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.
