Army says Fort Hood shooting pre-trial proceedings open to public

In response to inquiries from a number of media organizations, including the Military Reporters and Editors association, the Army Judge Advocate General’s office says the “pretrial investigation of the charges” will be open to the public. MRE had requested that all proceedings against Maj. Nidal Hasan  be open to the public. Hasan is accused in the Nov. 5, 2009, shooting at the post in which 13 service men and women were killed. The MRE letter had asked the there be “public access to the Convening Authority’s docket and all pleadings and motions filed in this matter, as well as the ability to attend all proceedings.”

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MRE condemns DOD for embed decision

The Military Reporters and Editors association has sent an official letter of criticism to the Defense Department for violating its own rules on embedding reporters – to allow unbiased coverage in the war zone.

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Media-military relations not improved by Pentagon’s ruling on Hastings embed

Freelance reporter Michael Hastings, whose Rolling Stone profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal ended the former top Afghanistan commander’s military career, has been denied an embed slot to join a military unit in Afghanistan, according to news reports. In a Twitter posting, Hastings wrote, “to clarify @AP story: the embed had already been approved for september. now it has been disapproved.” He apparently was working on a story about helicopters and asked for the embed a month ago. The Pentagon acknowledged Tuesday that it had denied the request. According to the Associated Press, Col. David Lapan “acknowledged that it’s ‘fairly rare’ for the military to turn way a reporter who wants to embed with front-line troops. ‘There is no right to [...]

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A new tool to read terrorists’ minds?

There’s been lots written about how to protect the country against the next terrorist attack. I just learned that one of my Northwestern University colleagues, J. Peter Rosenfeld, has completed research that offers a possible way to use technology to get inside the minds of terrorists to confirm details about an impending attack that emerges from intercepted chatter. In the Northwestern study, researchers used P300 brain wave testing in a mock terrorism scenario. When the researchers “knew in advance specifics of the planned attacked by the make-believe ‘terrorists,’ they were able to correlate P300 brain waves to guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy in the lab.” Rosenfeld told me via e-mail that that the online chatter gives preliminary information on [...]

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Reporting in Guantanamo

The Pentagon’s “Media Policy and Ground Rules” pamphlet for reporting on Guantanamo starts off badly and quickly veers into silly. The bad start: Reporters may only fly to Guantanamo to cover the military commissions by using military aircraft, although they can leave on commercial planes. Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald noted that she had to fly via commercial plan to Washington so she could take a military flight from Andrews Air Force Base to Cuba. She used to fly from Miami to report on Guantanamo. The turn to silly: “Etiquette” rules prohibit chewing gum, standing and stretching or sleeping in the courtroom. What these examples demonstrate: A military culture that results in arbitrary restrictions on reporters at the whim [...]

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