Media Restrictions Follow Reports On Wounded Veterans
The Washington Post recently reported on the "other" side of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where soldiers "encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas," as the Post put it. Newsweek also ran cover story on wounded veterans struggling to recover and Bob Woodruff's recent ABC documentary about his own recovery also examined the challenges to get proper medical care that other veterans with traumatic brain injuries are encountering within the VA system.
In the wake of such reporting, reports are circulating that soldiers at Walter Reed have been instructed not to speak with the media. The Army Times wrote yesterday that soldiers in the center's Medical Hold Unit "say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media." Noting that it is "unusual for soldiers to have daily inspections after Basic Training," the paper writes that one soldier told them that "some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media."
Following up on that report, Editor & Publisher spoke with several other military reporters to find that the Army Times' report "is not the first case of tightened restrictions." The president of Military Reporters and Editors told E&P: "It is starting to look like it is becoming a policy in some areas where they are not allowing reporters on the base unless it is an absolutely positively good news story. The military is making it harder and harder to do stories on bases, as far as doing man on the street interviews."
He added, "They are trying to manage the news. There has to be some middle ground and in the past there has been middle ground."
Today brings more details about some other restrictions. The New York Post reports that the Pentagon "has forced CNN and the Discovery Channel to suspend projects being filmed at Walter Reed Medical Center and other military branches" as the Department of Defense conducts a review of the medical center following the Washington Post's reporting.