Access Denied

The article by Neil Hickey describes the how restrictive the government has been with the media in terms of how they cover the war in Afganistan. The journalists covering the war had two problems with how they were able to obtain the information they needed. The first problem was that they "did not have reasonable access to land and sea bases from which air attacks were launched" and " little or no opportunity to interview pilots upon their return from their missions". The second problem they encountered was that the "information is funneled to journalists in briefings by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and upper-echelon military officers", therefore they can not depend on that information solely because it is unbias. One point in the article that I found important was that most of the operation in the beginning was fought by special forces which means the mission was a secret. Something I strongly disagreed with in this article was the fact that when the Marine commanders stopped journalists from taping soldiers who were killed and wounded by friendly fire, the journalists wanted an apology. I feel as though that is not something that they american public needs to see. I understand that it may sway peoples feelings toward or againist the war but if it were my loved one that was killed, I would not want everyone to see him or her like that. On one hand I feel like these images do not need to be shown on television but on the other, some anti-war people may use these as a tool to get their point across. The media wants to show the grusome aspect of the war put do not want to put a "real" face to that person. You do not see who that person was when you see them dead, you see them as a dead soldier. The media needs to put a personality to that soldier. With that, the media has a hard time because the government may think that these images will make things worse.