Can't stand armchair general reporters

[Buckshot Bear]

Can't stand armchair general reporters 

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-20/australian-commandos-in-afghanistan-filmed-discussing-quota/101432000

[Subdeacon Joe]

My ha'penny.

 

Commandos are supposed to be smart.  Making videos like those is stupid.

[Utah Bob #35998]

In WW2 reporters were heavily censored, and with valid reason. In Vietnam they were not. That was sometimes a good thing but often not. Especially when the reporters were convinced we were losing the war, which we weren’t,

 and became in effect, unwitting tools of the enemy.

In recent conflicts in the Mideast they have been more restricted in access to units but not heavily censored. This seems to be a reasonable precaution.

Now with the proliferation of cellphone cameras and social media, security has become a huge problem. The troops themselves, although prohibited from doing so, post videos and pictures which are inappropriate at best and serious security risks at worse.

The civilian populace neither understands military operations nor comprehends the mindset of young men a war environment which is really beyond their grasp. You have to have experienced it.

I have no idea what the solution is. 
 

[Sedalia Dave]

Yep we were smart enough to not put anything on film except pictures that any tourist would take.

 

Cameras were explicitly banned at all squadron functions involving alcohol. There were NO EXCEPTIONS.

 

One time someone tried to sneak pictures at a det party. They got caught and were extremely lucky that the only thing destroyed was the film.

[PowderRiverCowboy]

We were in Korengal Valley Afghanistan  Getting ready to go out for a 3 day mission . Had a reporter that wanted to tag along ,he had all approvals but squad had to approve him to embed .  He asked multiple times My answer always the same " Not a chance buttercup , We dont need you or want you " or something to that affect   I may have cleaned it up just a touch .

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

I was amazed to find out how many "reporters" in Vietnam got "front line" stories from hotels and officers' clubs and managed to never get anywhere near a fight.  Not all f them....we encountered some who'd beg to go with us,.... but there were some who should have been machine-gunned in the womb.

[Sixgun Sheridan]

I never understood how they managed to allow reporters on the front lines in Vietnam. All they're going to see is the gore and the grit of combat and not anything in the way of a bigger picture. If Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather had been reporting from Normandy or Iwo Jima we might have ended up having to negotiate peace with Hitler and Tojo.

[Utah Bob #35998]

13 minutes ago, Sixgun Sheridan said:

I never understood how they managed to allow reporters on the front lines in Vietnam. All they're going to see is the gore and the grit of combat and not anything in the way of a bigger picture. If Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather had been reporting from Normandy or Iwo Jima we might have ended up having to negotiate peace with Hitler and Tojo.

They never anticipated what the effect of immediate and uncensored video would have on the public.

There was a lot of discussion in Washington about whether or not to even show American casualties in news reels in WW2. And that was only a weekly occurrence. Imagine if the public had been bombarded with nightly images in their living rooms of combat in Europe and the Pacific. War Bond sales would have tanked and there’s a good chance we would have pulled out of the war.

[Sixgun Sheridan]

22 minutes ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

They never anticipated what the effect of immediate and uncensored video would have on the public.

 

They obviously had very little of that so-called "military intelligence". Even a 10yo with a learning disability could guess that showing death on TV every night would have an adverse effect on public morale.

[Utah Bob #35998]

1 minute ago, Sixgun Sheridan said:

 

They obviously had very little of that so-called "military intelligence". Even a 10yo with a learning disability could guess that showing death on TV every night would have an adverse effect on public morale.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS they shouted. And the government knuckled under. 

And things were not the same. In ww2 the army controlled communications. But how can you do that in the electronic age when there are multiple means of getting a story back. We were in a foreign country rather than an occupied territory and thus had less that total control of things. Some reporters were removed from the country. One was with my battalion. Burn it had to be done through channels and with the cooperation of the South Vietnamese. Things were complicated. They did learn a lesson and clamped down in Desert Storn.

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

A friend of my wife's saw her husband killed on TV before she was officially notified.

 

That's when I stopped having any use for almost all TV journalists.

[Phantom Falcon, SASS # 46139]

I was a Battalion ALO in 1969. The 6 said absolutely not to any request for reporters to even be on our hill, let alone tag along on an OP. Regiment tried to get him to change his mind and he said as long as he was CO, the restriction was in effect. He was later KIA. Turned out to be my last MEDEVAC as my time was up and I went back to flying. A damn fine Commander. I later found his name on the traveling wall. Turned out to be too many names I knew and I had to leave; couldn't look at any more. 

 

PF