Wednesday, May 02, 2007
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More On The Army's Blogging Ban
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Posted by:
Hugh Hewitt at
8:22 PM
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Senator Richard Shelby said on my show tonight that he is very skeptical of the blogging ban. The Washington Post has an article up on milblogging as well. I doubt very much if the Pentagon saw the reaction coming. Suggestion: Suspend the new policy asap and convene a panel of senior brass and civilians to focus on the blog issue but also on the information war more generally. This pratfall could become the occasion for the Pentagon to ask why we are getting rings run around us in the information war.
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On why the U.S. is losing the information war: gee, why doesn't the Army invite Hugh, Mary Katharine, and me, as well as a few other individuals (not an arena-full) in to explain why we're losing and what we can do about it? Pile up enough rules and restrictions about what people can say and how they can say it and you can lose any information battle in a hurry.
Steve Maloney (40 years in public communications & PR)
ambridge, pa
Tell the military to call me. I'm always available to serve my country |
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No matter what the military does, and clearly DOD has blown a call here, it has to reach the general public primarily through a highly selective filter called the MSM. And the MSM isn't going to change its agenda-driven war coverage any time soon.
In point of fact, the MSM product would be generally indistinguishable from present output if it were being directly supplied by radical Muslims. How, then, could our military communicate effectively on a broad scale even if it were attempting to do so? |
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on military personnel re: blogs, etc. angers me to no end. The military men and women who are putting their lives on the line are the only sources I trust to keep me abreast of what really is going on in this war, and I want to know what individual idiot is responsible for shutting them down! If some traitor is putting out info endangering the troops, then find him and take care of the matter in total, but DO NOT stop the speech of those who matter to us the most. |
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Your post deserves one big AMEN!!!
26 YEAR MILITARY AND VIET VET. |
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Sixty years ago my family moved to another country because my father's job was transferred there. This happened to be a country governed by a dictator who pretty much controlled everything, including the media. Only one newspaper dared speak out against him. One night the dictator's goons smashed the printing presses of that newspaper. Then they commandeered the public transportation system, throwing off the passengers and occupying all the seats and even sitting on the roof of the streetcars. All night they helled around town waving flaming torches and screaming the name of the dictator. I personally observed these riots from the balcony of our apartment. I cannot tell you the effect all of this had on an American child raised on freedom of the press. Soon a law was passed making it an act of treason to criticize the dictator or any member of his government. Some who spoke against the dictator were arrested and not heard from again.
I have seen for the past four years a movement among American conservatives to follow a similar path. I certainly agree with you that members of the military should not be censored in their communications unless of course they are announcing troop movements or something like that. But the idea that negative war news should be suppressed, that it is unpatriotic because it makes the Bush government look bad, is very frightening to me. If a school is opening in Fallujah, that is good. But if 150 people got blown up in Baghdad, that, however bad, is a more significant news item than the school opening. Would you have the 150 deaths go unreported for the sake of encouraging public support of the war?
If you fear that a party may say something bad about you, a time-honored way to control that is to convince others that the party is a liar. We see that phenomenon in the right's ongoing campaign to discredit the mainstream media. The job of the media is not to be the government's lapdogs, but its watchdogs. Your suggestion that President Bush put the fear of God into the media is not suitable for a free society. |
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