Report Indicates Happiness All Around On Embed Program, But No Downside?

Editor & Publisher's Joe Strupp has the scoop about a new Pentagon-sponsored study which has found "the embedding of journalists around the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003 was deemed an almost unqualified success by both military officials and journalists." The study was conducted in 2004 but was only recently authorized for release. The sturdy "involved interviews with 136 military personnel and 104 editors and embedded reporters between May 2003 and April 2004." Strupp summarizes:

"While it has been generally known for some time that both the military and media outlets view the embed program -- which continues in a much-reduced fashion today -- as a net positive, this study is by far the most extensive examination of the program and includes remarkably few criticisms from bureau chiefs and reporters. All of them, at least in this report, state flatly that traveling with, and being protected by, the soldiers did not in any way compromise their reporting (although that would seem to be an unknowable). The report summarizes: 'Bonding did not hinder their ability to do what they were sent to do -- report the truth.'"

"Besides its overall assessments, the lengthy report is filled with previously unknown or little-known facts. For example, it reveals that only three embeds were permanently banished from the program during the first year, with another two dozen 'disembedded' for a time; a late change in the original ground rules banned participants from possessing alcohol or 'pornographic materials'; 67 females embedded (9.7% of the total); the oldest embed was 75, the youngest 23; Thuraya was the satellite phone of choice; and the journalists got gas masks for free -- but had to pay $4,123 for shipping."

I wonder though, and this is just me totally thinking out loud here, if there wasn't a downside to this entire experiment that's not mentioned in the report. I'm not talking about some sort of Stockholm syndrome (a common criticism), where embedded reporters began sympathizing with their units to the extent that their objectivity was compromised. Far from that, I would submit that the embed program gave hundreds of journalists a real understanding of what the brave men and women of our armed forces go through. That can't help but be a valuable perspective for a reporter purporting to, well, report.

But I can't help but wonder, before the fact, whether the media as a whole was preoccupied by the expectation of covering a war, especially one which would provide them such close-up access, and whether that took attention away from questions about why. We have certainly seen the hand-wringing from the fourth estate in the post-war era and a lot of debate over going to war after the fact – a closing of the barn door once the horse, cow and chicken have escaped. There's no way to tell whether a more vigorous debate prior to the war would have made any difference whatsoever. But you wonder if the planning and expectation of having such unprecedented access to the front lines, and the technological means to deliver it almost immediately, was more interesting to some at the time than debating aluminum tubes and yellow cake uranium.

Again, it's just a thought.