The Post and the Whole Picture in Iraq

I have even found criticism of the coverage in the newsroom. Norrelle Combest, a Post copy aide, came by my office to say that The Post should cover more of the kind of support work done by the D.C. National Guard. She's a specialist fourth grade in the Guard and wants to see stories that present "the whole picture . . . something besides combat."

The Post's Jackie Spinner, who returned from Iraq in November after a year reporting there, sympathizes with these readers. "I deeply understand their need to read about a sense of mission." She covered reconstruction during most of her time there. "I wrote great news stories about reconstruction, but now it's much more difficult to get there.

"I don't think people understand how dangerous it is to travel. You're always a kidnapping target. I couldn't roam freely around the country and find these stories now because it's not safe." And she said there is a reluctance among reporters to automatically go to where the military thinks a good story might be: "We don't want to be manipulated."

"But when it's between covering a school opening in Kirkuk and 82 Iraqis getting killed in a bombing, the bombing is going to win. Death and killing are more of a priority." Spinner's book from her year in Iraq, "Tell Them I Didn't Cry: A Young Journalist's Story of Joy, Loss and Survival in Iraq," has just been published to good reviews.

Galloway and Lapan used almost identical words to say they see relations between the military and the media headed the way of Vietnam. Galloway said: "It's not at that point yet, but there are signs of it." Lapan said: "I see things headed in the wrong direction. I don't think we're at the point we were post-Vietnam, but it's headed that way."

A Gallup poll of the public, the military and the media, commissioned for a McCormick Tribune Foundation conference on military-press relations, showed some sobering numbers. Seventy percent of the military believes the media are too negative and only 20 percent of the public believe the coverage is balanced. Seventy-two percent of the military think media access to military officials is sufficient. Only 16 percent of those in the media agreed that the level of access is sufficient.

The Pentagon doesn't depend on the news media to get out the military's story. It maintains numerous Web sites, and Central Command, which oversees Iraq operations, has an increasingly sophisticated digital video and image distribution system to get the military's story out to radio and television stations as well as hometown newspapers. Four hundred video clips and almost 100 radio interviews go out every month.

The Pentagon also is reaching out to bloggers writing about the military. Pro-war blogger Bill Roggio was invited late last year to embed with the Marines, and a story in The Post quoting him brought about 100 critical e-mails generated off Roggio's blog, http://www.billroggio.com/ . Roggio was mentioned in the lead paragraph of a Dec. 26 story by Jonathan Finer and Doug Struck, then doing a rotation in Iraq, on the military's efforts to get its story told favorably. Finer and Struck also wrote about the military's controversial Information Operations program, where Iraqi news media are asked to do stories that focus on efforts to help Iraqis' quality of life and to counter insurgents' attempts to influence coverage. Those stories are often backed up by cash payments.

Roggio was furious that he was mentioned in the same story with journalists paid to write favorable pieces. He said it looked like "I must be part of a nefarious scheme by the military to influence the perceptions on Iraq. All they did was extend an invite that is no different than extending an invite to any reporter. I was invited on my merit. I felt I earned the right to be embedded. I took the risk of leaving my family and job and financing this with donations. Then to see it put in this light, I felt very wronged."

Finer and Hoffman said any close reading of the story would have told readers that Roggio was not paid by the military. That is correct, but a more expansive explanation of the difference between the two programs would have been helpful.

Roggio embedded under the a Pentagon public affairs program that deals with the news media and runs military Web sites. Information Operations, on the other hand, is basically meant to influence coverage. The issue of blurred lines between the two has been raised both by the military and the press.

Lapan arranged Roggio's embed near Fallujah. In Lapan's view: "We have invited bloggers . . . to embed in an effort to tell the story. Bloggers, in my mind, are just another means to communicate accurate, truthful information about what we do. These are not Information Operations any more than embedding a reporter from The Post or the New York Times is."

"The crux of the matter: Public affairs . . . is meant to inform the public. Information Operations is meant to influence our adversary and local populations. PA is primarily directed at American audiences. IO is primarily directed at enemy and supporting foreign publics. By law, IO is not to be directed at the American people. The purpose of IO is to influence; the purpose of PA is to inform," Lapan said.

Finer, in an e-mail, said: "The decision to embed Bill Roggio, a widely read military blogger whose views on the war are well known, came at a time when the military was increasingly expressing frustration with coverage they were receiving in the mainstream media. It also came amid the revelation of efforts to influence coverage in the Iraqi press by paying journalists to publish favorable stories. The story sought only to document what appeared to be a growing effort on the part of the military, and the insurgency, to control the dissemination of information from Iraq. Incidentally, the military, as well as independent analysts, seemed to agree the war over information was picking up on both sides and the Marines I spoke with did not object to the portrayal of Roggio as part of that effort."

After spending time over the past few months talking to journalists and the military in Iraq and at the Pentagon, I kept coming back to two quotes.

One is from Bradley Graham, a longtime Pentagon correspondent for The Post who said at the McCormack Tribune conference: "With the nation embroiled as it is in a difficult conflict and national opinion increasingly divided over what should be done, it's particularly important for the media and military to try to get their relationship right."

The other is from military correspondent Thomas E. Ricks: "Blaming the media is like blaming the rain. It is part of the battlefield environment, and smart officers figure out how to use the environment to their advantage." Ricks is writing a book about the war, which will be published in September. The title is "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq."

Deborah Howell is The Washington Post's ombudsman, and can be reached at 202-334-7582 or at ombudsman@washpost.com. A shorter version of this column appeared in The Post on March 26, 2006.