A Navy story - media jingoism - Nov. '97 US-Iraq conflict - Column - Brief Article

We shoot for Newsweek," Admiral Kendell Pease, director of the U.S. Navy's public-affairs office, told a group of reporters recently. During the recent stand-off between the U.S. military and Iraq, dramatic photos of U.S. ships, planes, and missiles in the Persian Gulf, taken by Navy sailors, appeared in Newsweek, Time, and on the front pages of major newspapers around the country. Pease showed off his collage of dozens of Navy press clips, pasted onto poster board, at an informal session with journalists in his office at the Pentagon.

"You know those two-page horizontal pictures Newsweek likes to run, with a lot of white space at the top, so there's room for a big headline?" Pease said. "We take those."

Readers might not know it though, because Newsweek and other publications sometimes fail to acknowledge their military sources.

Take the two-page spread in Newsweek's November 24 issue. Under the headline Saddam's Dark Threat, a shadowy picture of Navy bombers, with steam rising all around them, conveyed the ominous feeling on board the aircraft carrier U.S.S. George Washington, as it headed for the Gulf. The credit line attributed the photo to "Joseph Hendricks--A.P." But Hendricks doesn't work for A.P. He's a petty officer third class in the Navy, says Lieutenant Christopher Madden, acting director of the Navy News photo division.

It's Madden's job to market Navy photos, free of charge, to the A.P., Reuters, and other wire services, as digital images. News organizations that subscribe to the wires can download the pictures--which are clearly marked "Navy News." (The Washington Post ran a cropped version of the same steamy bomber shot that appeared in Newsweek, but credited the Navy.)

Madden says that "about 90 percent of the time," the newspapers and magazines that pick up Navy photos don't give proper credit.

"It's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we're getting huge success in the use of our imagery," says Madden. "On the other hand, we'd like to see `Navy photo,' so the organization gets credit." In the case of Newsweek, he says, "We were just glad to see the photographer's name on there, because often you'll only see the wire service credited."

"It's hard for the photographers" when they remain anonymous, Madden says, since they are trying to assemble professional portfolios. But neither he nor his boss, Admiral Pease, is making a big stink about the credit issue. After all, from a public-relations standpoint, the Navy is doing a bang-up job.

"We're happy that we've got such a good relationship with the wire services that the American public gets to see what's going on out there and see a Navy story," Madden says.

Getting the Navy's story out has gotten a lot easier since the Persian Gulf War. Like other branches of the military, the Navy has become more expert at public relations. And journalists have grown accustomed to the military's care and feeding.

During the Gulf War, the military dictated the parameters of coverage to captive press pools. Reporters submitted their articles to military censors before sending them to their editors. And news organizations censored themselves, deeming negative coverage of the military harmful to U.S. interests. It was "one of the most disturbing episodes in U.S. journalistic history," according to the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

Admiral Pease cited a Gulf War incident in which a boatload of reporters on a Navy aircraft carrier agreed not to report what they saw when a plane was shot down near them. Pease told them if they didn't all agree to suppress the story until he said it was OK to release it, he would send them home--and they'd never get the details of the incident. "Every one of them agreed," he said. "None of them broke the story for two and a half weeks, until I called them and said it was OK. I called them all on the same day, so nobody had the story first."

Since the Gulf War, "trust between the Navy and the media" has improved tremendously, Pease says.

The Pentagon is remarkably media-friendly. Throughout the building, there are more people dedicated to answering questions from journalists than there are at any other government agency in Washington.

Thirty-nine pictures of regular military correspondents adorn the wall outside the Pentagon press offices. Some of the reporters are posed in front of American flags, some in front of the blue curtain in the Pentagon's briefing room. The photos look much like the portraits of soldiers hanging in other hallways. Reporters and soldiers--one big. happy, pro-military family.

Unlike reporters who cover Congress. Pentagon reporters usually don't badger their sources in the hallway, or hound them with embarrassing questions during briefings. Instead, the atmosphere is respectful, patriotic, and subdued.

At his meeting with reporters from regional newspapers around the nation, Admiral Pease offered everyone the chance to talk by satellite phone to a hometown soldier aboard the U.S.S. George Washington. One reporter from Syracuse, New York, even got a chance to ride the Navy's Seawolf Submarine.