Letters

LETTERS

Down on the Farm

After reading your Case Study "Double Vision" by David Hornestay (April), I am reminded of the World War I song title "How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)?"

Ken Woodward
WWII baby boomer

No Glass Ceiling

I was disappointed in your article about women in government ("Kicking Glass," February). It carried the same tone as many articles about women in the private sector, and I am sure you misused employment and salary information. If you really compare women with men doing the same jobs, they make exactly the same-or in some cases more-money.

Women don't have comparable jobs to men because they choose positions that allow them to have more time off to be with their families.

So if you skew the data by comparing all women and men, you will almost always get a biased answer. There really isn't a glass ceiling anymore-only one that is maintained as a political form of misinformation.

Jim Blasko
Bonita, Calif.

Media vs. Military

James Kitfield does an outstanding, no-nonsense job of addressing the often-misunderstood relationship between the military and the news media (The Pen and the Sword, April). He correctly underscores how the phenomenal advances in mass-communications technology, shifts in journalism standards and practices, and array of post-Cold War military operations other than war are colliding and further complicating the already strained military-news media relationship.

As an educator at Air University, I believe those of us from "Mars" earnestly want to avoid slipping back into another low ebb of military/news media relations reminiscent of the Vietnam War. At a time when our nation's adversaries sometimes appear more media savvy than we are about the 24-hour news cycle and the potential of the Internet, the Air Force Public Affairs Center of Excellence (PACE) is striving to educate a new generation of military leaders-officers, NCOs, and government civilians who better understand the Fourth Estate, public affairs and the emerging concepts of information operations.

Prompted by the vision of Gen. Fogleman and former Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall, PACE was established in October 1998. Today we're striving to infuse media relations education, research and doctrine across the spectrum at Air University, from the strategic/operational levels for senior officers participating in war games-such as the Air Force's Global Engagement, Air War College's Tandem Challenge and School for Advanced Airpower Studies' Theater Campaign Warfare 2000-to Blue Thunder, the tactical-level exercise for newly commissioned lieutenants at the Aerospace Basic Course.

We're also teaching media relations courses at the Air War College, Air Command and Staff College, Squadron Officer School, and College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and Education. A variety of lectures and practical on-camera media training classes are being presented at group commanders' and on-scene commanders' courses, the First Sergeants Academy, and the Judge Advocate General School. We taught 2,500 students last year and more than 830 in the first three months of this year. Veteran New York- and Washington-based journalists, such as Peter Jennings and Andy Rooney, routinely speak at the colleges.

The jury remains out if we'll prove successful in addressing, as Kitfield describes, "the dysfunctional relationship between the military and the media." Perhaps we should be cautiously optimistic. As a colonel recently wrote in his student critique following a mock, yet stressful, television interview focusing on the controversial anthrax immunization issue: "I can see how media relations training is a very important part of any senior leader's toolbox. This session provided exposure to a needed skill."

Col. David L. Sims
Air Force

Kitfield has written a reasonable and balanced article. But he forgot an additional aspect of these polarized cultures-the disparity of salaries among traditional reporters then and now. Today's media culture brings in pay equivalent to that of doctors, lawyers and corporate leaders. While military salaries have also increased, we haven't lost touch with the working middle class, which would create disaffection between officers and enlisted members.

The officer class is on a more equal footing with the enlisted class than it was in the early to mid-20th century. The great media columnists and investigative reporters cannot say the same thing. They no longer go to the bar and down a beer with a friend down the street who happens to be a steelworker. Today's media elite have wine and cheese in Santa Barbara or Long Island. In the past, members of the media protected the "little guy" because they were the little guys. Now they are more concerned about the effect of a story on an IPO.

My problem with most national media types is that they are deluded into thinking they are balanced. They are hypocrites in that they aren't trying to make America better or safer; they only want to advance their point of view. I feel that almost every clip, article or story should be preceded by the word "commentary." At least that would ensure the integrity of honest packaging.

Lt. Col. Mike Moran (Retired)
Air Force Liaison to Civil Air Patrol
Indiana

As someone who has been a military journalist, a federal civilian public affairs practitioner and a civilian journalist, I believe your article The Pen and the Sword left nothing resolved. The article mentioned a clash between the two cultures, and I would expect there would always be a divide between the two.

I and others in the public affairs community attempt on a daily basis to bridge that divide, realizing that the taxpayers should have as much pertinent information about their military as possible. As your article suggests, the greatest division between the two factions is the issue of trust. With instantaneous reporting being the norm, is it fair to send soldiers, airmen, sailors or Marines into combat with television cameras running next to them and giving opposing forces all the information used to develop the plan of attack?

I am for freedom of the press, but I also understand that the press must patrol itself and determine what is really good for itself and the nation. Is one more viewer or one more paper sold worth the life of one individual? Of course not.

In order to serve the American people better, the media and the military must learn to co-exist and to trust each other. I do not want the media to serve as a propaganda tool for the military, but I also do not want it serving as an unknowing spy for opposing forces.

Larry D. McCaskill

Your article on the military's relationship with the press focuses mainly on the conservative-liberal divide and the battlefield experiences of past military conflicts as the cause for the distrust between us. I have been associated with the Army for 33 years (both in uniform and as a civilian), and my very deep distrust of the press is rooted in something much simpler and more immediate: the willingness of the media to go to almost any extreme to be competitive in their industry, no matter what the consequences.

In just a few days the press is able to move into a situation, do its damage and then move on, leaving chaos in its wake. It takes no responsibility for its actions. Members of the press assert that they are accountable to the public. If they write a bad story, the viewers can turn off their TVs or refuse to buy newspapers. This argument is specious, however, since the public has no way of knowing when the media's assertions of truth are in fact false and sometimes even deliberately fabricated.

As for me, I now believe little of what I hear on the news. However, laziness, sloppy work and downright dishonesty is placing at risk something much more precious to our nation than any unfortunate individual or organization that happens to be in an overzealous reporter's sights: the First Amendment. If the media does not tighten up its own performance, it is only a matter of time until it causes some event so catastrophic that the cry for legal controls on it will rise up from the people.

Edward A. Brown
Chief, Special Projects Office
Army Research Laboratory

Retired Navy Capt. John Byron misrepresents Gen. George Marshall's views on voting when he says, "In a sense, we've gone from a military that emulated George Marshall's dictate not to even vote, to one that seems to feel only one political party in America produces patriots." Byron would have us believe that Marshall refrained from voting for some altruistic or nonpartisan reason. That is far from the truth. Marshall publicly stated that because he did not pay taxes, he did not believe he should vote. Today, the military pays taxes along with the rest of American society.

As for Byron finding it "chilling" that the military seems to feel only one political party produces patriots, I don't find that to be the case. What I hear quite often is great concern for wildly out-of-whack moral compasses, a continued erosion of traditional values and the propagation of situational-based ethics. And this concern does translate into voting patterns.

Col. J.E. Vesely