It’s no wonder that more than 700 reporters from around the world are going stir crazy in Saudi Arabia. The “pool” system, in which small groups of tightly controlled correspondents report back to their colleagues, is widely viewed by the press as a disaster. “If the war is a beast, we’ve seen only a toenail,” says Forrest Sawyer, an ABC News correspondent in Dhahran. While avoiding a repeat of Lyndon Johnson’s “credibility gap,” military planners realize that a “fact gap” is widening, and it leaves them with a dilemma. While they crave the control their stringent approach provides, they know the dangers of a frustrated press corps.
The Pentagon’s argument that it’s simply trying to save the lives of soldiers and reporters is wearing thin. Why, for instance, did a military spokesman refuse to acknowledge the capture of American POWs even days after the downed pilots showed up on Iraqi TV? The “security review” process was supposedly streamlined, but Carol Morello of The Philadelphia Inquirer says that reports she filed from the Red Sea went through four layers of censorship. Even adjectives are edited: Frank Bruni of The Detroit Free Press wrote that pilots were “giddy” on returning from early missions. Officers changed the word to “proud”; they compromised on “pumped up.” From avoiding coverage of wounded Marines to banning the traditional pictures of the arrival of flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base, the military is determined to impede reporting that might convey the war’s emotional price.
The press has a crippling fear of appearing whiny about its own logistics. This is partly what led news organizations to go along with the unworkable pool system, even after it failed miserably in its 1989 debut in Panama. The whole arrangement is antithetical to the craft. Not only is enterprise reporting impossible in pools (whose information must, by definition, be shared), but talking to soldiers in the presence of public-affairs officers rarely yields anything substantial. Reporters on the ground are disturbed that their bosses back home haven’t fought harder to change these realities.
Now, with the political motivation of the restrictions growing clearer, objections are mounting from other quarters. “The Pentagon is as much interested in structuring public opinion as safeguarding security,” charges Rep. Frank McCloskey (Democrat of Indiana), who said hearings will likely begin next week to scrutinize the restrictions. Meanwhile, federal Judge Leonard Sand ordered Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams to submit to a deposition in a suit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights challenging the legality of the rules.
Some newspeople–most of them photographers and print reporters–decided to fight the restrictions on the ground in Saudi Arabia, undertaking unauthorized trips to cover what they could in the desert. Reaching the front without the help of the military is far more difficult and dangerous than in Vietnam (in part because of allied roadblocks). CBS correspondent Bob Simon and his crew disappeared near the Kuwaiti border early last week after embarking on one such unauthorized trip. Their car, with keys and gear still in it, was found abandoned in the desert.
Beyond the incident’s potentially tragic implications, the disappearance dealt a blow to the cause of independent reporting. Simon had already broken free from the pool for one first-rate piece from the front and he was determined to do so again. Now his colleagues might be discouraged from following his example. The military argues that the pools are not only safer for reporters, but a distinct improvement over the 1983 invasion of Grenada, which was off the record entirely. “What we have here is a compromise between the journalists who want to go to the front in their rent-a-car and the generals who would rather have all the press stay in a hotel in London,” says Col. William Mulvey. To the Pentagon, George Bush’s battle cry “This will not be another Vietnam” means in part that the easy media access of that conflict will not be repeated.
But the pool system could unravel yet. Last week’s first footage of the Persian Gulf oil spill came from ITN, a British network that circumvented the pool system to obtain it. This caused alarm at other networks, whose cooperation is needed for the system to work. “We’ve been playing by the rules, and the rules aren’t working very well,” says Ed Turner, executive vice president of CNN. The best arrangement from reporters’ perspective would be simply to help them go independently where they request. Military complaints about the troops being overrun by the media ring hollow. Spread out over 500,000 troops, a few hundred carefully accredited reporters at a time would hardly be noticed.
As it is, the journalists have been reduced to interviewing one another. The Dhahran prize for grandstanding goes easily to CNN’s Charles Jaco. “It’s gas!” he yelled to his viewers at one point, reaching for his gas mask. (He later apologized.) “I’ve run for it too many times,” Jaco said in a war-weary voice to a reporter from Mirabella magazine in the Dhahran International Hotel last week. “The next thing you know, we are taking these air bursts and I’m almost literally knocked off my feet.” Other reporters who believe the danger has been greatly exaggerated point out that so far not one person in the Dhahran area has been even slightly injured. On TV, anyway, the war is strangely bloodless. With Iraq sealed off and Israel under heavy censorship, reporters have employed the wonders of live satellite technology mostly just to fill time.
Live, unedited coverage not only generates mistakes, it lacks a sense of context. That elusive journalistic quality involves more than disclaimers on propaganda reports. Sometimes true context requires breaking the rules for getting to the story, as Simon did. And sometimes it simply means focusing on the subject from a different angle. Only rarely, for instance, have Iraqi refugees who fled to Jordan been interviewed on TV about the effects of the allied bombing, as if firsthand accounts of war are somehow less newsworthy than the “I’ve got nothing for you on that” comments of briefers or the repetitious speculation of retired generals. Dissenters from the war, given at least a little voice before hostilities began, have been all but absent from most network coverage. ABC, NBC and CBS have each extended their evening news programs to one hour, which by itself allows for more context. But if the Pentagon succeeds in severely restricting access to information, all the air time imaginable won’t fill the gap in what the public needs to know about its war.
Which of the following apply to the U.S. news media’s coverage of the war? (Percent saying applies)
73% Fair and reliable 64% Makes it harder for U.S. officials to conduct the war 56% Too much propaganda from Iraq 55% Live coverage leads to impatience for a quick ending 32% Too controlled by the Pentagon
From the “Newsweek” Poll of Jan. 24-25, 1991
