Rumsfeld OKs Principles for Media Access to Troops

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld formally accepted a set of principles Thursday that the Pentagon and the media agreed to after the Gulf War to ensure open and independent coverage of future military action.

Several reporters who attended an hourlong Pentagon meeting with Rumsfeld and his press aides came away feeling “cautiously optimistic that we’re headed in the right direction” on gaining more access to U.S. troops, said Robin Sproul, Washington bureau chief for ABC News.

Journalists praised Rumsfeld for meeting with them personally and for “being very open to our point of view,” in the words of Carl Leubsdorf, Washington bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News.

“I don’t think any of us is totally satisfied, but we’re talking, and that’s a good thing,” Leubsdorf said.

Others who attended the meeting were openly skeptical, though, about how much access the media ultimately would have to the war effort.

“My sense is that we’re getting words and no action,” said Tom Ricks, Pentagon reporter for the Washington Post. “They have these periodic meetings [with media representatives] and take our temperature to see if they can get away with stalling for another week. The bottom line is we now have thousands of deployed U.S. forces and almost no [firsthand] coverage. I’ve never seen a situation like this.”

Journalists have been pressing for direct access to U.S. military forces--specifically, to have reporters on the Kitty Hawk, the base for special operations units, and to be allowed access to troops in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and other countries in the Central Asian theater.

“The answer so far has been no to every request,” said Sandy Johnson, Washington bureau chief for Associated Press.

Rumsfeld and Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon representative, told those at Thursday’s meeting that the request to go aboard the Kitty Hawk was under active consideration and would have to be approved by Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in the region.

Clark Hoyt, Washington editor for Knight Ridder newspapers, said that he later asked Clarke to reconcile Rumsfeld’s comments with word from Bahrain, where he said reporters are being told, “You’ll never get on the Kitty Hawk.”

Clarke told him, “Go with the secretary,” Hoyt said, “so now we’ll see if he follows through and opens this up.”

To allow reporters access to troops in any of the Central Asian countries would require the approval of their governments, Rumsfeld and Clarke said, and those countries have expressed concerns about stories disclosing that U.S. troops are operating there.

But Ricks said the Post’s reporter in Uzbekistan had asked government officials if they objected to having U.S. reporters in their country “and they said, ‘It’s the American government who doesn’t want you to cover this.’

“I think ‘local sensitivities’ is an excuse the Pentagon is hiding behind,” Ricks said.

Although journalists continue to argue for more access--and to object to any security review of their stories, which they regard as censorship--the American public supports the military in such disputes by a more than 2-1 margin.

In a poll taken last week and released Wednesday, the Pew Research Center asked: “Do you think the military should exert more control over how news organizations report about the war, or do you think most decisions about how to report about the war should be left to news organizations themselves? Fifty-nine percent of the respondents said the military should be given more control; 28% said the decisions should be left to the news organizations.

Still, journalists had one previous meeting and three telephone conference calls with Clarke in recent weeks, trying to gain Rumsfeld’s approval of the nine combat coverage principles negotiated between the media and the military 10 years ago. Some also were upset when the Pentagon skipped a daily briefing last week, and Clarke said she wanted to return to a normal schedule of twice-weekly briefings.

“We’re not in normal times,” Hoyt said, “so that wasn’t acceptable.”

Frustrated by repeated assurances that Rumsfeld was considering the nine principles but had not yet made a decision, the journalists last week sent Clarke an e-mail asking for a “face-to-face meeting with you as soon as possible.”

Journalists didn’t expect Rumsfeld to attend Thursday’s meeting and were pleasantly surprised when he walked in with Clarke.

“I couldn’t take it anymore,” one reporter quoted Clarke as saying good-naturedly when she and Rumsfeld arrived, “so I brought reinforcements.”

Rumsfeld quickly agreed to the daily press briefings and to the principles of combat coverage, though reporters said he repeatedly reminded them that “this is a very different kind of war,” and some of those principles might require tweaking to be applicable now.

Hoyt said he came away from the meeting feeling encouraged, and several other reporters praised Rumsfeld and Clarke for their availability to journalists.

Clarke, who frequently says that she or her staff can be reached 24 hours a day, seven days a week, was especially pleased that several action items emerged from Thursday’s meeting.

Reporters in the combat area have complained that with no Pentagon press officers in Central Asia, for example, it’s often difficult for them to get the information they need. Clarke said she’d try to find people in U.S. embassies in those countries to “work for us with the media.” She also agreed to try to set up video conference calls with military personnel there.

After the meeting, Hoyt said he asked Clarke for assurances that if the Pentagon wanted to make any changes in the principles of combat coverage, the media would be consulted. Clarke quickly agreed. “We consider this a collaborative effort, not stone tablets handed down by us,” she said.

The first of the principles says, “Open and independent reporting will be the principal means of coverage of U.S. military operations.”

Reporters covering the Gulf War often complained that for some operations, the military organized pools--small groups of reporters who share their notes, film and video with everyone else--and then isolated the pools far from the action. Thus, the second principle recognizes the need, at times, for pools but says, “Pools are not to serve as the standard of covering U.S. military operations.”

The principle that may cause the most friction between the military and the media is one that says, “Journalists will be provided access to all major military units.”

Rumsfeld told the journalists that if they are allowed on the Kitty Hawk, they would have to obey certain, as yet unspecified, ground rules.

Reporters who have been allowed on the Carl Vinson and Enterprise, from which bombers and cruise missiles have been launched since the air attack in Afghanistan began, “have already been following the rules set down by the military,” Johnson said.

In many instances, reporters have not been allowed to use the last names of soldiers they interview, “and while we had access to observe the early bombing raids, the war was underway for several hours before anyone on the ships could file [their stories] and say they’d seen the missiles launched.”

Some journalists argue that being on an aircraft carrier actually keeps them far from the action they’d most like to see.

No journalist wants to “jeopardize any lives or blow any covert operation,” said Owen Ullmann of USA Today. “But not to have any reporters anywhere near the action makes it kind of hard to do your job. It leaves us stuck trusting other sources that aren’t necessarily reliable.”

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