Captured by the press

[ewx]

So what's so bad about these sailors and marines being allowed to sell their stories to the papers?

(i.e. as compared to just anyone being allowed to sell stories to papers; chequebook journalism may well be problematic in general but I don't see why it should be prohibited specifically to military personnel.)

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what I thought. (I can see reasons to restrict soldiers from doing so, whether I agree or not, but now the fuss has been made, it doesn't really make any difference any more.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I can see reasons for restricting what soldiers may say at all - you don't want them revealing sensitive information about ongoing operations. But this applies even if they're not being paid, and nobody seems to have suggested it's an issue here.

[mtbc100.livejournal.com]

… and perhaps they should protect each other's privacy. But, yes.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

What's interesting is that there's a Minister voluntarily taking the blame for a decision that was made without consulting him (albeit by people who are answerable to him). It's a long time since that's happened, and it's a bit strange.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

When was the last time a defence minister went on to greater things? Not a rhetorical question, I really have no idea, but if it's not really on the cursus honorum then he may think he's got little to lose.</total speculation>

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Depends what you mean by 'greater things'. He's not getting any younger, but former defence Ministers include Michael Portillo, John Reid, Michael Heseltine and Denis Healey.

[mhoulden.livejournal.com]

Could it be a certain amount of arse coveing by the MOD and our Dear Leader because having "ordinary" service personnel saying (more or less) what they want might reveal things that their superiors find embarassing? It's pretty common knowledge that a lot of really senior officers are somewhat lacking in the clue and comptence departments, but having it confirmed might not be what they want.

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

The MoD need/want to manage the media, especially during conflict. If individual personnel are allowed to speak directly to the media that won't be as successful. Part of joining the military involves giving up a number of rights you have as a citizen, such as the freedom to speak to the press. If high-profile exceptions are made (for fairly obvious propaganda reasons), it could cause resentment in serving personnel as most loss of rights are easier to bear if the rules are applied equally to all.

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

Good job I hit refresh before posting pretty much the same thing.

It's interesting times for the MoD and co. at the moment due to the number of personnel with mobile phones, video cameras, blogs, and suchlike, it's worth chatting with major_clanger about this if you're interested.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I agree there are good reasons for limiting what staff can say in public about current/recent military activities, but the fuss doesn't seem to be about people being allowed to speak or not, but rather about them being paid for it. Am I completely missing the point of recent media stories here?

[pm215]

Part of joining the military involves giving up a number of rights you have as a citizen, such as the freedom to speak to the press.

For that matter, I'm pretty sure my company would call it gross misconduct...

[nevboo.livejournal.com]

I assume that the problem is that the stories will get twisted, upset people, and make other countries attack us and we aren't prepared for nuclear war?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

But surely there'd be just as much danger of this even if they weren't paid.

[nevboo.livejournal.com]

True. I guess I was fixated there on the telling the story part rather than the paid part. I thought normally they couldn't tell or be paid.

[gerald_duck]

What seems to be upsetting people most is that they're making a lot of money out of having survived, whereas the estates of soldiers who've died in Iraq have been left with very little. That seems to be an unfortunate way for things to be set up, but I'm not sure it's the main issue.

What strikes me as more controversial is that they're making money out of telling the story of how they did their job. If I did that in the private sector, my employer would probably come down on me like a ton of bricks and claim ownership of the work, so why not in the military? I think I draw some kind of fuzzy and ill-defined line between, for example, Spike Milligan's tales of his time in the army — where he was largely being paid for the quality of the telling and the insight he brought to his experiences — and this case where there's no suggestion of any literary skill or insight and the payment is being made because of the experience itself.

I'm assuming the personnel are still bound by secrecy laws, so there's not actually any risk of them revealing confidential operational details.

The biggest cock-up seems to have been the ugly propaganda advantage we've handed the Iranians. We got our soldiers home, spent a day or two briefing them then let them loose on the media, effectively on a commission basis, to tell as interesting a story as possible of what had happened to them. While I personally doubt they were actually nobbled much, if at all, the look of the thing is pretty shabby.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Milligan was also a conscript; much harder to control them as tightly as you can volunteers. He was also writing well after the fact (and conflict), and when no longer in uniform.

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

I can see a fairly high risk that serving personnel might behave differently in a given situation (to the extent of not following orders etc) if they thought that they stood a chance of getting some dosh out of an interesting story at the end of it.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

That's a reasonable point. Still, I don't think anybody is suggesting putting an end to the long-standing practice of people writing up their experiences in war after it's over, which you'd have thought might be considered to carry a similar risk.

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

Much less risk - if you can make 100k out of your story mid-war, then you can afford to bog off rather than stick out fighting the ^&*^& war to the end!

[mooism.livejournal.com]

There’s a perception that they’ve profited from doing their job badly. There’s a fear that soldiers might now try to get captured, in the hope that they’d be released quickly and collect £££ from the papers.

There’s a fear that soldiers might now try to get captured...

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I must have missed that one. Who has that fear, specifically?

Re: There’s a fear that soldiers might now try to get captured...

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I don’t remember specifically where I’ve heard that from or who it was attributed to. It is the justification that’s stuck in my head since they came back, though.