Should journalists be embedded with the military?

Photographer Joao Silva had a simple view of news. Looking at journos clambering aboard an Army Buffel, donning bulletproof vests and helmets for an armed, escorted tour of the East Rand battlefield in 1993, he shook his head: “Nah, bro. We don’t do gang bangs…”

Embedded journalism

And then we were off by ourselves – the one bulletproof vest we had between the three of us shoved up against the rear window of The Star’s Nissan Sentra. Silva – who later lost his legs in a landmine explosion in 2010 – believed in marching to the beat of his own news drummer. Story first. Safety second…

He was by no means a maverick, either. Quite a few of us in the dinosaur era of journalism believed in going it alone … and would have cringed at the thought of being “embedded” – especially with the government, or a president.

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That’s why I had little sympathy with the hacks sitting on the SAA Airbus A340 at Warsaw’s Chopin airport.

Their nice little “jolly” to Europe and Russia had gone pear-shaped and they were reduced to interviewing each other.

My first news editor, on The Chronicle in Bulawayo, would have fired me on the spot if I ever dared to use another journalist as a source. I wonder what he would think of today’s “microwave journalism”, which is nothing more than a collection of warmed-over Tweets in many cases.

Invasion of Iraq

Leaving aside the debacle of the grounded plane, the question of journalists being embedded with an organisation – or the military, as happened in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – is one worth considering.

People with political power are only too aware that granting some hacks privileged access will dramatically reduce the chance of critical, or negative coverage. And, in a version of the “Stockholm Syndrome”, it won’t be too difficult to steer a reporter to your way of thinking if you spend a lot of time with them.

On the other hand, being excluded from these cosy little clubs can deprive a reporter of useful insights into the workings of government. And, of course, actually getting out and reporting on the ground (as opposed to “warming a bloody chair in the newsroom!”, as my Chronicle news editor would say) is always where the better stories are.

Sometimes, though, there is pressure on journalists to join the club. The former SA Defence Force (SADF) tried to make me get official accreditation, threatening exclusion from news and events if I did not apply. I never did … and eventually they realised I would report fairly, warts and all.

They didn’t appreciate the revelations of the warts (especially when we dug into the chemical weapons programme in the early ’90s) but accepted the reality.

A brigadier once said to me, angrily: “Why do you always write so much kak about us (referring to the Army)?” My response: “Sir, maybe you should stop causing so much kak…”

I told him that if the Army did something positive, I would report it because I had no agenda. A few weeks later, he called to tell me Army medical personnel were assisting with a cholera outbreak in Mpumalanga. It made the front page of the paper the next day.

He phoned later, incredulous that I was “being fair”.

No sir, I’m just doing my job. And that is a job which can be done without being embedded.

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