Friday, February 29, 2008
Blackout More Like a Copout
By
Bob SteeleNelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values
There are times when it might make sense for news organizations to
agree to a military or government request to delay reporting a story.
The case of Prince Harry soldiering in Afghanistan was no such time.
Mine is not an argument for reporting the story. Rather, it's a
criticism of the decision on the part of multiple news organizations to
agree to withhold it before it happened.
Harry was deployed to Afghanistan only after a number of British media
outfits and some international news organizations agreed to stay
quiet, according to various reports. These news operations,
including the AP and CNN, went along with what some have termed an
embargo and others have called "a news blackout" about Harry serving in
battle. These organizations promised to hold back on this story until
after Harry returned from what was scheduled to be a four to six month
tour in Afghanistan.
The secrecy ended this week. As
the AP reported, "Several news organizations -- including The Associated Press -- agreed
to keep the news under wraps to protect the prince and his fellow
soldiers until the informal embargo was broken Thursday by the Drudge
Report Web site."
That term "informal embargo" has a stench about it. It reeks of a
backroom deal where an important ethical principle -- independence --
ends up in the spittoon.
Even if you turn to the lofty language used by the British editors, there's a whiff of weak logic. Writing in
The Guardian,
Bob Satchwell, the executive director of the [British] Society of
Editors, offered the following justification:
"The consensus was that as army chiefs had decided the prince would go
to war it would be wrong to put him and his soldier colleagues at extra
risk by publicising his deployment in advance. In fact media blackouts
are not that unusual. We do not report kidnaps, at the request of the
police, if a hostage's life might be a risk. We often know about the
movements of politicians or royalty so that coverage can be planned but
do not report them until they are safe."
True, there are exceptional instances when it may be justifiable for
journalists to hold back elements of a story for an appropriate --
ideally fairly short -- period of time. It might be proper to
temporarily withhold a story to protect someone from profound, imminent
danger. It might be appropriate to delay reporting troop movements in
battle or a highly sensitive detail in a story about national security.
It would have been one thing if the news organizations had discovered Harry's whereabouts after he was already there -- and simply delayed their reports long enough for him to be removed from the front lines. It's their long-term collusion with the government that so seriously undermines the media's credibility in this case.
The reasons for withholding the news were not justifiable. The time period was inappropriately long.
The collaborative agreement among many news agencies was counter to the
spirit of an independent press.
Sure there was a possibility that the famous prince -- third in line to
the British throne -- could have been at particular risk if the enemy
learned he was in Afghanistan. Think snipers
or cutthroat kidnappers. But enemy with intelligence savvy might well
learn on their own that Prince Harry was in battle. The Taliban and
al-Qaida don't necessarily need tips from reporters to do dirty deeds.
But even if one accepts that news reports might heighten a danger,
there are other logical challenges to this secrecy about Harry the
soldier. To the best of my knowledge, there was no compelling reason
for Prince Harry to go to Afghanistan as an army officer. There was
nothing essential that he, personally, brought to the battlefield. He
had no specific duty or skill that was irreplaceable. Praise him, if
you will, for his spirit or his patriotism. But it's certainly not
justification for the risks taken or the journalistic principles sacrificed.
As Satchwell, representing the British editors, wrote, "The prince was
desperate to join his army colleagues in the front line. Army chiefs
wanted him to go to war like any other young officer who had been
expensively trained for the task. It seemed pretty clear that his
family wanted him to fulfil his ambitions too."
Such reasons for Harry going to battle, given potential risk to him and
other soldiers around him, ring hollow. But I'll let the Royal Family
and the Brits wrestle with that part of the equation.
My primary concern is with the news organizations that played along with this secret deal.
Especially when you add in a revealing quid pro quo piece of the puzzle, any
arguments for ethical responsibility further erode. In exchange for
the media's silence, the British military agreed to provide the news
organizations with favored treatment
As Satchwell wrote in The Guardian, "In return there would be special
access for the media to the prince before, during and after his
deployment which could be reported when he returned home, without any
interference by the Royal family or the military except for reasons of
operational security."
Trading secrecy for access. That stinks.
It gets worse. More from Satchwell: "It was an extraordinary
and rare display of unity for national and regional newspaper and
magazine editors and broadcasters not to report the story."
Unity? Hardly. It sounds more like a conspiratorial cabal.
Hiding behind false logic, the news organizations involved in this deal
failed their readers and viewers and delivered a serious hit to the principle of journalistic independence.
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