting the EFF (https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/). Those are my thoughts, but I second your question and hope others have input.

uptown 12y ago

The American mainstream media is severely dysfunctional. Cable "news" networks are biased outlets for each political party to deliver their message. Even more-traditional network news outlets like NBC News have sacrificed the appearance of a separation of the reporters from the politicians they're supposed to report on by hiring family members of recent and current political figures. On NBC's current payroll are Jenna Bush Hager, and Chelsea Clinton. On CNN's payroll is Chris Cuomo - brother to the Governor of New York. It seems that above all else, mainstream news craves access. Hiring the presidential daughters provides a network like NBC access to those presidential families in a way other networks may not have. Attending the annual White House Correspondents dinner provides reporters access to celebrities and a night out of dining and drinking with the people they're supposed to hold to account for their actions. And being complicit with the military's approach towards how a war should be reported ensures they retain their access to the war "story" - be it factual or massaged. Recall the story from the NYTimes about the military analysts that networks always put on-air whenever a military story is being covered? If not, it's worth a read: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html?pagewan... Real reporting is hard. And when media organizations elect to go along with how a story is presented rather than providing raw, unbiased accounts of things, it does an injustice to the public. And it's made even more difficult when an administration chooses to take an aggressive stance towards journalists regarding how they source and report their stories. It's never been easier to be a reporter and disseminate information to millions. I can only hope that the public seizes that opportunity and fixes the ways that news is currently broken.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago
I believe pbiggar of CircleCI might comment on that - his (failed) YC from a few years back was a "new news" take. Apparently it is far from clear what is going to come next - technology has provided the opportunity but not the solutions
eli 12y ago
Soon most people will get their news online, not from TV. The audience for TV keeps getting older and the market share for digital news keeps growing.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

Tl;dr Iraq never had more than 12 embedded journalists covering 100,000 troops, and they had to be nice or get removed. Democracy needs transparency and journalism is one of the best means of ensuring this - and it was totally strangled in Iraq so that abuses by Pro-US Iraq groups got no criticism in US - and this leads to no criticism of our military and administration. This fails to be healthy.

vacri 12y ago
The US military learned its lesson about independent journalists in the Vietnam war.
clebio 12y ago
The piece is just shy of 1200 words. Is a tldr really needed? Would that his analysis was longer.... Back to Hedges' books.
- Gracana 12y ago
  > his Her. Why are people still misgendering Chelsea Manning?
  - clebio 12y ago
    You're absolutely right about that, and I apologize. It was pure sloppiness on my part. I meant no disrespect towards or commentary on Manning.
mattdeboard 12y ago
Your tl;dr is 100% wrong. There were many, many times where there were more than 12 embeds.

r0h1n 12y ago

Is it any surprise that newspaper war stories are usually one-sided and glib, considering they are written by journalists who: a. have "established relations with the military", b. are rated by military contractors as likely to produce "favourable" coverage c. are subject to revocation of access AND blacklisting for "controversial reporting" A system that is designed to promote the army's point of view and penalize those that deviate from it will end up producing exactly that. The problem, and the solution, lies in the rules of embedding: > A Pentagon spokesman said, “Embeds are a privilege, not a right.” > If a reporter’s embed status is terminated, typically she or he is blacklisted. This program of limiting press access was challenged in court in 2013 by a freelance reporter, Wayne Anderson, who claimed to have followed his agreement but to have been terminated after publishing adverse reports about the conflict in Afghanistan. The ruling on his case upheld the military’s position that there was no constitutionally protected right to be an embedded journalist. As long as embeds are considered a "privilege" to be doled out (or rescinded) by the army based on it's own publicity objectives, it's impossible to expect neutral journalism from such a system.

eshvk 12y ago
From my very limited understanding of embeds, it appears that they are journalists who form part of the army team. It is not clear to me if they are protected/have access to military secrets by virtue of being part of the team; however, it appears to be implied. In such a scenario, I am not sure how the question of neutrality even ever appears. If you are embedded, you are by definition not neutral? Surely, there are other means for war journalism to exist? As was the case during the other wars of the past century?
- revelation 12y ago
  Of course other ways exist! In these, you will have your head blown off by 18 year olds who mistake your camera for a RPG. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike
  - growupkids 12y ago

HenryMc 12y ago

The Vice documentary 'This Is What Winning Looks Like' has some great reporting on Afghanistan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI

personlurking 12y ago
"The documentary follows U.S. Marines as they train Afghan security forces, showing their ineptitude, drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and corruption as well as the reduced role of US Marines due to the troop withdrawal." A reddit discussion on looking at the documentary critically. http://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/25vm20/this_is_what_winning_looks_like_2013_the/chlc80w http://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/25vm20/this_i...

austenallred 12y ago

The problem extends much further than Iraq and affects all journalism. For example, the most widely read report from the New York Times on the Russia-Ukraine conflict was completely false. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-york-times-propaganda-photos-on-ukraine-exposed/5378942 http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-york-times-propaganda-photo...) That being said, the NYT is still much more neutral in its reporting than the kremlin-funded Russia Today, which is little more than a propaganda machine, including it's US arm. I've spent the last few years trying to create a Wikipedia-like system where anyone can curate and fact-check the first hand sources coming out of an event. There is incredible content coming from the people on the ground who, despite having their own opinions, are not blatantly funded by someone who is trying to twist the story to meet their narrative. It seems to be working well so far with hardcore news junkies using it (the group similar to the Wikipedia editors), but we'll have to see in a couple days at the public launch.

omonra 12y ago
Your point lacks credibility because the one link you cite is nothing but a Kremlin mouthpiece. Ie it's painfully blatant & appears to be written by RT staffers.
dmpk2k 12y ago
I assume the public launch will be announced here too?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mattdeboard 12y ago

I was the public affairs chief for Regimental Combat Team 6 (USMC), with a "territory" covering half of Al Anbar Province including Fallujah & Ramadi in 2007. I met scores of journalists and had high level visibility into the Marines' handling of journalists in Iraq. The first thing I want to say is that Manning is describing the Army's approach to journalism coverage. It is quite different from the Marines' approach, which as far as I could tell (and from my vantage point I was in a good position to have a clear understanding) was extremely open. I do not recall any cases of "blacklisting" or otherwise limiting access of journalists to events, leaders or units in our area of operations (AO). I did hear stories about how the Army was handling it and it was, in typical Army fashion, being handled very poorly. I realize this might sound like glib "Semper Fi" jingoism but you'll have to trust me there was a real difference. (BTW the Marine Corps isn't guiltless, I'm sure, but during my time I was pretty proud of our commitment to openness.) Second, about the tally of reporters. In 2010 the coverage had wound almost completely down because frankly the American people had lost interest. Even in 2007 the number of embed requests we received declined when "peace broke out" during the Anbar "awakening". There's no reason to think that the reason the official count of embeds never rose above 12 (if that's true) because of official limitations. Instead I think it's pretty reasonable to think that is because most embeds would have been quite boring at the time, relatively speaking. It was much easier to sit inside the Green Zone in Baghdad and report from there. I don't really have a punchy conclusion to put here. Basically, don't believe everything is black or white in this matter. Like everything it was/is a complicated system with a lot of moving parts, and to clump it all into some homogenous bucket is basically give up on actually understanding.

eli 12y ago

Rather easy to take potshots, now that Iraq is falling apart. If this outcome was so obvious why wait until now to write an op-ed? The pre-war coverage had some problems but I thought the reporting about the war, on the whole, was pretty decent. I read a lot about torture and about the lack of press freedom in Iraq.

Ygg2 12y ago
> Rather easy to take potshots, now that Iraq is falling apart. If this outcome was so obvious why wait until now to write an op-ed? It's outcome was known and obvious from the get go. You kill the dictator that repress another extremist. What did you think it was going to happen? No retaliation. America's 'Wars' from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, War on Terror (and War on Drugs) have all been, very, very, very bad. I can't think of a military campaign that accomplished their goals, unless said goals were to cause as much shit as possible and get paid shit ton for doing so. http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175854/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_a_record_of_unparalleled_failure/ http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175854/tomgram%3A_engelhardt...
- eli 12y ago
  My point is that it's tough to say "I told you so" after the fact.
  - Ygg2 12y ago
    There were many analytic saying it will end like this (I don't have links at the moment). If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Dethroning Saddam just led to a power vacuum that installed whatever he was suppressing for the duration of his reign.
mattdeboard 12y ago
Like, are you questioning why Manning waited until now to publish an op-ed? I'd wager it's because Manning was going through the whole trial -> prison -> acclimating to prison thing.

Zigurd 12y ago

The same can be said about 99% of journalism about government at every level, including local government and policing. There is much too little skepticism. This is why citizen journalism, as rough as it often is, is successful, and why data-based journalism like fiverthirtyeight is the future of professional journalism.