Journalists as a linguistic tube and "Information Operations"
The answers, the Rod Nordland, former Burole ladder of Newsweek in Baghdad in the short break in an interview on questions about reporting from Iraq with the magazine Foreign Policy, surprise no more nobody. Nordland is not the first journalist who states: "It is a lot worse than it is reported".
"The news from Iraq are regulated by the government" – Also, this key message has been read from other journalists who worked in Iraq in one or the other form rather rarely with the addition that the government masters this task quite well: "The Administration Does A Great Job of Managing The News." That the success is nevertheless disclosed and the government despite their efforts over the "to negative" Reporting in the media complains, according to Nordland shows the limits of information management. Nevertheless, after his collision, the government has a certain success:
The Americans are unaware of this, how sincere it (the situation in Iraq, Anm. D. A.) and how little progress has been made. They continue to talk about how much better the Iraqi army is now and that they take more responsibility, but in most cases that is not true.
But Nordland also reports from a recent development: the militar started, many regulations of the "Embedded reporting" (see. An enchanted version of the war) "censor". Before a journalist as "embed" It was approved, his previous work was very accomplished very carefully and special attention was given to what "Slant" (Painting) have his stories.
You will be rejected if the militar does not like the tendency. There was trap of journalists set to a blacklist because the militars "not happy" Over the work, which the journalists as "Embeds" had delivered. But finally one experiences more than any official American representative from the Iraqis, especially if he belongs to the militar.
Similar experiences as embedded rapporteur also collected a television journalist of Reuters in Iraq. Your conclusion: "What we did there was not a real journalism…I was a mouthpiece of the Pentagon."
Colonel Ralph Baker is also argued the embedded journalists against besides, only if they stayed a long time and spend a lot of time with his unity and thus getting to know their work in the right context, this is a good thing. The fact that such a commitment of the reporter is often lost even the current distance and which makes it difficult to report close to the journalist to the soldiers, to report on things that could damage them, Branch Baker.
For balance or "genuine journalism" Is Colonel Ralph O. Baker not. Baker was until recently commander of a brigade whose area of application was at Baghdad and included two rough districts of the capital – "in the middle" so. His experience report, published in a publication of the US Army, acted by the state of the Things practiced "Information Operations" (see. "The network must be evaporated like an enemy weapon system"To).
70 percent of working hours for IO
The article addresses a specialist audience and most of its strategic recipes, such as the forced repetition of simple messages that are conveyed to the environment and the emphasis on its own successes and the harmful activities of the "Sparkish" In every communique to the outside, nothing is new. Nevertheless, the article offers a few insights that surprise.
For example, the general evaluation of Information Operations (iOS): that you are from Baker as "deceive weapon" is already mentioned in the title, one could still see as a kind of lips that the commander of a military unity but 70 percent of his working time for "Intelligence and IO Systems" has spent, amazed. This was one of Baker "Paradigm change" in his work
Baker plads for a modernization of the iOS. In the nature of his approach taught on site, you can see how much the army guide tries to have large-scale control over each message that goes to the outside. Every message to an event must go the time-consuming Burocratic way and be admitted from above, Baker complains. Many of the relevant rules and structures still dated from the experiences of the Cold War, the hierarchical paths of information policy were too slow, he stated that the opponents always spread in advance to spread their view.
The fact that Baker also hierarchy paradigms in the information policy and, for example, his own press conferences would not have to be specially mentioned that he had other targets than the lead and other addressees, but it is noteworthy because that allows a few conclusions. For example, Baker turned to the Arab media, newspapers and TV channels, because it’s written and sent there, what his target audience, the "silent majority of local population", actually influenced. His supervisors had it "High" in mind, their target media specifications were the national media in the US and international.
From this one can read three things, once an obvious ignorance of the management level against the Iraqi opportunity, on the other hand, that the American station Al-Hurray, which is not mentioned at all, is also some relevance in official circles, and to the third, how much it depends on the lead "Liberation of Iraq" especially in the US and internationally good for sale. Iraqi or. Arab media seems in the view of the guided apparently only as detours to welcome news – propaganda – in their own resp. Insufficient international media (see. Happy Iraq).
It is interesting that Baker knows a different manner, the IOS was necessary with the up-to-date repeat program for the amption of basic truths: its own soldiers whose "influential sources of information" CNN, BBC or Fox news More and more negative views produced.
