I want to thank the great blog Think Progress for bringing this story to attention, because it involves one of the most important issues there is -- freedom of the press. Of all the freedoms provided us by our Founding Fathers, perhaps the most important is freedom of speech and the press. That's because this is the freedom that protects and insures all of our other freedoms.
It seems that the United States military doesn't think freedom of the press is very important. It looks like they have decided to allow only those reporters who write "positive stories" about the military to be able to be embedded and report from the front lines with the soldiers.
To do this, they have hired The Rendon Group to investigate any reporters asking to be embedded. They have a $1.5 million contract with the Defense Department to do "news analysis and media assessment". They screen the reporter's writings and report on whether they have been "positive", "negative" or "neutral" toward the military.
The military says they have not denied access to any reporter because of what was learned in the Rendon Group's investigation, but that is not really true. Just last month, a Stars and Stripes reporter was denied the ability to embed because he "refused to highlight" good news.
This is a very dangerous precedent, and if it is allowed to continue it will affect the ability of the American people to get the truth about what is going on in a war zone. I can understand the military being embarrassed by negative stories, but that cannot trump the right of the people to know the truth.
There is only one valid reason to bar any reporter from a war zone. If the reporter releases secret information about combat operations that endanger the soldiers involved in that operation, then he should not be allowed to embed (and probably should be prosecuted). But that should be the only exception to freedom of the press in a war zone.
Reporters should never be judged by whether they report "positively" or "negatively" about the military or what it doing. If things are not going well, a negative story may be necessary to get the truth to the American people. Pressuring reporters to write only positive stories about the war effort (and that's exactly what this is) will result in a skewed "rose-colored glasses" view of the war and the military.
That's not news -- it's propaganda. President Obama should step in and stop this immediately.
