Reporting on War
By George Esper
The
Vietnam War, the first living room war, gave birth to a new generation
of journalists and a new way of reporting that held the government
accountable for its conduct and strategy. The war with Iraq last
spring introduced still a new breed of journalists and technology
that has revolutionized war coverage.
But one thing is constant: The courage and determination of war reporters to tell the story at great risk and personal sacrifice. More than 70 western journalists died in ten years of covering the Vietnam War. Twenty died in Gulf War II, during six weeks of major combat operations that ended May 1. Fortunately, there were no journalists killed in the brief 100-hour Gulf War I in 1991.
From Homer to Ernest Hemingway, there have always been those who reported and photographed the horrors and heroism of war. For them their journalistic calling and the challenge transcends everything else. I'm often asked why some of us want to cover wars, why we want to be in the front row seats of the battlefields.
I was often hard put to explain why I spent ten years in Vietnam. But I found my answer in the words of a 22-year-old army nurse who had come to the mud, monsoons, and mortars of Vietnam, just as reporters and photographers had. The photographers to show the agony of war in the faces of the fallen. She to comfort them-their arms and legs blown off-with her wit and charm and smile, telling them how handsome they were, as they slipped away in her arms. To be not alone in this loneliest and most frightening of moments.
I asked Jackie Navarro why she was there. She said it was because she would never feel more worthwhile in her life.
In any war, you have to be where the action is. And indeed we were in the Vietnam War, the most accessible in history. If you had the energy, courage, and stamina, you could go where you wanted, and a few places more. And we did. If you knew a battle was brewing, you'd go to the military and hitch a ride on a helicopter, a truck, an armored personnel carrier. If we wanted to come out, we could anytime, and move on to another major battle. We were rarely with one unit for more than a few weeks.
The military blamed us for losing the Vietnam War with the images we put into American living rooms that were the eyes of a hurricane gathering momentum for an end to U.S. involvement: the South Vietnamese general executing a Viet Cong officer on a street corner; the little girl running naked down a highway after being scorched by a napalm strike; the bodies of men, women, and children herded into a ditch and machine-gunned to death by American troops during the infamous My Lai massacre.
Even though we were more honest with the American people than their own government, the military decided we would never have the access or flexibility we had in Vietnam. So they shut us out in Gulf War I. What a pity. While U.S. forces scored a thundering victory, the reporting of many of their heroic exploits was swept away in the sandstorms of the military pool system.
But in the recent Gulf War, journalists were embedded, remaining with a unit on an extended basis—perhaps a period of weeks or even months. So why the turnaround? Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield explained in a memo:
"We need to tell the factual story—good or bad—before others seed the media with disinformation and distortions . . . Our people in the field need to tell our story. Only commanders can ensure the media got the story alongside the troops."
The embedding drew mostly favorable reviews from the press corps. "It's been an extraordinary experience for all of us," CBS News President Andrew Hayward told the AP. "This really has been, not just a quantitative change, but a qualitative change in war journalism."
The distinguished Associated Press War Correspondent Richard Pyle, author of the book Lost Over Laos, says that the embedding of some 500 journalists, combined with the latest satellite technology, was a real breakthrough that gave the world an unprecedented look at war, in real time.
"It had drawbacks in that the reporting was in brief bursts, lacking context," says Pyle, who covered the Vietnam War and Gulf War I. "Both the military . . . and the media itself could have done a better job in putting it all together in a more coherent form. The inflexibility of the system—a reporter could not move forward, or laterally, from unit to unit as the battle shifted—was another limitation."
Others echoed the same sentiments as Pyle. Robert Wiener, the legendary producer who helped put CNN on the map during Gulf War I by being the only network in Baghdad, observed a tendency of some reporters to get so wrapped up emotionally in the troops they're embedded with, and sometimes lose the distance he thinks is necessary to cover events in a balanced fashion.
A memorial stone in Arlington National Cemetery honors journalists around the world killed while covering conflicts. Its inscription should be our guide in any war:
"One who finds a truth lights a torch."
The above is adapted from a speech to the West Virginia Associated Press Broadcasters Association. George Esper covered both the Vietnam War and Gulf War I for the Associated Press.