War Reporting: How to live and tell the tale

WASHINGTON–The War on Terror continues to claim the lives of soldiers, innocent civilians, and journalists. Safety training experts say war reporters have a lot to learn about protecting themselves while trying to get their story.   “Too many times journalists are the only professionals on the battlefield or in a disaster zone quite unprepared for what they are going to encounter,” said... [Read more]

The War on Terror continues to claim the lives of soldiers, innocent civilians, and journalists. Safety training experts say war reporters have a lot to learn about protecting themselves while trying to get their story.

Share this via

Aid workers pay high price for USAID policy in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON –Security for aid workers in Afghanistan is deteriorating and nongovernment organizations blame U.S. development policies for putting more lives at risk. The U.S. Agency for International Development requires that humanitarian aid projects in Afghanistan support the military’s war strategy, a policy that has made aid workers targets for the Taliban, nongovernment organizations say. “There... [Read more]

WASHINGTON –Security for aid workers in Afghanistan is deteriorating and nongovernment organizations blame U.S. development policies for putting more lives at risk. The U.S. Agency for International Development requires that humanitarian aid projects in Afghanistan support the military’s war strategy, a policy that has made aid workers targets for the Taliban, nongovernment organizations say. “There are more attacks on aid workers now,” said Ann Richard, vice president of government relations at the International Rescue Committee, a nongovernment organization with programs in Afghanistan. “Security for NGOs has gone in the opposite direction.” USAID policies explicitly support the counterinsurgency war strategy in Afghanistan, and the agency allocates funding to nongovernment organizations based on how their projects “contribute to COIN goals,” according to [...]

Share this via

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... [Read more]

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 [...]

Share this via

Could Academic/Pro Collaborations Rejuvenate Embedded War Reporting?

DENVER – As budget cuts have decimated national security journalism, one of the first things to go has been the kind of deep and prolonged embedded reporting that keeps the public abreast of what is happening in the two wars that the United States is waging, in Afghanistan and Iraq. The University of Oklahoma and veteran broadcast reporter Mike Boettcher have come up with an intriguing model... [Read more]

DENVER – As budget cuts have decimated national security journalism, one of the first things to go has been the kind of deep and prolonged embedded reporting that keeps the public abreast of what is happening in the two wars that the United States is waging, in Afghanistan and Iraq. The University of Oklahoma and veteran broadcast reporter Mike Boettcher have come up with an intriguing model for how to help sustain that kind of journalism, while also using it as a tool for teaching the next generation of national security journalists. Boettcher , a visiting professor at OU’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, will work with students to produce multimedia content based on his reports from Afghanistan, [...]

Share this via

Winners and losers in Afghanistan

As The Washington Post reports, Gen. David H. Petraeus and other commanders in Afghanistan are planning to allow commanders to have access to large amounts of money from a discretionary fund so that they can support reconstruction projects that should be done in a hurry. The money, says Petraeus, is “a weapon system.” Not everybody agrees. International-aid experts point out that developing... [Read more]

As The Washington Post reports, Gen. David H. Petraeus and other commanders in Afghanistan are planning to allow commanders to have access to large amounts of money from a discretionary fund so that they can support reconstruction projects that should be done in a hurry. The money, says Petraeus, is “a weapon system.” Not everybody agrees. International-aid experts point out that developing the infrastructure of a devastated country takes time and cannot be put on a fast track, regardless of how much money is poured into the projects. Often, the beneficiaries of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan are the tribal leaders who become business partners with American contractors and friends of U.S. military commanders and intelligence officers. As Jake Sherman, [...]

Share this via

On WikiLeaks and Pakistan

Some Obama administration officials and congressional lawmakers in recent days
 have sought to downplay the significance of the massive leak of secret U.S.
military files by the organization WikiLeaks by saying it’s “old news,’’ or a 
rehash of what is already well known about the prolonged war.
 But why would they think such a dismissive characterization of the remarkable 
trove... [Read more]

Some Obama administration officials and congressional lawmakers in recent days
 have sought to downplay the significance of the massive leak of secret U.S.
military files by the organization WikiLeaks by saying it’s “old news,’’ or a 
rehash of what is already well known about the prolonged war.
 But why would they think such a dismissive characterization of the remarkable 
trove of documents makes things better, not worse? If anything, what they are conceding is that top U.S. intelligence and 
policy-making officials know full well that at least some of the billions of dollars that they have given to Pakistan in recent years has gone to funding the very insurgency that they are trying to wipe out in Afghanistan – with little, [...]

Share this via

Next Page »