GW Veterans Discuss their Views on Media Coverage of War

By Emma Thomson

Wednesday evening the GW Veterans and Office of Veteran Services presented War in the Media: A Veteran’s Perspective before a diverse crowd in the Marvin Center Amphitheater. The panel, moderated by School of Media & Public Affairs Professor Michael Shanahan, discussed the role of the media in war coverage, the interactions between soldiers and reporters, the embedding process, and the transition for veterans from the Army to life at GW.

Participants in the panel included current George Washington students and Army veterans Mitchell Bent, Elena Kim, and Dominic Amaral. They were joined by national correspondent for McClatchy Newspaper Hannah Allam and foreign policy-defense analyst Andrew Lubin, both of whom participated in Iraq as embedded soldiers and have extensive experience in combat zone reporting.

The panel began with a discussion on the issue of embedding, a program in which the military places a civilian press member in a specific unit to record and report on its activity. Not surprisingly, the members of the panel all had different individual experiences with their respective reporters. Bent  described his own experience with an embedded reporter. He remembered when a journalist assigned to his unit witnessed a misfired mortar that hit a civilian’s home. Though Bent insists the incident was an accident, he recalls the journalist’s immediate response as, “Oh my God, you just mortared civilians.”

According to Bent, the reporter’s words inflicted devastating shame on the men who had fired the mortar, which had been aimed at the enemy, and made them, “wish they had never been born.” As a result of his personal experience, Bent perceives the media as an institution “not to be trusted.”

Allam passionately responded to Bent’s remarks. She protested that journalists are not in war zones to cover up soldiers’ mistakes but to report the truth.  She said they are not cheerleaders, nor are embedded press members obligated to write positive stories if nothing positive is happening.   

Some veterans want to see more graphic depictions of the war. Amaral, who encountered many embedded journalists during his service, expressed his desire for news sources to publish the gory images of the realities of war. In addition, he stated his frustration with civilians who do not understand war or who base their opinions on the war scenes from video games or movies.  Amaral supported the use of embedded journalists their use as long as they follow the ground rules set by the military and do not interfere with missions.     

Kim, who during her 5 year career served as a Human Intelligence Collector through a 15 month tour in Iraq, stressed the importance of covering not only veterans’ issues, but female veterans’ transition back into civilian life. As the only female veteran on the panel, she added a unique perspective to military themes often seen as inherently masculine. According to her, transitioning into college life was even more difficult as a female veteran due to the lack of community among other returning women soldiers.    

Before the panel began, Shanahan, a Vietnam veteran, provided a history of media-military relationships beginning with the Civil War. Mentioning Lincoln’s struggles to raise support following the publication of Matthew Brady’s photographs depicting fallen soldiers, Shanahan stressed the importance of the media in gauging public perception of war. Particularly in the Korean Conflict and Vietnam War, the media played an immense role in conveying war themes and images to the American public. Shanahan noted that the press has the ability to influence the public, and also must use the information given by the government. As an example, he remembered the misinformation given about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that was used by both the president and the media to justify the war.