WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- The news media generally have had a good relationship with the U.S. military and have done a good job covering the war in Afghanistan, though a healthy wariness exists on both sides, panelists at a Brookings Institution forum said Wednesday.
"I think we've done very well," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told the group. She said the war has been unconventional and the Pentagon has tried to facilitate news media access to "those things that can be appropriately covered."
"The amount and diversity of coverage has been extraordinary," she said.
Clarke said the Pentagon recently did enable selected reporters to "embed" -- or bivouac with and report on -- six Special Forces teams. But, she said, "any time having media along would compromise the mission or put lives at risk, we're not going to do that."
She said when U.S. Marines went into southern Afghanistan and established Camp Rhino, reporters from a regional pool were taken along.
Asked where the Pentagon had fallen short, she said the Defense Department erred and violated its own guidelines in temporarily confining reporters at Camp Rhino to a building, preventing them from photographing and reporting on friendly fire casualties who were arriving at the base.
She said that error quickly was corrected and the reporters there have been free to do their jobs since then.
"In general, I think the media has done a great job," Clarke said -- particularly the long-time Pentagon press corps, the reporters who are veterans at covering the Defense Department.
Michael Getler, ombudsman for The Washington Post and former editor of the International Herald Tribune, said the military has done "a hell of a job" in Afghanistan.
He said reporters in the country and along border areas "have done a good, courageous job" -- pointing out how vulnerable they were because the cash and equipment they are carrying made them "walking ATMs" for thieves.
"I think we are all in their debt for excellent reporting," he said.
Getler also noted that more journalists have been killed covering the war than U.S. service personnel actually fighting it.
Getler said the Pentagon and White House basically have a green light from the public to do what they want without fear of adverse reaction, and the public is not concerned whether the news media is in position to see and report on what's going on.
"My concern as an observer -- I think what we're seeing now is a situation in which the public wants the enemy defeated, and is not concerned about press concerns," he said. "You can't blame them."
Getler said the Pentagon apologized after not allowing reporters access to wounded soldiers evacuated after the friendly fire incident "and that was nice," but he said it was a situation that could happen again.
Sanford Ungar, president of Goucher College and former director of the Voice of America, said the news media have had much more access than in the Gulf War, though since the Oct. 7 start of the military campaign that followed the Sept. 11 terror attacks on Washington and New York City, there is a sense of "an element of reporting on the hometown football team."
"There is a sense that while we haven't won completely, we can somewhat go back to normal," he said.
Getler said he thought media access to the war was much less than during the Gulf War. He said during the Gulf War, reporters were with all of the major units. He said the problem in the Gulf was reporters couldn't file their stories until the military was ready to let them, but he said there was a minimum of censorship.
Getler said in the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon did not allow reporters to have access to Special Forces troops early in the conflict.
"They could have embedded one or two reporters with Special Forces headquarters units," he said. He also said no reporters were allowed on the USS Kitty Hawk, where Special Forces troops were billeted, and reporters were not allowed access to 10th Mountain Division troops in Uzbekistan.
Getler said to get to know troops and do adequate reporting, journalists need to spend time with them.
Clarke said the Pentagon received feedback from many Americans who said the Defense Department was releasing too much information about the early stages of the war. When the Pentagon provided combat camera footage of a Special Forces raid near Kandahar, "many Americans took us to task," she said.
She said the Pentagon has released appropriate information, including negative information, such as civilian casualties from errant bombs and information on the crash of a B-1 bomber that went down off Diego Garcia.
"We do what we think is appropriate at any given time," she said. She said it was inappropriate to compare the Afghanistan conflict with the Gulf War because the Afghanistan war is "a very unconventional war. We need to think differently."
Bernard Kalb, former CBS and NBC television reporter and former State Department spokesman who now comments on the media for CNN, said many in the Pentagon felt "the media had stabbed them in the back and was responsible for the collapse of the U.S. position in Vietnam."
He later added that an Army-funded history on the war showed "the media got it right."
Clarke said, "I think there is a very healthy tension" between the news media and the Pentagon.
"It exists for a reason," she said. But, she went on, "It is in my interest for the American people to get as much appropriate information as possible," adding that while sensitive information should not be shared, the Pentagon needs to be truthful and forthcoming.
"They (the American people) will leave us if we are not straight with them," she said.
Clarke also said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "answers as forthrightly as he can." She said when Rumsfeld pauses during briefings, he's "mentally going through what's appropriate to tell and what isn't."
Panelists discussed the influence of analysis and commentary on American perceptions about the war.
Panel host Stephen Hess, a Brookings senior fellow, said there had been much talk and writing about how the U.S. was in a "quagmire" early in the conflict, before the Taliban regime collapsed. This perception turned out to be "incredibly wrong."
"Right or wrong, a pundit on television must never appear hesitant," said Kalb. While Getler sought to draw a distinction between analysis and commentary on the one hand and reporting on the other, Kalb maintained that the one seeped into the other, "so much of opinion, particularly television opinion, has a way of shaping the perception of what the drumbeat of the media is saying," he said.
Kalb also said that over the past decade, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, news organizations -- and especially the TV networks -- had tended to focus on U.S. stories and dismantle foreign coverage. He said Sept. 11 changed that.
John Morton of ABC-TV asked the panel whether famed World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle would be able to do his job during this war.
"There is no Ernie Pyle in this war," he said. He said Pyle, a columnist for Scripps-Howard Newspapers who covered the European and Pacific theaters of World War II and was killed by a Japanese machine gunner on the island of Ie Shima in 1945, spent weeks at a time with troops and brought the war home to Americans. His column ran in some 700 daily newspapers.
"If he were alive today, could he report" in this war? Morton asked.
"Sure," said Clarke. "It depends on the circumstances."
"The more we can show what the men and women in uniform are like, the better off we are," Clarke said.
Ungar said he thought the reporters of this war wouldn't have the impact of Pyle, because of the multitude of media outlets.
