Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 17, 1991 TAG: 9102170292
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY ROBERT M. O'NEIL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Some believe that severe restrictions are essential to protect not only military interests, but also the welfare of journalists themselves. Others recognize that wartime may require special rules, but feel as I do that we need broad media access no less, and perhaps even more, in these times.
The case for maximum access draws on familiar principles. Most basic is our national commitment to a historically uncensored press. That commitment was firmly set in our Constitution just centuries ago, and has been consistently reaffirmed over the years.
The creators of our Bill of Rights declared that Congress should make no law abridging the freedom of the press. Those who had just fought a war for independence did not limit that guarantee to times of peace. A free press was seen back then, and has remained, a vital catalyst to an informed and responsible electorate.
There are other considerations of only slightly lesser gravity: War carries an unusually high risk of rumor or mischief; a vigilant press, free to probe all parts of the theater of combat, at and behind the lines, offers the best hope of checking those rumors. A vigorous, uncensored press may also offer the most effective antidote to insidious enemy propaganda.
Finally, and surely not least, morale and support at home during a war halfway around the globe depends on citizen confidence that we are being told the truth - at least as much of it as can be told without endangering the lives of our troops. (An opinion poll just after the start of war reveals that half the American people do not believe they are being told by the military the whole story of what is happening in the gulf.)
The present picture is not all bad from a free-press perspective. It could be worse, and very nearly was. Defense officials last August excluded the media from coverage of early military mobilization in the gulf. Reporters and editors experienced other difficulties in the early months.
When draft guidelines on press coverage first surfaced in December, unprecedented censorship seemed in store. Media representatives vehemently objected. Several objectionable features were dropped - forbidding impromptu interviews with military personnel, for example, and requiring that all interviews be on record.
Concerns now focus on restrictions that survived the cut and became effective with the first air sorties. Two rules are especially troubling - one that subjects all dispatches to "security review" in Saudi Arabia before being sent home, and the other that confines coverage to designated pools, whose members must be accompanied by military escorts at all times.
These restrictions can be faulted at several levels. One is historical: Before 1983, the American media had wide if not unlimited access to area of combat. Though censorship formally existed during World War II, correspondents were at or near the front in nearly all campaigns. They accompanied the first waves that landed in France on D-day.
Despite efforts by General MacArthur to curb some coverage during the Korean War, the press was present at the front lines. Even during Vietnam, reporters were generally free to go when and where they wished. Restrictions were few, as were instances of censorship. Journalists were even taken along on military transports.
United States involvement in Grenada marked a watershed. Journalists were initially barred from the field. Reporters' activities and itineraries were later severely restricted by the military. A Defense Department panel the next year made sweeping proposals for press access. But the media pool this panel urged was not activated when the United States invaded Panama in 1989; those reporters who later got to Panama were never fully able to overcome the effects of their initial exclusion.
It is too early to know just how burdensome the new security review process will be. But there have been a few disturbing portents - a military reviewer's demand that pilots returning from the first sorties not be described as "giddy" (which sounded too Rambo-like) but as "proud;" and unexplained delays as long as 53 hours in obtaining clearance for dispatches. (Delays also have been imposed to permit defense officials to make the first announcement of key developments.)
The pool procedure also needs to be tested in the coming weeks. It may distinguish unfairly journalists from large and small media; reporters for the major networks, dailies and news services are likelier to be chosen for the pools. Once in the pool, they have seats at the feast, while their less fortunate peers must await the crumbs from the journalistic table - as lawsuits already filed by two smaller media groups make clear.
All this seems inimical to freedom of the press as we know and value it. Wartime is different, of course. Courts have sustained some restrictions that would not be tolerated at other times. Even when the nation is at peace, judges defer to the military in certain matters, especially those affecting military bases and personnel.
Yet the Supreme Court has consistently warned that any form of prior restraint is inherently suspect - as witness the clear majority who would not allow even temporary suppression of the possibly sensitive and damaging Pentagon Papers despite pleas of national security. Nothing less than "publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops" would justify such a ban.
Justice Black may have put it best in his Pentagon Papers case concurrence: "The government's power to censor the press was abolished so the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people."
Responsible journalists do not ask complete liberty in covering events in the gulf. What they seek - and what readers, listeners and viewers back home deserve - is not to have military censors monitor every interview, second-guess the choice of words in describing emotions or events, or delay urgent dispatches beyond the point of timeliness.
The framers of the First Amendment might well have differed on the wisdom of going to war in the gulf. But they would have no doubt the American people should learn everything about this war that does not place our troops in peril.
by CNB