Embedded Romp
Sounds like Danger Room blogger and serial embed David Axe has a book in him. Here’s a five-minute spin through multiple embeds with seven armies in three countries. CJR.
Topics: Afghanistan, Iraq, lebanon, media, military
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:48 pm Comments (1) on Wednesday, February 20, 2008
One Response to “Embedded Romp”
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February 22nd, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Don’t you just love it?
Sometimes I do wonder though, how seemingly intelligent people can have an expectation that an organization as huge and stressed as the US military in a war zone is all one massive unhuman hive mind. You know, were everyone is magically all on the same page at the same instant in all things and all ways?
Pitty the poor sucker of an officer tasked with babysitting a bunch of whiny civilian reporters, each full of his very own self importance and demanding that all bend to his own needs, wants, desires or be labeled as incompetent.
I wonder if the particular journo who wrote that piece has any sort of functional clue as to how long it can take for changes to filter through so many levels of command structure.
Poor piece of shit got black balled because he couldn’t look at an issue and ask a few basic elemental questions.
1. Is my fame and enhanced paycheck of greater value that the lives of those who might be impacted by what I’m about to divulge?
2. Could going into any real detail on this, that or this other thing, make it easier for the enemy to kill the soldiers around me, or even my own damn self?
3. Is it possible that I should maybe, just this once, pretend to be a grown up with some sort of functional concept as to cause and effect?
Journos are important and what they do is valuable, when they do it well. And many do take real risks and do their jobs to the best of human ability.
But, the realm of journalism does also attract a rather over blown ego type with almost no functional knowledge of what he is covering, other than having been a tourist.
The good ones get lumped together with the bad. This is a practice that many in the industry of journalism practice so it’s no great hypocrisy to hold those in that industry to the same broad brush strokes.