Chapter 5
Conclusions

The troubled relationship of the American media and military evolved continuously throughout the missions in Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf. Yet, no matter how much this relationship changed, the same factors continued to define media-military relations in all three operations. During the last two decades memories of the Vietnam War have haunted both of these institutions. The policies of the military and the attitudes of the press and the public towards media coverage of wars were influenced enormously by the experiences of Vietnam. Grenada, Panama, and the Gulf War showed how the relationship between the American media and the military has been irrevocably altered by Vietnam.

Likewise, during these three military operations the media and the military were both deeply affected by continuous changes in technology. The same scientific ingenuity that gave the military laser guided missiles also gave the media the ability to instantaneously transmit video images to nearly anywhere on the the globe. The history of the relationship of these two institutions has been dictated by changes in technology and reaction to these changes. From the printing press, to telegraph, radio, and television, each new advance in the media's capabilities has created new conflicts between the press and the military. Media technology, particularly by the time of the Gulf War, created difficulties for the media-military relationship of greater dimensions than had ever before been known.

Finally, the culture clash between America's press and armed forces also defined their relationship during these three military operations. Though these institutions are theoretically playing for the same team and working towards the same democratic goals and values, their relationship has remained consistently cantankerous. The press and the military have played vital roles in American democracy since the founding of the nation. A dysfunctional relationship between these two Constitutional entities is advantageous for neither themselves, nor the public which they are supposed to serve.

Though most of the U.S. soldiers who fought in Panama and the Persian Gulf were not old enough even to have remembered it, memories of America's only military loss have lurked in the background of every military operation since Vietnam. Operation Desert Storm in particular was absolutely haunted by the specter of Vietnam. A bibliometric survey commissioned by the Gannett Foundation Media Center to study print and broadcast media from August 1990 to March 1991 counted the appearance of the word "Vietnam" 7,299 times in major newspapers, magazines, and nightly news broadcasts. It was mentioned more times than any other word studied, and in comparison, Saddam Hussein's name appeared only 1,170 times. Even before the Gulf War began, as the number of American troops in Saudi Arabia grew, George Bush promised the American people that a war in the Persian Gulf would not be "another Vietnam." Afterwards, at the conclusion of the allied ground offensive, the president announced victoriously, "This is a proud day for America. By God, we've kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all." The war in Southeast Asia, however, would not be so easily exorcised from the American national consciousness. It cut some of its deepest wounds into the media-military relationship -- wounds that even after two invasions and a full-scale war have not yet healed. One of the most significant ways in which the White House and the Pentagon kicked the Vietnam Syndrome was by not allowing the American press freedom of access or information during the wars after Vietnam. More than any other factor, Vietnam defined the nature of the tempestuous media-military relationship from Grenada to Panama to the Persian Gulf.

In many ways the war against Iraq was a national therapy session designed to heal the traumas of Vietnam as "forty-three days of televised Desert Storm replaced images of division, death, and defeat with images of military might, patriotism, and international acclaim of America." When President Bush said the Gulf War would not be another Vietnam he was subtly promising a number of different things to the American people. First of all it was a promise that the U.S. would be militarily victorious against Iraq. It was a guarantee that even if there were a lot of casualties and a large number of flag-covered coffins coming home every day, Americans would not have to see them. It meant that justice and morality would clearly be on America's side this time and that the public would not have to feel bad about this war. To accomplish all of this, the military would not have their "hands tied" and the press would. "Indeed, this 'Vietnam Syndrome' figured so prominently throughout the Gulf War and the crisis leading up to it that it prompted the frequent observation that the United States appeared to be still fighting the trauma of that conflict as much, if not more so, than the war against Saddam Hussein." The Gulf War was fought as fiercely on the information front as it was on the battlefield, and kicking the Vietnam Syndrome, for the most part, meant kicking out the press.

In Grenada, Panama, and then the Persian Gulf the lessons of Vietnam sent the press in two opposite directions. On the one hand, the discovery in that war that the U.S. government and military had often lied to the public "on the concrete details of the progress and conduct of the conflict led the press to accept a possibility that all U.S. foreign policy might have been characterized by deception." Vietnam made many in the press as well as the American public exceedingly skeptical and cynical of their nation's institutions. The scandal of Watergate immediately after Vietnam only exacerbated this cynicism.

On the other hand, Vietnam also had the effect of making the feisty, inquisitive press that had challenged and criticized the war timid and docile. According to Sydney Schanberg,

By the time of Operation Just Cause in Panama the American press had been tamed. Though it overwhelmingly decried the various military restrictions of all three of these military operations, the media readily regurgitated pre-packaged Pentagon story-lines rather than asking tough questions and finding ways to gather information independently. By 1983, something had obviously transformed the investigative media of the 1970s:

Whatever it was that caused the press to change, the military also learned from Vietnam and revamped its public relations apparatus. The most important military realization after the war was that the public presentation of conflict on television was just as important as any other facet of strategic planning. General William Westmoreland and many others in the military believed that in Vietnam, "television's unique requirements contributed to a distorted view of the war. The news had to be compressed and visually dramatic, and as a result the war that Americans saw was almost exclusively violent, miserable or controversial." By the time of Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada, the Pentagon had learned that modern wars were not just won on the battlefield, but also on television screens where attitudes and perceptions were bought and sold like any other commercial product. Though many in the Pentagon continue to this day to place a great deal of blame on the biases of the media for the loss of Vietnam, this claim is simply unfounded. Blaming the media was and is a way for the military, the government, and the American public to avoid confronting and understanding the complexities of the Vietnam tragedy. As Col. Harry G. Summers pointed out,

Thus the military realized after the Vietnam experience that to be able to wage war it would have to control the media, particularly the television media, so that the horrible images of war would not make it back to the home-front. In 1942 Admiral Ernest J. King's press policy was, "Don't tell them anything. When it's over, tell them who won." Forty years later, this attitude was echoed in more detail in a study conducted by a public affairs officer at the U.S. Naval War College just before the invasion of Grenada. The report took into account the lessons learned in Vietnam as well as the experiences of the British in the Falkland Islands war in 1982. The study, which many believed was used as a blue print for the press policies of Grenada reached conclusions such as, "you cannot allow the public's sons to be wounded or maimed right in front of them via their TV sets at home.... You must be able to exclude certain correspondents from the battle zone.... [And], knowing there will be flak damage to repair domestically in a free information society... objectivity can come back into fashion once the shooting is over." In all three cases, Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf, it was apparent that the military based their system of media control and manipulation on logic similar to the Machiavellian methods espoused by Admiral King and this public affairs study. These three military operations illustrated the military's belief that suspension of the freedom of the press, one of the most fundamental tenets of the Bill of Rights, was perfectly justified as long as an operation was successful.

The power of color television in Vietnam was what truly exacerbated the inherent conflicts of the press and the military. Since television cameras typically only have access to a nation's own troops and not those of the enemy, broadcasts from Vietnam gave the impression that the majority of violence, bloodshed, and misery of the war was being caused by and at the same time happening to the American troops there. In 1966 television journalist Morley Safer commented:

Thus, in Urgent Fury, Just Cause, and Desert Storm the American public was not permitted to see the cry of pain and the shattered face. The public relations lessons of Vietnam were what dictated the media-military relationship in all three of these operations. From Grenada to Panama to the Persian Gulf, Vietnam was the nagging underlying issue constantly at the back of the mind of the media, the military, the policy makers, and the American public.

Like the experiences and memories of Vietnam, advances in telecommunications technology have also been a constant defining element of the media-military relationship since the invasion of Grenada. Just as new technology is a significant military factor of every war, so too is it a factor for the press. Virtually every American war has seen the advent of new communications technology that has exacerbated the tensions inherent between the media and the military. During the Civil War the telegraph emerged, in the Spanish-American War overseas cable communication was used, in World War I radio was the new technology of the day, World War II had its motion picture news reels, Korea saw the first use of black and white television and, of course, color TV had a tremendous impact on the war in Vietnam. Much of the media-military conflict of Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf was a result of frustrations created by technological changes that neither the press nor the media were quite used to. Robert Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs put it best:

The impact of television on war reporting, even before the days of instantaneous satellite transmission, was enormous. Much of this had to do simply with the nature of the medium. Television is used, especially in the United States, for entertainment as well as for news and information purposes. Particularly in the last decade the lines between news and entertainment on TV have become increasingly blurred. Numerous entertainment programs have copied the standard evening news anchorman format, while at the same time, network news shows have made significant efforts to lighten up their presentations with more of a magazine format and less serious, straightforward information and analysis. The popular phenomenon of audience interaction programs like Geraldo, Oprah, and Larry King are the best illustration of the blending that has taken place between information and entertainment on television.

Thus, by its very nature television is a problematic instrument of war coverage. "TV entertainment, after all, is supposed to have a clear story line, heroes and villains that are easy to tell apart and most important -- a satisfying ending that does not drag on and on." The chaos, unpredictable violence, and complicated political and historical issues of war, however, do not fit neatly into the tidy formats necessary for this medium. War provides the media great opportunities for stories of action, drama, and poignant human interest. Yet, it is precisely because of this that objectivity and fact are often sacrificed in television news coverage of war.

In Panama and the Persian Gulf there were numerous examples of this. In both wars Hollywood casting directors could not have found two better characters to play the role of the evil dictator. Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein made for such tantalizing stories that the media willingly followed the White House's efforts to demonize and caricature the enemy leaders. Certainly neither of these dictators possessed many redeeming qualities, but demonization of the enemy leads to untruths as was frequently the case with Manuel Noriega and the stories the media and the military created about his collusion with "witches" and imaginary caches of cocaine. The ultimate result of this demonization process is to simplify extremely complicated political, social, and historical issues to the level of good guy versus bad guy. This dangerous process prepares the American people to accept the death and destruction of war as necessary to save the world from whatever Hitler-like madman is being promoted at the time.

Television has also transformed journalists from simply being the reporters of the news to being an actual part of it. In the Gulf War the press was not just a neutral observer, "media organizations were talked about almost as much as governments, generals and troops on both sides." Television was no longer just a spectator of events, it was a creator of and participant in events. Like the tree that falls in the forest but makes no sound because no one is there to hear it, events in today's world are not "real" unless television cameras are there to record them. Thus, because of television, journalists are often partners in the creation of the news -- "unwilling and unwitting partners, perhaps, but partners none the less in producing what journalist Daniel Boorstin has deplored as pseudo-events, pseudo-protests, pseudo-crises and controversies." As television observes an event, it changes it. American policy makers and the public thus must realize that what they are watching is not necessarily truth and fact, but television's modified version of truth and fact.

Another element innate to television is the medium's insatiable need for moving pictures with dramatic color. Action pictures are what make television more graphic in depicting the death and destruction of war and provide it with a visceral power that other forms of media cannot attain. Yet, just as action makes television powerful, it also makes television a slave to action. TV news must present interesting visuals, and more often than not, thoughtful, careful debate and analysis of complex issues do not make for good pictures. As media analyst Ben Bagdikian said, television news producers have "an ingrained dislike for talking heads -- words as opposed to action." In the Gulf War, the use of action pictures "increased the impression that this was essentially a military confrontation and not an... economic one." Thus there was "the usual downgrading on TV of important policies and information not accompanied by dramatic action." In Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf television tended to neglect discussion of the histories and backgrounds of the conflicts while relying heavily on whatever action the cameras could find or whatever pre-packaged images the Pentagon public relations office would provide for them.

As a slave to action, television is therefore at the mercy of those who control access to the action. The media is limited, especially during war, by where the military allows them to point their cameras. Ultimately, "the medium's pathological need for moving pictures delivers it into the hands of those who control access.... The inevitable result is that our coverage is biased because the story has to be led by pictures."

Not just during war the issue of who controls the powerful new tools of the media is a significant question. The American press has increasingly become monopolized and concentrated in a smaller number of hands. By the middle of the 1990s, according to some Wall Street analysts, a mere half dozen mega-corporations could control the vast majority of American media. This trend was illustrated in all three of these wars, as television was continuously controlled by fewer people.

As German media critic Hans Magnus Enzenberger noted over twenty-five years ago, "There is no such thing as unmanipulated writing, filming, and broadcasting. The question is, therefore, not whether the media [is] manipulated, but who manipulates [it]." Pentagon public affairs officers clearly took heed of Enzenberger's message. Television, particularly during an event as complicated and multi-faceted as war can not possibly present viewers with a true picture of what is happening. Though truth-telling during war is always going to be difficult and imperfect, the American public must depend on independent observers being allowed to see as much as possible with as little restriction as possible. War is the circumstance in which truth is most desperately sought, yet is at the same time hardest to discover. In the Gulf War, however, there was one important difference that gave substance to the discontent many felt about the restrictions of the press. Although the whole truth was no more available in Desert Storm than it ever was in any war, "the illusion of truth [was] more strongly present than it ever [had] been."

Television is a powerful medium in itself, but is even more powerful when it can be transmitted via satellite from virtually any remote location on earth to nearly anywhere else. In 1983 at the time of the Grenada invasion, video transmission via satellite was just becoming reality and many were still scoffing at Ted Turner for creating a 24 hour a day cable news television network called CNN. The Gulf War, of course, gave Turner and CNN the last laugh as instantaneous television had a profound effect on the coverage of war. For one, live television changed the standard measure of broadcasting quality from accuracy to speed, and the "speed of communications technology has eroded our capacity to reflect, interpret, sift. The imperative is to get the story on the air no matter how dubious or uncorroborated it is." The impact of live war coverage was heightened by the fact that a three person camera crew with a satellite uplink had the ability to bounce their broadcast across the globe at the speed of light.

As was the case in the Persian Gulf, nations at war now have access to their adversary's television broadcasts. This raises important strategic questions for the military. It has also thoroughly altered the traditionally secretive world of diplomacy and changed the nature of international politics. The fact that during the Gulf War the entire world tuned into the same newscast from an American television network could only have had a tremendous impact:

Realizing the power of modern television, the military needed to create new ways to control the media. A paper published by the U.S. Army War College just months before the invasion of Grenada predicted that with technological advances just over the horizon "it will be very difficult to control newsmen who have hand-held equipment capable of transmitting from remote locations via satellite direct to the home office thousands of miles away." The invasion of Grenada and the two military operations after it, however, proved the exact opposite to be true. The press was easy to exclude and most of the time a willing partner of the U.S. military.

From Grenada to Panama to the Persian Gulf, the military has constantly stayed a step ahead of the media and its advancing telecommunications technology. Over the course of the eight years between Operations Urgent Fury and Desert Storm the Pentagon grew exponentially more sophisticated in its public affairs and media management skills. In Grenada the exclusion of the press was brutish and heavy-handed. Though the public was overwhelmingly supportive of the press restrictions, media relations grew to be the military's biggest black eye of the operation. Six years later in Panama, as the bungled implementation of the Sidle Panel's press pooling system illustrated, the military had learned that it at least had to make a symbolic effort to allow the press to observe a mission. Though a press pool was brought to Panama it was essentially locked away in U.S. bases the entire time there and brought out only when the military had something it specifically wanted them to see. Whether true or not, the military's dealings with the press in Panama made it seem as though the Bush administration had things to hide from the American public about its reasons for and execution of the invasion.

In the Persian Gulf just a year after Operation Just Cause, the Pentagon had corrected many of the public affairs problems of Panama. The press meanwhile, "did not heed the warning of [Panama] and failed to develop any mechanism for assuring access to information and limiting censorship." In the war against Iraq, the Pentagon and White House public affairs offices had the difficult task of using the media to sustain public support in twenty-eight nations, prosecute a successfully ferocious war, keep the ferocity of war away from the television screen, and exploit the medium for disinformation and propaganda purposes knowing that Saddam was also watching. They were successful and Operation Desert Storm was a text book case of media manipulation and news management. Rather than being completely excluded as it was in Grenada and instead of locking it away as was the case in Panama, the American press was allowed to see a lot in the Persian Gulf. From August 2, 1990 on, the American people were inundated with news coverage. There was rarely a shortage of information or images emerging from Dhahran and Riyadh. Yet, what the public saw so much of was, for the most part, only what the military wanted or allowed them to see. Trotted before the world's cameras were human interest stories of the difficult lives of American men and women waiting in the desert of Saudi Arabia, displays of America's high-tech gadgets and machines, heroes and villains acting in clearly plotted story lines, video game images of air attacks, and perfect, clean weapons destroying facilities rather than people.

By the time of Operation Desert Storm, the military had learned that to keep the media happy it needed to satiate its tremendous appetite for new stories and captivating images. By supplying the media with pre-packaged "story ideas" and keeping it occupied with escorted tours, the Pentagon was able to hold the press at bay for most of the operation. Despite the discussion during and after the war about censorship and restrictions, "the most interesting aspect of [the Gulf War] was the fact that the screen was filled up by material -- briefings, press conferences, video tapes -- that was supplied by the government. The issue was not so much keeping things away, but how much from one perspective dominated the screen." By feeding the media a constant stream of light snacks consisting of hometown soldier stories and hi-tech hardware displays, the military kept the press away from the war's growing smorgasbord of death and destruction.

As often as possible the Pentagon took its case to the American people with telegenic, straight-talking generals who were very unlike the image of the stiff-backed military men of Vietnam's 5 o'clock follies. Satellite technology and Pentagon public relations skill meant that the military no longer needed to depend on the press to send its message to the American people. When "authorities can speak directly to the audience via live television rather than indirectly via the interpretations with which journalists have traditionally informed their readers and viewers of what was going on, the gap between government and governed is narrowed substantially." Through increasingly sophisticated means in all three of these operations the military made it very difficult for any perspective other than the official one to make its way to the American public.

By the time of the Gulf War, the Pentagon had learned effectively how to break and shape events before the media could do it first. "The ability of the American-led coalition to drive its military message home and abroad by superior technology and controlling international communications systems and news organizations... demonstrated... that the New World Order and the New World Information Order had merged into one." Just as the inaccurate front page headline is always more powerful than the next day's retraction and apology -- the ability to break the news in the age of instant global telecommunications is the ability to spin public discourse in a desired direction. Either the media did not realize the scope of the military's manipulation and management or it was a willing partner in it. But during the Gulf War the "voices of [Dick] Cheney, Colin Powell, and Norman Shwarzkopf dominated. The whole truth came later if at all. That may be the price the newspaper reader and the television viewer will pay for a successful war. But it is not a price journalists should easily pay. And next time, if there is no brisk success, they will not be thanked by anyone for paying it."

The memories of Vietnam and the pressures of constantly changing technology have only served to widen the gap that naturally exists between the media and the military. The natures of these two institutions and the people who are members of them are often polar opposites from each other. When the press and the armed forces come together during American military operations their meetings are a predictable clash of cultures.

A 1982 U.S. Army War College study on the attitude of the military towards the media at the time concluded, "In any future conflict, the overall attitude of senior Army officers toward the media would be extremely negative. The majority of officers don't trust the media to tell the truth." This prediction was proved to be correct a year later during the invasion of Grenada. In general, there could be few other professions "more ready to misunderstand each other than journalists and soldiers." During the decade between Vietnam and Grenada members of the media and the military had virtually no experience dealing with each other. Few young officers under the age of thirty in Grenada had any combat experience in which they would have dealt with journalists on a personal level. Their only impression of the press was the second-hand knowledge passed down to them from their elders' negative experiences in Vietnam. Likewise, since the end of the draft in 1972, few college educated journalists had much personal experience dealing with the military.

The the press and the armed forces are two completely different cultures. Whereas the military stresses conformity, deference to authority, discipline, group loyalty, and cohesion, the press is typically individualistic, independent, competitive, and suspicious of authority. Journalists tend to be creative and always searching for new angles whereas soldiers are more content with traditional, tried and true approaches. Along the same lines, reporters are often liberal and skeptical while soldiers can be conservative and accepting. The military is an extremely hierarchical institution with great inner pride and loyalties. It does not function as a democracy and often does not make sense to civilians with scant knowledge of military matters. The press, meanwhile, is the label applied to an extremely diffuse group of magazines, newspapers, and radio and television networks whose interests are often completely different and conflicting. At times it seems to be a ridiculous oversimplification even to say there is such thing as "the media."

Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf illustrated that there is an extreme lack of understanding between the media and the military. A 1985 study showed that more than half of a group of Army officers surveyed had during their careers less than one day training about the media and more than 71% of them had three days or less. According to Twentieth Century Fund Task Force Member, Richard Halloran,

The press and the military have also separated over the last decade as the armed forces have professionalized and become an all-volunteer force. This has created a rift between the military and the American civilian population as well. According to Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor, after Vietnam, "the military settled into the relative isolation of self-contained ghettos and lost touch with a changing America.... A sense of moral elitism emerged within the armed forces which is apparent today to any civilian" who deals with it.

This great divide between the press and the military, however, was not just the fault of the military. By the time of the Grenada invasion reporters were also rather unaware of the realities of the modern military. Journalist Henry Allen wrote, "After the draft ended, virtually none of them [journalists] even knew anyone who had been in the military, much less served themselves. They were part of what sociologists called the new class, the governing class, the professional class. They were a long way from most Americans." While the military made somewhat of an effort after Grenada to educate officers on the necessary role of the press in a democracy, no comparable efforts were made in journalism schools or mid-career programs to educate news people about the military. Clearly journalists had changed. The old image of the low paid but high-spirited regular fellow drinking beer with the police as the city edition was put to bed "gave way to the person shaped by television: the anchorman or anchorwoman, cool, comely, and paid more than the president." Many felt that by the 1980s members of the media had lost touch with the man on the street. A letter to the editor of a Los Angeles newspaper just after the invasion of Grenada expressed the feelings of many Americans that "journalists are so out of touch with majority values such as honor, duty, and service to the country, that they are alienated from the very people they purport to serve." A 1983 National Opinion Research Center survey showed that only 13.7% of Americans had a "great deal of confidence in the press." Complaints of a liberally biased media still continue today and were heard throughout Operations Just Cause and Desert Storm. According to one critic,

From Grenada to Panama to the Persian Gulf this clash of cultures widened the gap between the military and the media to neither of their advantage, nor to the benefit of the public and government which these institutions are supposed to serve.

Though it is sometimes attributed to Edmund Burke, the term "fourth estate" was coined by English statesman and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. In traditional pre-French revolution European society the clergy, the nobility, and the common people were referred to as society's three estates. Observing the power of the modern British press in 1828, Macaulay added, the "gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm." Since the days of Macaulay's observation, the press has grown even more powerful, especially in the United States where the framers of the Constitution made certain in the First Amendment to grant the fourth estate freedom from government interference. Just as the power of the American media has increased, particularly in the last thirty years with the advent of television, so too has the American military grown well past what the nation's founders ever would have imagined. If Macaulay were alive today he could very well have said that "the Pentagon in which the soldiers sit has become a fifth estate of the realm."

The press and the military have played increasingly significant roles in society throughout the course of American history, and it is ironic that these two fundamental institutions of American democracy are considered by many to be out of touch with the mainstream and incompatible with each other. The constitutional roles of the press and the military are similar to each other in important ways, yet, during wartime, the fourth estate and the armed forces are inevitably at odds with each other. The omnipresent controversy between these institutions involves two essential cornerstones of democracy: the fundamental right of the people to know what the government is doing, and the government's ability to effectively defend American interests at home and abroad. Grenada, Panama, and the Gulf War showed these two institutions struggling to come to grips not just with each other, but with their own changing roles as well.

The institutions of the press and the military are vital to the functioning and defense of American democracy. Their roles are defined in the Constitution itself, and both have played significant parts in American history since the founding of the nation. In a broad sense, the roles of the press and the military are actually quite similar. It is the fundamental task of both institutions to protect and defend American interests and democratic principles. More specifically, the military's purpose is to defend America from foreign and domestic threats, while the press's role is to vigilantly uproots and expose threats to democratic institutions, practices, and goals. Both institutions have their own professional standards and codes of conduct, are independent and feel they have the need and the right to do their jobs without outside interference. But both can also be rather self-important and haughty about the significance of their roles in American society. Though they defend the same values and are seemingly playing for the same team, the press and the military have always had a difficult relationship.

From the beginning of the nation's existence, the free press has been an essential element of American democracy. In The Federalist Papers #84, Alexander Hamilton defined the role of the press as the "expeditious messenger" that would help concerned citizens "sound the alarm" should government become involved in "any pernicious project." The functioning of a democracy depends heavily on the education of its citizens, thus, one of the primary jobs of the American press is to keep the public educated and informed. As Sydney Schanberg noted, democracy "is a messy system; often inefficient and clumsy, but it functions because the public is included and not kept in the dark. It's worth reminding ourselves that the most supremely efficient systems in the world are dictatorships where the press is completely controlled." And as journalist Michael Kinsley said, "If you are worried that dictatorships have an unfair advantage in world affairs, your quarrel is with democracy, not with journalism." The press in a democracy must be the link between the people and their institutions and the watchdog over those who hold power. The information provided in television and newspapers is what the American people use to formulate their opinions and decide their choices of policies. Ideally, the mission of the press is nothing less than making sure that the public has the best and most accurate information possible.

As Grenada, Panama, and the Gulf War illustrated, accurate information can be quite difficult to come by during wartime as the military often, and at times justifiably, has little trust in the modern American press.

The military also justifies its restrictiveness in the belief that in times of national emergency such as war, some freedoms must be subordinated to the winning of the struggle if the very government that guarantees those freedoms is to survive. The media-military paradox is that freedom of the press may have to be limited during war to assure that all of the privileges of the Constitution are still intact once the war is over. The military will point out, "a democracy in wartime can survive without a First Amendment,... but it cannot survive without a successful military defense."

As these three American military operations illustrated, during war, freedom of the press is in its most precarious position and its role is not necessarily the same as it is at other times. Nevertheless, even during conflict it is not the job of the press to cringe at authority or to jump on the bandwagon and unequivocally support the cause, no matter how popular. The American press, "when it accompanies the nation's soldiers into battle, performs a unique role. It serves as eyewitness; it forges a bond between the citizen and the soldier; and... it tries to avoid manipulation either by officials or by citizens of the government through accurate independent reporting." Now that the military has the ability to broadcast live press briefings via satellite and with the sophistication of the Pentagon's public relations operation, the American press is beginning to seem like an unnecessary middle man during warfare. It would be, however, a tremendous loss to democracy to allow independent reporters to continue to be shoved aside by a military that no longer wants to be filtered and critiqued by the fourth estate. "The notion of press as surrogate achieves its greatest legitimacy during times of foreign conflict, when the public's theoretical ability to gather its own news is at its nadir, and the government's grant of priority to the press is at its height."

Fear of the press often has little to do with operational security and more to do with fear of the facts. Americans seemed quite willing in Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf to sacrifice their right to know as long as their cause was winning. Turning a blind eye to some aspects of war worked reasonably well since the U.S. won these military operations quickly and overwhelmingly. But military operations may not always run so smoothly. "Some people don't want to know too much about [a] war for the same reason they don't want to know too much about what the police are doing, or, for that matter, what their teenagers are doing.... three out of four people who are afraid of the truth about [a] war wouldn't mind hearing it themselves but know that, if journalists unleash it, immediately it will fall into the hands of millions of damn fools who lack their own common sense. In Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf the military did not trust the press, and the press did not trust itself.

The December 1992 Operation Restore Hope to Somalia makes for an interesting postscript to this discussion of media-military relations since the invasion of Grenada. Though the relief mission to Somalia was quite different in many ways from the three major American military operations before it, Restore Hope highlighted exactly what is wrong with the modern relationship between the press and the armed forces. Before dawn on Wednesday December 16, 1992 an advance guard of Navy SEALS landed and secured a beach near the city of Mogadishu. As the SEALS hit the beach, they were confronted not by Somali warlords or hostile gunmen, but by a horde of journalists armed with bright lights and whirring television cameras. As the "surprise" dead-of-night landing was broadcast live on CNN and other networks, the black-faced young commandos were like confused deer caught in the headlights of an on-rushing media locomotive. The press in Mogadishu had been tipped off by the military as to when and where the SEALS would be landing. This staged military mission, performed almost solely to give the media something to look at, shows the fundamental problem of the modern media-military relationship. Rather than giving them the freedom to cover the important and substantial elements of military operations, the Pentagon tries to keep the media busy with carefully managed tours and controlled events such as the Mogadishu beach landing. For its part, the media plays along with this since the Pentagon public relations machinery is able to provide it with tantalizing visuals and interesting new stories. If the military is only going to supply the American public with carefully orchestrated media events, then the press should allow the Pentagon to hire Hollywood producers to cover military operations rather than allowing itself to be used free of charge. Though Operation Restore Hope may have shown that the media and the military have developed a better working relationship since the antagonism of Grenada, ultimately, this new form of partnership does not deliver the best, most accurate information to the American public.

It is crucial for a number of reasons that the press has the freedom to independently observe American military operations. First, the role of the press as a free and independent observer and as a crucial player in the checks and balances is ever so much more vital in an era in which bureaucratic, executive power, especially in the realm of foreign policy, has become so great.

Second, for the sake of the families whose members are servicemen and women doing dangerous work a long way from home, the media is one of the few ways for these people to keep in touch and know what is happening. Soldiers also become anxious about press restrictions, feeling as one Desert Storm serviceman did, "You start to wonder what they're keeping from us." As Walter Cronkite noted, "It is drummed into us, and we take pride in the fact, that these are 'our boys (and girls),' 'our troops,' 'our forces' in the Gulf. They are indeed, and it is our war. Our elected representatives in Congress gave our elected president permission to wage it. We had better darned well know what they are doing in our name." Additionally, Americans need an independent press to assess the performance of their soldiers and their equipment. Military spending takes such a tremendous bite out of the U.S. tax dollar that the press must be able to observe military operations so that Congress and voters have some sort of independent basis to judge how well their money is being spent, and decide on how, in the future, Pentagon budgets should be allocated. As the Patriot missile proved after the Persian Gulf War, the military is not above misleading the press, the public, and Congress in order to enhance appropriations for itself. Finally, and most importantly, an independent free press is necessary for the American public and policy makers to judge the implementation, wisdom, and morality of the most sensitive and deadly sort of foreign policy a nation chooses to execute -- war.

It is wholly inappropriate in this society to leave the decision of whether or not to bring the press along solely to the military. Freedom of information is a civilian matter. The press's job is to make certain that debate continues even when a military action is popular and supported by the public. "When politicians close ranks behind a military action, journalists must have the intellectual independence and imagination to supply the critical counterweight on their own. If not, Americans will continue, over and over again, to find themselves crying over spilt blood." If the restrictions and information management tactics of Grenada, Panama, and the Gulf War continue to exist and develop, the American press will soon find that its main function during war is to read and distribute Pentagon, White House and State Department press releases free of charge. By so heavily restricting the press the military is in danger of doing exactly what it is supposed to defend against. As Zechariah Chafee Jr., a leading scholar of the press, warned in 1941, "Let us not in our anxiety to protect ourselves from foreign tyrants initiate some of their worst acts, and sacrifice in the process of national defense the very liberties which we are defending."

As the media and military have changed and developed since the 1983 invasion of Grenada, certain factors have remained constant and continued to define the important relationship between these two institutions. Most significantly, for both the press and the military, Vietnam has lurked in the shadows of all of these military operations. From the total exclusion of Urgent Fury to the symbolic inclusion of Just Cause to the manipulations of Desert Storm, the experiences and memories of Vietnam were what dictated the media-military relationship. Advances in telecommunications technology were the second significant factor in these three invasions. The advent of instantaneous satellite transmission of video images from remote locations to a global audience has irrevocably changed the press as well as the armed forces. Because of this technology the media during international crisis has such potential power that it is no longer a neutral observer of war, but a significant player in strategic and political considerations.

In response to the growth of press capabilities, the military became increasingly sophisticated in its ability to manipulate and manage news and information emerging from war. As the Gulf War illustrated, and then the incident in Somalia later confirmed, the world's viewing public is able to see aspects of military operations live that were never before accessible, like the pinpoint bombing of enemy facilities or a secret nighttime beach landing. Yet, by the overwhelming attention paid to the images released by the Pentagon, the official perspective is allowed to dominate the television screen, open debate is stymied, and the underlying political and historical issues of the reasons for the conflict are ignored. Rather than working to change this, the American press has often served as a willing partner to the Pentagon's news management tactics. Though the press and the military are constantly changing and a healthy tension will naturally always exist between these two institutions, their relationship is crucial to the smooth functioning of American democracy. The developments of Grenada, Panama, and the Gulf War have shown that there is a need to reassess whether the media and the military are functioning together in the best interest of the public they are both supposed to serve.