Media Excluded at Launching of U.S. Attack

Some American news organizations said Tuesday that they are considering protesting the Pentagon’s apparent decision to exclude reporters and photographers from on-the-scene coverage of the air strike against Libya.

But editors at other major news outlets said they were pleased with the Defense Department’s handling of the situation, especially with the military’s decision to fly reporters to a Mediterranean aircraft carrier hours after the Libyan strikes had ceased.

The Libyan action marked the second time in less than a month that U.S. journalists were not present to cover the beginning of Mediterranean military actions, despite an informal agreement to give a “pool” of reporters notice of such events.

Reporters also were not allowed to witness the start of Navy maneuvers last month in the Gulf of Sidra, in which jets bombed a Libyan missile base and sank at least two gunboats.

The New York Times, which protested the maneuvers decision, said it probably also will complain about the latest action, “but I’m not certain it will make much difference,” the newspaper’s Washington editor, Bill Kovach, said Tuesday.

However, Robert D. McFarland, NBC News vice president and Washington bureau chief, said the Pentagon “showed good faith” in flying journalists early Tuesday into the Mediterranean, even though the military action had ended.

“We obviously would have preferred a pool setup” allowing reporters to cover the action from the start, McFarland said, but “we’re not upset. They got people out there pretty quickly, in fact.”

A small pool of journalists was flown from Naples, Italy, to the aircraft carrier America on Tuesday, hours after U.S. F-111s had bombed military targets in Tripoli and Benghazi and returned to posts on Mediterranean ships and at bases in Britain.

Richard Harwood, Washington Post deputy managing editor, also said that the newspaper was satisfied with the Pentagon’s handling of press coverage of the latest incident.

Those outlets and others complained vigorously in 1983 after the Reagan Administration barred reporters for several days from covering a U.S.-led military invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada. Later discussions produced an informal pact under which a small number of journalists are to be secretly summoned in advance of U.S. military actions and flown by the Pentagon to the scene of operations.

The agreement has been tested several times and usually--but not always--has worked without any breach of military secrecy.

Alvin Shuster, foreign editor of The Los Angeles Times, said he is “professionally dissatisfied” with the Pentagon decision to exclude reporters from Monday’s battle, saying that the military “missed an opportunity to give the press a chance to demonstrate that it can be trusted.” He said The Times is considering filing a complaint with the Pentagon.

“What the press will get now” from being aboard Mediterranean ships, he said, “will be interesting but will border on the irrelevant.”