Military Commentators: Dupes of the Pentagon or the Media?


Author: Colonel Kenneth Allard (US Army, ret.)

Date Published: 2008-04-24


Military Commentators: Dupes of the Pentagon or the Media?

Col. Ken Allard (US Army, ret.)

 

The bad news began arriving by cell-phone Saturday night: my picture was on the front page of the Sunday New York Times. After 25 years of military service and ten more with NBC, this was not my first media frenzy – but definitely my first at center stage.

 

Several months before, David Barstow, a Times reporter, had contacted me with a surprising request. He began our conversation with the only line guaranteed to turn an author’s best mental defenses into applesauce: “I read your book. Wow.” He even suggested flying to San Antonio for an interview about Warheads, my 2006 memoir about television’s military analysts. The trip never happened but we probably spent five hours over the next month talking about the story he was writing.

 

It closely followed the plot-line of Warheads: how retired military officers like me became a staple of television news after 9/11 and how Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon wrapped us into a sometimes uncomfortable embrace. The Times had powerful resources that lesser authors could only envy, so Barstow had uncovered thousands of internal Pentagon memos showing just how tight the bear-hug could be.

 

They referred to us as “message force multipliers,” “key influencers” or “surrogates.” Other documents gleefully reported how some analysts had earned their slurs, writing editorials that were little more than Pentagon puff-pieces. And even worse: leveraging their unique access to the media and the powerful for personal gain.

 

Barstow’s piece turned out to be 7,800 words long, either a novella or a near record for newsprint. It actually took several readings before I realized that something was missing: any acknowledgment of Warheads or the fact that its publication had preceded the Times exposé by almost two years.

 

Also missing from such a lengthy article was the all-important sense of context. Military analysts like David Grange, Barry McCaffrey and Wes Clark had been forthright in criticizing both the Bush administration and the Rumsfeld Pentagon over the issue of troop strength during the Iraq invasion, earning us a very public rebuke from Vice President Cheney.

 

Throughout the war, we listened carefully to many different briefings, but also relied on our own sources, experiences and beliefs. You don’t become either an officer or a TV analyst – two professions requiring high-wire acts without a net – in the absence of a strong sense of who you are. That meant most of us made up our own minds about when the party line was right and when it was not.

 

Though far from perfect, we also had to brace ourselves to survive the daily carnival of TV journalism. Barstow quoted me correctly as saying that the only conflict of interest there was the networks’ lack of interest. That pervasive superficiality was primarily why I resigned last year from NBC News. For the record, I took two Pentagon-supported trips before leaving: one to Baghdad in December of 2005, the other three months earlier in September. After surviving Katrina, I drove from my boarded-up home in Alabama to embed with the 82nd Airborne in New Orleans. The reaction of MSNBC producers following both occasions was identical: “Oh, really? Cool, then we’ll try and get you on. No promises, though.”

 

Journalistic ethics is one of the great contradictions – like military intelligence or liberal intellectual. But a particular perversity is required by the Times or anyone else who overlooks the reason why the Warheads were created in the first place. The fact is that military science has never been a graduation requirement in the testosterone-free zones of our journalism schools. When 9/11 forced the networks to confront their long tradition of military illiteracy, they instinctively out-sourced informed commentary to the Warheads.

 

Retired colonels highlighting the war in three minutes (or hopefully less) of air time was the perfect solution for a country more likely to know a resident of North Dakota than a soldier serving on active duty. So give the Pentagon its due: because under Rumsfeld they grasped with remarkable shrewdness the real implications of a citizenry grown weary of its Minuteman heritage. And steadily experimented to perfect the techniques of manipulating future generations of Couch Potatoes.

 

COL (Ret) Ken Allard is an executive-in-residence at UTSA, the author of Warheads, and a columnist with the San Antonio Express-News. E-mail comments: Warheads6@aol.com. 

# # #

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Colonel Kenneth Allard (U.S. Army, ret.) is an executive-in-residence at UTSA and the author of "Warheads: Cable News and the Fog of War." and San Antonio Express-News. Email: Warheads6@aol.com

read full author bio here


If you are a reporter or producer who is interested in receiving more information about this writer or this article, please email your request to pr@familysecuritymatters.org.

Note -- The opinions expressed in this columfn are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of The Family Security Foundation, Inc.




Click here to support Family Security Matters