Remember

Remember Me


Fm 7-21-13 :: Appendix C :: Section III- Memorial Ceremony

Memorial ceremonies are patriotic tributes to deceased soldiers....

In most cases, the unit prepares a program that may include a biographical summary of the deceased soldier with mention of awards and decorations. The following elements are commonly part of a memorial ceremony:

• Prelude (often suitable music).
• Posting of the Colors.
• National Anthem.
• Invocation.
• Memorial Tribute (e.g., remarks by unit commander or a friend of the deceased).
• Scripture Reading.
• Hymn or other special music.
• Meditation (quiet moment for attendees to reflect).
• Benediction.
• Last Roll Call. This is a final tribute paid by soldiers to their fallen comrade. It has its origin in the accountability roll call conducted by the unit First Sergeant following combat. Although sometimes painful to listen through, the Last Roll is called with the conviction held by soldiers that all unit members will be accounted for, and none will ever be forgotten.
• Firing of rifle volleys.
• Taps.

Pentagon Memorial

"The memorial should instill the ideas that patriotism is a moral duty, that freedom comes at a price, and that the victims of this attack have paid the ultimate price...We challenge you to create a memorial that translates this terrible tragedy into a place of solace, peace, and healing."

The Media Store
Tune: Sixteen Tons

Some people say a man is made out of mud
A soldier's made out of muscle and blood
Muscle and blood, skin and bones...
A mind that's sharp and a back that's strong

Chorus:
I served sixteen years, and what did I get?
My flag-draped casket all over the 'net
St. Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go
They gave my soul to the Media store

Woke up one mornin' and the sun didn't shine
Boots, rifle, beret made into a shrine
My voice was absent when they called roll
the Chaplain said, "God bless his soul!"

(Chorus)

They carried me slowly thru the drizzlin' rain
and laid me gently on the ramp of the plane
My Brothers in Arms honored my name
A "cost of war," it's a cryin' shame

(Chorus)

Flag-draped caskets came home before
but you weren't there, before the war
You got your photos but there'll be no more
There's no honor in the Media store

UPDATE:
A media protest clouds Marine's final journey

But what bothers me is the way the somber ceremony to honor a man who died for his country got manipulated by the media to create outrage.

Yeah, because those cemetery vultures can't get enough special care and feeding at another man's funeral.

IO, IO, It's off to blog I go!

Jay Rosen pointed me to a blog post over at Noah Shachtman's Danger Room called Military Report: Secretly 'Recruit or Hire Bloggers'.

Oooooh, scary. Shachtman even links to a .zip file copy of the report at cryptome.org! [Because, uh, it's not publicly available? Why, yes it is! link updated, also at USAF Air University]

If you don't know anything about blogs, blog metrics (i.e. sites like technorati) or have never heard of the web's power law (or long tail, which isn't mentioned in the report), then this might be an OK primer. The only eye-catching part of the first 18 pages of the report, for me anyway, was a graphic of Peretti/Bennett's micro-middle-mass media ecology ("infosphere" in the report).

If you do know that stuff, fast forward to page 19, Implications for Influence Operations. Influence Operations are a subset of Information Operations (IO) and are not unique to the military. For example, "culture jamming" is a form of influence operations. So is advertising. Military Information Operations have been around for a while and I'd argue the military was slow to notice the blogosphere. Starting on page 19 of the report, there's about 7 pages of reading pertaining to blogs and IO. Here's a paragraph from the report's conclusion:

One of the significant limitations of this paper, as an initial foray into military use of the blogosphere, is that much of the information available concerns American blogs, run by Americans, largely for an American audience. Military use of the blogosphere must necessarily focus on foreign blogs, bloggers and audiences. However, because some factors, such as the scale-free nature of the Internet and the psychological basis of influence are universals, we hope to lay a general basis for military use of the blogosphere that can be adapted to specific tactical circumstances by information operators.

I don't think Shachtman's post does a good job of representing the report or informing anyone about IO. For example, Shachtman quotes from the report, "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers" and "Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering." He even provides a long blockquote, with a very strange ellipsis! Below I've provided the preceding paragraph and the first paragraph of Shachtman's blockquote, in italics, with the ellipsis removed:

This discussion of communities leads us to another point of difficulty in using blogs for IO. Segmentary opposition and its gentler cousin, in-group/out-group dynamics, may prevent a foreign audience from taking an overtly U.S. government-run or sponsored blog seriously. Even American blogs show a high incidence of ethnic clustering,³⁹ and the deep-seated fissures between major tribal groups, and often between subgroups, frequently define traditionally tribal societies like those in Afghanistan. Even if there is no widespread preconception about U.S. use of propaganda, it may be easy for foreign audiences to dismiss the U.S. perspective with “Yes, but you aren’t one of us, you don’t really understand us.”

In this regard, information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence already within the target nation, group, or community to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering.⁴⁰ On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names.⁴¹ People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust. [emphasis mine]

Does that make a difference? I kept the endnotes and linked them because I thought you might enjoy Daniel (of Fake Steve Jobs fame) Lyons' screed linked from endnote 40. I don't know why it didn't get linked by Shachtman in the blockquote. Strangely, Shachtman did link to a NYT story about the Iraqi press roughly corresponding to endnote 41 which, if I was Mark Mazzetti or Borzou Daragahi, I'd be a little upset.

Anyway, I read Danger Room occasionally and sometimes enjoy it. This one, not so much. If you are interested in blogs that cover IO well, I'd recommend SWJ or MountainRunner. You might also be interested in the University of Nebraska at Omaha blog: Information Warfare Online Resources.

Thanks for the pointer, Jay!

UPDATE:
Propaganda: Can a Word Decide a War?

A culture of information empowerment down to the lowest levels needs to be inculcated among senior government officials, permitting for clear guidance provided to subordinates, risk mitigation procedures established, and, perhaps most importantly, acceptance that this will not be a zero-defect undertaking.

Winning hearts, minds, trust, and credibility, in the end, requires a local approach. Consider a major US metropolitan area. Neighborhoods take on their own personalities, driven by socio-economic factors and ethnic and racial identity, among other considerations. Value sets are different among the diversity of communities that make up the melting pot that is a large American city. It should not be difficult then to understand how it is nearly impossible to influence perceptions among audiences in a foreign country with a “one size fits all” set of messages and actions. Long-term US presence and engagement in foreign nations allows for a deeper understanding of cultural differences. These cultural underpinnings combined with the hard work of relationship building allow for effective tailoring of messages and the successful identification of key influencers. Engagement is the key whether it is by US soldiers in their area of operations, diplomats on Provincial Reconstruction Teams, US Agency for International Development workers, or nongovernmental organizations.³² Where no US presence exists, efforts must include recruiting key individuals for US exchange programs, people who will tell this nation’s story upon their return home.

An Anthology of Journalism's Decline

Hutchins' Report: A Free And Responsible Press (1947)

Today our society needs, first, a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day's events in a context which gives them meaning; second, a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism; third, a means of projecting the opinions and attitudes of the groups in the society to one another; fourth, a method of presenting and clarifying the goals and values of the society; and, fifth, a way of reaching every member of the society by the currents of information, thought, and feeling which the press supplies.

Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen's Notions of Objectivity (1972)

To journalists, like social scientists,² the term "objectivity" stands as a bulwark between themselves and critics. Attacked for a controversial presentation of "facts," newspapermen invoke their objectivity almost the way a Mediterranean peasant might wear a clove of garlic around his neck to ward off evil spirits.

Untended Gates: The Mismanaged Press (1986)

The unprofessional gatekeeper system clearly has to be judged as being one of the root causes of the steady slide of public confidence in journalism.

Governing with the News: The News Media as a Political Institution (1998)

Instead, the news media share more with two other political institutions: the political parties, and the interest group system.

Uncertain Guardians: The News Media as a Political Institution (1999)

In this book I build on the work of Cater and his successors, Leon Sigal and Herbert Cans in particular, to explain why the news media effectively constitute a political institution and why this fact matters to students of American politics.

Snob Journalism: Elitism Versus Ethics for a Profession in Crisis (2003)

Most journalists don't know the history of their profession, have not read great works of their predecessors and have not read even the small number of major philosophical works produced by journalists.

When psychologist Bill Damon and his colleagues were researching their book "Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet," they found they had never studied a profession that did as poor a job as journalism of handing down the collected wisdom of one generation to another.

The State of the News Media: Public Attitudes (2007)

All that comes, of course, against a background of more than 20 years of growing skepticism about journalists, their companies and the news media as an institution. As we have noted in other reports,since the early 1980s, the public has come to view the news media as less professional, less accurate, less caring, less moral and more inclined to cover up rather than correct mistakes.

UPDATE: The above are, of course, supplements to Andy's required reading for journalists (pro-am and networked).

Gallup: Media Use and Evaluation

Previous:
Lippman-Dewey Blogosphere
Culture War: Institutions vs. Media

Iraq: Complexify vs. Simplify then Exaggerate

The situation in Iraq is incredibly complex -- and the products of the ‘Surge’ are far too fragile to survive a Coalition drawdown (Part 1 of 2)

Stop Complaining ... Support Michael Yon!

Clearly, a majority of Americans believe the current set of outdated fallacies passed around mainstream media like watered down drinks at happy hour. Why wouldn’t they?
...
It’s easy to complain about the state of mainstream media coverage of the War in Iraq. Now, it’s also easy to do something concrete to improve it.

To continue reading, click here.

Bloggers vs. Journalists vs. Media

Brain drain

"I don't understand or like the media," said the online newspaper editor who's planning his exit. "Blogging has shown me that I don't really need the guys that own the presses anymore. I'll probably stay in journalism, but I can't wait to get out of the media."

'Forbes' Puts Journalists on Endangered Species List

UPDATE & Related: NYT for sale?

Howard Kurtz interviews himself

Jeez, what a gimmick to push a book. Good luck, Howie!

Medal of Honor: Navy SEAL Lt. Michael Murphy

Blackfive has the best history/roundup (of course).

UNFIT TO PRINT? "By now, most folks know exactly how much The New York Times despises the U.S. military."

NYT: L.I. Navy Seal, Missing Since Attack in Afghanistan, Is Dead (July 7, 2005)
NYT: Navy Mission of Officer Was Secret to Parents (July 8, 2005)

UPDATE: President Bush Presents Medal of Honor to Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy, U.S. Navy (w/ pics)

Interagency Unity of Effort: Goldwater-Nichols II

LTG (Ret.) Sanchez's keynote speech at the 6th annual Military Reporters & Editors (MRE) conference has been badly reported in the news. I've read the MRE transcript and watched the C-SPAN video. The transcript is pretty good, but the video is much, much better. The MRE transcript misses some of Sanchez's speech and has none of the Q&A. The C-SPAN video is an hour long, but you don't need to watch the first 8 1/2 minutes or the last four minutes.

I recommend the video, it is worth at least 48 minutes of your time. I also recommend you start the download, hit pause on the Real player (the video continues to download) and come back when it's all downloaded. Forward the scroll bar to about the 08:30 mark and watch when you can get 48 minutes of (mostly) uninterrupted time.

The first 10 minutes of Sanchez's speech is spent criticizing the media. The rest of his speech (12 minutes) is spent criticizing (primarily) the political leadership. The Q&A lasts 26 minutes.

I do want to pull out one part of Sanchez's speech criticizing America's "interagency" leadership (about 27:40 into the video):

Achieving unity of effort in Iraq has been elusive to date primarily because there is no entity that has the authority to direct the actions of our interagency. As I stated before, our National Security Council has been a failure. Furthermore, America's ability to hold the interagency accountable for their failures in this war is non-existent. This must change. We probably need to implement a Goldwaters-like Nichols act for the interagency. As a nation we must recognize that the enemy we face is committed to destroying our way of life. This enemy is arguably more dangerous than any threat we faced in the twentieth century. Our political leaders must place national security objectives above partisan politics, demand intergency unity of effort, and never again commit America to war without a grand strategy that embraces the basic tenets of the Powell doctrine. [emphasis added]

I've written previously about this in The Surge as Foreign Internal Defense. Specifically, from Joint Publication 3-07.1, Joint Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Foreign Internal Defense (FID) (1.6MB pdf):

Ensure Unity of Effort. As a tool of US foreign policy, FID is a national-level program effort that involves numerous USG [US Government] agencies that may play a dominant role in providing the content of FID plans. Planning must coordinate an integrated theater effort that is joint, interagency, and multinational in order to reduce inefficiencies and enhance strategy in support of FID programs. An interagency political-military plan that provides a means for achieving unity of effort among USG agencies is described in Appendix D, Illustrative Interagency Political-Military Plan for Foreign Internal Defense.

How long, how many more times, will we kick the "new Goldwaters-Nichols Act" for "interagency jointness" down the road?

Let's review, shall we?

From a military perspective, Joint Pub 3-08 Vols I & II (pdf), Interagency Coordination During Joint Operations, describe what agencies are involved and what they do. The National Defense University has an html excerpt online from the 1996 editions of JP 3-08 listing the agencies. Both pubs were updated and republished in March 2006.

In May 1997, President Clinton promulgated Presidential Decision Directive 56: Managing Complex Contingency Operations. Read it. It further defined interagency planning and coordination for "complex contingency operations."

In 1998, Mark Walsh and Micheal J. Harwood published a good article in Parameters titled Complex Emergencies: Under New Management, which further describes interagency coordination during "complex emergencies," "complex contingency operations" and Clinton's PDD-56.

In December 1999, Rowan Scarborough reported for the Washington Times:

"NSC not stepping forward in leadership role," states the study conducted by A.B. Technologies in Alexandria for the Joint Chiefs of Staff....

The documents, dated November, say none of the heads of the military's postgraduate schools, such as the National Defense University, is "directly engaged in the training effort."

What's more, most agencies told the consultants they have no role in carrying out PDD 56, when in fact they do.

"There are no agency accountability checks to see what has been done, who has done it," the report says.

The report presents the ironic situation of the NSC, which had the lead in carrying out PDD 56, not following a directive sent out by the president it advises.

Moreover, PDD 56 was largely ignored by an administration that has sent American troops on a record number of so-called "contingencies" on foreign soil. The missions have included peacekeeping in Somalia, Haiti, East Timor and Bosnia, as well as air strikes on targets in Iraq, Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Serbia.

On February 13, 2001, the Bush administration promulgated National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 1, Organization of the National Security Council System. During Bush's first term, the two names most responsible for interagency coordination concerning Iraq were Condoleezza Rice as the National Security Advisor and Elliot Abrams as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director of the NSC Policy Coordination Committee for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations and later as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director of the NSC Policy Coordination Committee for Near East and North African Affairs.

The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century began a comprehensive review of America's national security in July 1998 and has published 3 volumes. The third volume, Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change (pdf), was published February 15, 2001. This is a 156-page report, but I highly recommend at least reading the 10-page Executive Summary. You might also be interested in reviewing the 50 recommendations in Appendix 1:

This appendix lists all of the Phase III Report’s major recommendations in order of
their presentation. The recommendations are numbered sequentially and grouped by Section. The page on which the recommendation appears in the report is noted in the box. Those recommendations in red type indicate recommendations on which Congressional action is required for implementation. Those in blue type can be implemented by Executive Order. Those in green type can be implemented by the head of an Executive Branch department or agency, or by the Congressional leadership, as appropriate.

Also in 2001, the National Defense University was funded "to develop and conduct an interagency training program." This became the Interagency Transformation, Education, and After-Action Review (ITEA) Program. I recommend visiting their website. There is a lot of good information there, and the foundation for developing training for a "National Security Service Corps." There is also a good set of high-level briefing slides (ppt) on NSPD-1 there.

The Center for Strategic & International Studies has also published two volumes under its
Beyond Goldwater-Nichols effort:

Beyond Goldwater-Nichols (BG-N) is a three-phased effort to explore the next era of defense reform. Its primary goal is to develop an integrated set of practical and actionable recommended reforms for organizing both the U.S. military and national security apparatus to meet 21st century challenges. As part of its outreach to build the case for necessary reforms, the BG-N study team serves as an honest broker among the various stakeholders, including between and among the Defense Department (DoD), the State Department, the White House, and the Congress, as well as among the various parties in DoD....

The BG-N study team released the Phase 1 Final Report in March 2004, in which a number of areas were addressed, including: reassessing the civilian, joint, and service balance; building a strategy-driven, more efficient resource allocation process; strengthening the cadre of national security and defense civilians; improving DoD's and the U.S. government’s ability to conduct interagency and combined operations; and more. Phase 2 of the BG-N study was released in July 2005. With seven working groups this phase tackles a slate of issues, including: capabilities for 21st century missions; the regional and functional command structures; the U.S. government’s design in light of 21st century challenges; the defense acquisition process; the commercial-like defense agencies; joint officer management and professional military education; and new domains of warfare.

"On August 5, 2004, Secretary Powell announced the creation of the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS) to enhance our nation's institutional capacity to respond to crises involving failing, failed, and post-conflict states and complex emergencies [link added]." Under the S/CRS is the S/CRS Inter-Agency Team.

On December 7, 2005, the Bush administration promulgated NSPD-44, Mananagement of Interagency Efforts Concerning Reconstruction and Stabilization. This makes the State Department the "focal point":

(i) to coordinate and strengthen efforts of the United States Government to prepare, plan for, and conduct reconstruction and stabilization assistance and related activities in a range of situations that require the response capabilities of multiple United States Government entities and (ii) to harmonize such efforts with U.S. military plans and operations.

and so on ...

The "interagency process" needs to be legislated and funded, for the same reasons that the "joint process" in the military needed the Goldwater-Nichols Act. There's been a significant amount of research and effort in this area over the last decade. The Department of Homeland Security has statutory interagency responsibility (and accountability) for domestic operations.

What department or equivalent "unified commander" in the field is accountable for "interagency jointness" for all the other operations?

Other References:
National Defense University bibliography on Interagency Coordination
U.S. Military Operations in Iraq: Planning, Combat and Occupation (April 26, 2006)
OIF Phase IV: A Planner's Reply to Brigadier Aylwin-Foster (March-April 2006)
Phase IV Operations: Where Wars are Really Won (May - June 2005)
Transforming for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations (November 12, 2003)

Previous:
The Surge as Stabilty and Support
The Surge as Foreign Internal Defense
Would Sun Tzu Surge?
Si vis pacem, para bellum
Iraq v2.0

NYT Contributes to MoveOn?

This looks bad: About that NYT MoveOn discount.

Do you think the NYT is calling MoveOn right now to explain their "billing error?"

Nah, me neither.

UPDATE: Angered by an Antiwar Ad, Giuliani Seeks Equal Space

[Catherine J. Mathis, a spokeswoman for The New York Times Company,] said the department charges advocacy groups $64,575 for full-page, black-and-white advertisements that run on a “standby” basis, meaning an advertiser can request a specific day and placement but is not guaranteed them.

Betraying Its Own Best Interests

Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications for The Times, said, "We made a mistake."

No moving on from 'General Betray Us' story; NYT admits mistake, MoveOn issues new challenge

MoveOn issued a statement this afternoon saying that it will send the Times a check for $77,083 to cover the difference between what it was charged and the higher rate that it should have paid.

Free Hugs

See if you can watch this without smiling ....

HuffPo's Lows: Martin Lewis

Martin Lewis penned a post for HuffPo imploring GEN Pace to court-martial President Bush.

His case seems to be based on the idea that the President is a person subject to Chapter 47 of the US Code. He's not: Section 802. Art. 2. Persons subject to this chapter.

It seems odd that Lewis would go to the trouble of linking to punitive articles in the same chapter, but not bother to check, or link to, the section of the UCMJ that actually states who is subject to the UCMJ. OK, not so odd given the author and the publisher.

Besides being factually ignorant, it's a terrible opinion (as in stupid) to promote the idea that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff can or should court-martial a President. It demonstrates an absolute lack of civic understanding about our government, our military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, etc., ....

Oh well, "There's always tomorrow..."

Sensationalizing Suicide

Suicide's back in the news. Do you think Greg Mitchell has ever read anything from the Dart Center or American Foundation for Suicide Prevention about covering suicide? Either he hasn't and ignorantly writes about suicide, or he has and callously writes about suicide.

Armed Liberal crunches the numbers and finds ... surprise!! ... military suicides are below the civilian population rates.

Over at Target Rich Environment ... "the civilian suicide rate likely exceeds the 2006 US Army suicide rate (adjusted for demographics)."

I can't remember ever reading a news report on military suicides worth the time spent.

After Desert Storm, 15 years ago, it was studied:

By the close of FY 1992, sixty-four active duty soldiers had committed suicide, a reduction of twelve from FY 1991. Even allowing for later adjustments due to changes in the originally reported cause of death, the number of active duty suicides in the 1992 calendar year was 87, compared to 102 for 1991. The ratio of suicides per 100,000 soldiers was 14.5 for 1992, a slight decrease from the 14.6 rate in 1991. By way of comparison, the civilian suicide rate for roughly the same age group (20-34) was 22-25/100,000. Psychological autopsies of soldier suicides did not indicate that downsizing or changes in policy played any role in their motivations. Psychologists still attributed suicides, in large part, to failures in personal relationships, alcohol abuse, and financial difficulties.

In Haiti, more than 10 years ago, the media made suicide a big issue. It wasn't.

It was raised as an issue again during the 90s "peace operations".

It's been raised frequently now during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Ever wonder why you don't read frequent stories in the news about suicide among the "creative people":

• The Literary Arts
  Recent studies have shown that poets and writers are four times more likely than others to suffer from affective disorders, particularly manic depression. Dickinson, Eliot, and Poe are among the many poets who suffered from an affective illness. Writers such as Balzac, Conrad, Dickens, Emerson, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Ibsen, Melville, and Tolstoy also suffered from the illness. In many cases, the writer's depression led to suicide: John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf.


• The Visual Arts
  Painters, sculptors, and other visual artists have also been afflicted by depressive disorders. Gaugin, Jackson Pollock, Michelangelo, and Georgia O'Keeffe suffered from depression. Van Gogh, Arshile Gorky and Mark Rothko died by suicide. Contemporary designers are plagued by alcohol and drug abuse, which are associated with depression.


• The Musical Arts
  The death of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain brought the issue of suicide into the spotlight. But the problem was not new to the music world. Classical composers such as Rachmaninoff, Schumann and Tchaikovsky suffered from affective disorders. Irving Berlin, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker and Cole Porter also suffered from depressive illnesses.


• The Theatrical Arts
  For many performing artists, the link between depression and suicide has been complicated by the effects of drug and alcohol abuse. For actresses like Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, it remains unclear whether the cause of death was accidental overdose or suicide. Also, the tendency toward depression and suicide often shows up in the children of these performers, suggesting a familial link.

I guess it's because Greg Mitchell doesn't find their suicides "especially tragic" or maybe it's because "the press doesn't know what to do about them."

UPDATE (via Insty): More at OTB and View from the Porch.

UPDATE: kf asks, "Who Has to Try to Kill Themselves in this Town to Make the Front Page?"

UPDATE: Sensationalizing Suicide II

Related: Two Suicides, Two Newsrooms, Two Decisions

Why Newspapers Aren't Worth Buying

Reign of Error

Maier, an associate professor at the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication, describes in a forthcoming research paper his findings that fewer than 2 percent of factually flawed articles are corrected at dailies. [my emphasis]
...
The results might shock even the most jaded of newspaper readers. About 69 percent of the 3,600 news sources completed the survey, and they spotted 2,615 factual errors in 1,220 stories. That means that about half of the stories for which a survey was completed contained one or more errors. Just 23 of the flawed stories—less than 2 percent—generated newspaper corrections. No paper corrected more than 4.2 percent of its flawed articles.
Obviously, a newspaper can't publish a correction until it learns of its error. But the studied dailies performed poorly when informed of their goofs. Maier found that 130 of the news sources reported having asked for corrections, but their complaints elicited only four corrections.

UPDATE: Confessing Errors in a Digital Age

It’s important to understand why newspapers have tended to fall short on their perceived commitment to correct what they got wrong the first time around. And in a time when anybody can easily post—and pass along—news and information online (usually without an editor’s scrutiny), the need is greater than ever to set in place a coherent system of correcting errors—despite the digital practitioners’ assurances about the Web’s inherent self-correcting nature.

Also see the figure at the bottom of page 7 of the Mongerson report (pdf).

Our motivation for asking these questions came from a desire to learn how many journalists regularly report on errors and fabrications in the news (the central theme of the Mongerson Prize) and to put the extent of such reporting in context with other coverage. But as the chart on the right shows, very few respondents say they have experience investigating and reporting either of those issues.

Related:
The Mongerson Prize for Investigative Reporting on the News was discontinued in 2006.
An Anthology of Journalism's Decline

War Stories: Carter and Beauchamp

Phil Carter wrote about Beauchamp on Slate, his blog and spoke to NPR.

If I understand his point, even if Beauchamp's story is exaggerated and/or fabricated and the New Republic failed its editorial responsibility, he is concerned that true stories about the (uncomfortable/awful) realities of war are not (will not be) heard by the public.

What I found most interesting was Carter's seeming contradiction in his own assessment of the veracity of Beauchamp's anecdotes:

I am deeply skeptical about the veracity of Beauchamp's dispatches, particularly the last one, but disinclined to offer definitive pronouncements at this time....

Among military circles, the reaction to Beauchamp's stories has been mixed. A number of my friends were disturbed by the article, especially what it implied about his unit and its leadership, but very few questioned its basic truth.... Beauchamp's tale was neither believable nor patently untrue on its face.

There were many technical and organizational reasons to be skeptical of Beauchamp's tales. I find it difficult to believe that Carter's military friends were not as skeptical as he was. I'm also surprised that Carter doesn't express support for publicly questioning Beauchamp's tales given his own skepticism.

I was disturbed by Beauchamp's article because of my own deep skepticism that it was true. I would have been more disturbed by the article, and what it implied about Beauchamp's unit and leadership, if it was true.

Beauchamp disturbs me either way. Either his tales about his own disturbing behavior are true or he exaggerated/fabricated them.

It's also one thing to tell exaggerated or fabricated personal and secondhand "war stories" at "unit reunions and American Legion halls" and quite another to publish them publicly as nonfiction to further your personal ambition as an "author."

At the end of his Slate piece, Carter offers advice for journalists attempting to tell the story of what happens in wartime:

... The New Republic erred in granting Beauchamp a pseudonym. In this instance, Beauchamp's personal credibility as a combat infantryman would have bolstered his reports immeasurably.... The lesson here is that in war reporting, as with all reporting, you can certainly use anonymous sources, but only with the proper due diligence.

Granting Beauchamp a pseudonym was not the error. Identifying Beauchamp as a combat infantryman rather than as a soldier would not have "bolstered his reports immeasurably." There is no first and second lesson, as Carter suggests, but just the one: "The lesson here is that in war reporting, as with all reporting, you can certainly use anonymous sources, but only with the proper due diligence."

The error was granting Beauchamp a pseudonym without investing the editorial oversight required of a publication doing so ("proper due diligence"). That's the difference between being an Internet Service Provider for a self-publishing anonymous military blogger in Baghdad, and being the New Republic publishing articles by a pseudonymous "freelance writer and soldier currently serving in Baghdad."

It is also the comparison between "Jeff Gannon" and "Scott Thomas" that the New Republic should want to avoid. "Jeff Gannon" was a pseudonym for a partisan hack getting White House day passes writing for an obscure partisan website. "Scott Thomas" was a pseudonym for a "freelance writer and soldier currently serving in Baghdad" writing a diary for the magazine's print edition and website. If the comparison becomes a distinction without a difference for the American public, the credibility of the New Republic is in real trouble.

Related:
The Army Responds
Why I Serve: An affluent big-city lawyer explains why he did

Previous:
Not Blogging About Beauchamp

Not Blogging About Beauchamp

Initially, I had zero motivation to blog about Scott Thomas Beauchamp.

As the story developed, I started having negative motivation to write about him. Not a motivation to write negative things about him, mind you, but an increasing determination not to write about it at all.

I did follow the story for two reasons: the military component and the blog/journalism component.

I still don't feel motivated to write about the military component of this story.

I do want to say a few things at this point about the blog/journalism component.

1. I thought Michael Goldfarb's Fact or Fiction? post was good blogging.

   But we believe that the best chance for getting at the truth is likely to come from the combined efforts of the blogosphere, which has, in the past, proven adept at determining the reliability of such claims. To that end we'd encourage the milblogging community to do some digging of their own, and individual soldiers and veterans to come forward with relevant information--either about the specific events or their plausibility in general.
   
   Does anyone who has served at FOB Falcon remember hearing about or seeing the humiliation of this woman? Do they know her name and how we might get in contact with her to confirm the author's account of the events that day?
   
   Is anyone familiar with a combat outpost a few miles south of the Baghdad airport where a mass grave of Iraqi children was discovered? What about the other parts of the story? And does anyone else know of Bradleys careening wildly through the streets of Baghdad?

2. I think early on, many milbloggers did a good job of trying to answer those questions and the story pretty much peaked (for me, anyway) around July 21, three days after Goldfarb's initial post, when Major Kirk Luedeke, PAO for FOB Falcon, responded to the story. Determining the identity of "Scott Thomas," and the veracity of his claims, was just a matter of time from that point on. I certainly thought the military chain of command at FOB Falcon was then in a better position than anyone else (including TNR and WWS) to report back what they found.
   


3. My "negative motivation" was a reaction to much of what I read about the story from July 21 until now.


4. Today I read BLOGS MISSING THE REAL STORY AS USUAL by Rick Moran:

   I only know a growing sense of unease elicited by the notion that by overhyping stories like the Beauchamp caper, the credibility of the medium suffers. For that reason alone, it may be time to put down the blood stained hatchets and begin to seriously examine just what we should be doing that will increase our influence rather than make us look like a bunch of one dimensional attack dogs.

Bingo! The Lippman-Dewey Blogosphere.

UPDATE: For those that consider Beauchamp a "victory" for the blogosphere. I'd rank it right up there with James Dale "Jeff Gannon" Guckert.

There's always tomorrow...

James Fallows

The problems with the media are the same as I tried to describe 11 years ago -- just worse, and with new technology. But there's always tomorrow...

NBC Dateline Reporter flees Defcon 15

Bloggers' Roundtable: PRTs in Iraq

Small Wars Journal
MountainRunner
wretchard at Belmont Club

Transcript is at FNS but not yet at DoD's Bloggers' Roundtable archive.

Related:



Iraq Briefing August 1
Brinkley, Reeker, Bergner Brief Media
Paul Brinkley, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Philip Reeker, US Embassy, Baghdad, and BG Kevin Bergner, Multi-National Force-Iraq spokesman, speak with reporters in Iraq, August 1, 2007

Securing Iraq: A Pivotal Moment in Time

via SWJ