Open Access For Media Troubles
Pentagon 'Embedded' Reporters Become Mixed Blessing
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 31, 2003; Page A25

"We just thought the natural challenges of broadcasting from the field would restrict it," the official said. "Had we known it would be this wide open, we might have considered restrictions."

This article discusses the growing concern over the photos and stories that are coming out of the current Iraqi conflict through embedded reporters. The pentagon and military officials have begun to second-guess themselves in allowing reporters to accompany the troops into conflicts, being “embedded” with different units (both Army and Marines).

After the complaints of numerous reporters and news corporations following the first Iraqi war; over the pool system and attempts to limit the access of information. This time around the pentagon and military advisors decided to allow reporters to accompany troops. Now they are regretting it, the uncensored gritty, violent images being delivered by the various war correspondents in Iraq, are causing a growing concern.

Officials are rethinking the whole system once again, trying to figure out a way to rein in some of these reporters and their stories. They have already limited access and use to satellite phones for reporters out of a well-founded fear that they may compromise or give away a unit’s position. (This has already happened once during the beginning of the war, when Geraldo Rivera foolishly reported the position of the unit he was with) The main thing, according to this article, that the pentagon wants is to find a way to once more gain control of the access and flow of information that is coming out of Iraq. The press can and has through the negative images and negative reports, swayed the public’s opinion from being supportive of the war to being against the war.