The military and the press play an important role than any other bodies for guaranteeing the national security and the people's right to be informed. In war-time, the military receives intensive spot right from the press and the people, and the press ...
The military and the press play an important role than any other bodies for guaranteeing the national security and the people's right to be informed. In war-time, the military receives intensive spot right from the press and the people, and the press is the first means for people to obtain information about war situation, meeting their right to be informed.
In this paper, I suggested fundamental tasks for the army and the press to prevent incorrect report in war-time, through case studies on the cause of incorrect report and every kinds of war. Incorrect report happens due to the conflict between the military and the press such as the different thoughts on the range of military secrets which is a conflict factor between the two bodies, a different perception on the value of news, a difference in the acknowledgement on the things covered, an excessive prejudice of the press and the military to each other, a legal control to the access to the military information, and the likes. Other than these fundamental factors, the cause of incorrect report includes a negative outlook on the military, speculative articles resulted from the secretive methods of the military, reporter's shortage of knowledge on the military, practice of informing the news obtained outside the military without confirmation, and the complexity of confirming procedure for the covered information, etc. Behind this, there are intrinsic conflicts between the military and the press. Analyzing war cases, these conflicts are well expressed. In war-time, effective news control is a decisive factor to win the war, especially modern wars require overall security capacity to be exerted, so military power and the integration of people's will to perform the war are the key to the win the war. Examining the cases of people's will to carry out a war, we get lessens from the coverage of the press during the Gulf war and Vietnam war. These cases tell us that the press in wartime plays a bigger role than the army's strategy or advanced weapons, and that it should go with active cooperation with the press to win a war.
Thus, the military should try to understand and keep a good relation with the press even in peace time, and construct a cooperating system in which the press can think good of the military. Basically, reporting attitude in wartime is a problem up to the military. The urgent tasks of the military include determination of basic contents to news blackout and the news control, establishment of news briefing guideline toward the press, and clarification of the concept of the public affairs which has been in the state of ambiguousness in peace and war-time.
Present curriculum for the officers charged in public affairs in wartime should be corrected suitably to the concept of public affairs in war-time. In the present curriculum, the classes of public affairs in war-time is just 9%, and the classes of experiment and practice needed to perform effectively the tasks has been rarely adopted. The direction of public affairs in wartime should be established as well. Despite public affairs guideline is to be shared with other departments and the press, it has been limited to the military, which should be corrected.
The release of the war situation to the press should be unified through a single channel, which is necessary to elevate the credibility of the coverage of war situation and to conform the outlooks.
Lastly, the military should educate army-related reporters so that the reporters can recognize correctly the reality and the direction of the army, and the reporters are to be educated in detailed separate groups. The primary task of the press is to cultivate military-special reporters. Blanket re-education of the reporters could keep them from going with the specialization of the military. Reporters' lack of specialization could lead to incorrect report resulting from the wrong article on the military.
In such cases, the credibility on the military and the assurance of people's right to be informed could be invaded obviously by just one reporter. Also, the press companies damaged from the Pool-System during the Gulf war need to set up a hierarchically independent system in which the companies consult with the military for the number of war-correspondents and the equipments according to the function of each company having its own war-correspondents, and to downsize the unnecessarily large press corps, and to resolve the problem of sharing the covered news.
I concluded that, when the problems to be resolved between the military and the press is settled, news censorship and news control other than the coverage which could affect the operations security and negative public opinion become unnecessary as a result of the consultation between the military and the press.
Also, conflicts between the two bodies and the incorrect report in wartime could also be prevented.