Bad Stories: The American Media-Military Relationship
Abstract
The 1999 air war over Kosovo re-ignited a feud between the military and the news media that is generally believed to have been a permanent undercurrent of media-military relations since the Vietnam War. The events of 11 September 2001 and the subsequent declaration by President George W. Bush of a "War on Terrorism" temporarily drove the feud underground. But soon the media began, albeit tentatively, to second-guess Pentagon strategy in Afghanistan. Indeed, the general consensus among military people, the press, and academics is that a co-operative working relationship between the press and the military that had been established in World War II collapsed in the 1960s. While these groups disagree significantly on whether media criticism of U.S. policy and strategy contributed to America's defeat in Southeast Asia, the view that Vietnam was a turning point in media-military relations is widespread. "The War in Southeast Asia changed the fundamental contours of military-media relations," write a sociologist and a Pentagon reporter. "As in World War II, a group of young correspondents David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Malcome Browne, Peter Arnett and Charley Mohr who arrived in Vietnam in the early 1960s, became famous for their reporting. Unlike World War II, however, these reporters incurred the wrath of the official establishment for their contrary accounts of the war's progress. Paradoxical, according to this view, media-military relations may have been better when censorship was in force, as in World War II.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA485180
Entities
People
- Douglas Porch
Organizations
- Naval War College