War PR
: The Defense Department policy of embedding correspondents with fighting units is proving to be brilliant — for the Defense Department. First, it assured them sympathetic, human-level coverage of our troops as they waited and bonded. Second, now that war has begun, the “embeds” are restricted from saying a lot and even if they could say what they know they don’t know much; we hear TV correspondents gasp as something wooshes overhead and they tell us that something wooshes but they don’t have the faintest idea what’s doing the wooshing or where it’s headed. Or as a journalist embedded on the USS Abraham Lincoln said with admirable candor: “We’re in the thick of it, knowing precious little.”
And besides, if you don’t like the media, then you can make fun of how silly they all look talking in gas masks.
