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The Military's Love-Hate Relationship With Blogs

The military's love-hate relationship with blogs, which I mentioned in a column in the spring, has been on display in recent days, with the Pentagon sending mixed signals to bloggers. Here is a recap of some of the coverage:

-- U.S. Central Command sent an e-mail to bloggers in order to encourage them point readers to information on the CENTCOM Web site. One goal is to virally spread news that may be ignored by major media.

"I would like to invite you to check out our Web site. ... It's one more resource for information and you're free to use any of it (video, audio, photos and articles) in conversations on your blog," the e-mail said. "Also, if you would like, you can be added to our mailing list. ... Most of the time we can get CENTCOM information out to bloggers before it appears in the main stream media."

Spc. Chris Erickson, a member of CENTCOM's "electronic media engagement team," sent the e-mail, which was obtained and published by Raw Story. The blog outreach effort was first disclosed in a March press release.

-- While the Pentagon brass clearly think enough of blogs to solicit their help in spreading good news, commanders in the field apparently don't share that view, as evidenced by two recent incidents:

1) Camp Lejeune did not respond by telephone or e-mail to a blogger's questions about body armor for soldiers, and an official at Camp Pendleton answered by saying that questions from bloggers don't merit a response.

"We talked to [name withheld] at Camp Pendleton, and were told that the Department of Defense does not support blogs," Captain's Journal reported. "We responded by posing the following question: So if we were the L.A. Times or some similar MSM outlet, you would support our questions? In a profound revealing response, Camp Pendleton said, “but sir, you aren't the L.A. Times. You're a … blog!"

2) Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, the director of the combined press information center in Iraq, refused a request from renowned milblogger Michael Yon to embed with U.S. troops in Iraq. "I do not recognize your Web site as a media organization that we will use as a source to credential journalists covering ... operations," Johnson wrote in a July 18 e-mail that Yon cited in the Oct. 30 issue of Weekly Standard.

Yon said Johnson "has repeatedly gone on record decrying the lack of press coverage in Iraq, all while alienating the last vestiges of any press willing to spend month after month in combat with American soldiers."

After reading the magazine article, blogger Michelle Malkin wrote, "I hope the Pentagon has a good answer to this that does not involve sneering at milbloggers." And in an update to that entry that further demonstrates the military's inconsistency about bloggers, she noted that journalist/blogger Michael Fumento made it through the military public affairs maze and is now blogging from Iraq.

-- As a resident of Manassas, Va., I was particularly interested in a story about a Virginia National Guard unit dedicated to watching blogs. The 10 members of the data-processing unit scours official and unofficial Army Web sites for "operational security violations," or OPSEC. That's military-speak for disclosing information that could put U.S. troops in jeopardy.

Milblogs like Andi's World and BlackFive insist that they appreciate the need for maintaining OPSEC, but they warned that strict military policies on blogging could do more harm than good by debilitating a powerful medium.

UPDATE: Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald blasted the military for its approach to blogs. "When something good is happening in the military, you can rely on someone high up and behind the lines to try to kill it. Slowly. Bureaucratically. Bleed the life out of it," he wrote. "That is what is happening to milblogging, the Internet phenomenon that lets soldiers in Iraq tell us what they see, do and think."

Posted by Danny | 01:53 PM

Comments

I work in a library at a Marine base. When we wanted to start up a blog to inform our patrons of new books, events, etc., we were told no, that "a blog is a chatroom and we don't allow chatrooms."

A couple of weeks ago, Headquarters blocked access to MySpace from all the computers we provide at the library for the military and their families to use. Access was reinstated, thanks a petition by some Marines, but meanwhile it seems they're experimenting with blocking all kinds of sites, in a seemingly random fashion. We never know, from day to day, what sites our patrons will be able to access, and which not.

It looks like some true ignorance of the Internet in action, IMHO.

Trudy W. Schuett | 10.25.06 12:41 AM

I think there are two main reasons bloggers can't' get treated like mainstream media when it comes to credentials.

- Most of them lack the support structure (insurance, health insurance, disability) provided by large media organizations. This is simple risk assesment on the part of the military.

- If you let in one guy who is good and reasonable, you have to let everyone in -- even the fringe radicals.

Withheld | 10.25.06 02:28 PM

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