.... For your part of the media–military relationship, members of the media, the Army asks for only a few simple things: follow your ethics; make every story as complete a story as possible; hold yourselves to the same high standard of truth-telling, accuracy and proficiency you do us; try to apply your ethic of ‘limitation of harm’ to Soldiers, their Families and your country’s security and well-being; and when one of your fellow journalist-professionals fails to live up to your ethics or does shoddy work, call them on it. Publicly. We understand the sometimes cut-throat nature of the competition media face. We know you need access, transparency, recognition of your deadline, and as much information as we can tell you – or at least the reason ‘why’ we cannot tell you. But in return we ask you to report all sides of a story, not just the elements of data that prove a premise or working thesis. And therein is our greatest frustration of late in our side of this relationship: agenda journalism. Several times in the past year, journalists have requested our support in pursuit of their stories, been granted incredible access – hours of interviews with all levels of the Army, full disclosure up to the point of classified data – and then cherry-picked what they wished in order to sound-bite their way to a factually unsupportable premise. And when confronted with the missing facts and the rest of the incomplete story, editors and producers utter the mantra ‘we stand by our reporter’ and knowing peer professionals (and competitors) shrug their shoulders and turn away.
Let there be no misunderstanding, this is not an issue of ‘good news’ versus ‘bad news’, but rather complete versus incomplete. We accept the negative stories; we understand you will and should hold us accountable to the public. But the public, like us, expects you to get it right and as complete as possible, and when they get it wrong or only tell half the story, the public also expects you to correct the inaccurate or incomplete story that has now gone from newscast or print to several thousand blogs and perhaps a call for a congressional hearing. News organizations must look to their ethical code, and when one of your peers fails to meet your own expectations of that code, make that a story. One might imagine the standards of journalism would improve and the public would be better served ....
