The U.S. Coalition Forces Land Component Command in Kuwait pulled the credentials of two embedded journalists from the
Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, Va., after publishing a picture of a bullet-ridden Humvee parked in a Kuwaiti camp.
Reporter Louis Hansen and photographer Hyunsoo Leo Kim lost their embed credentials after the newspaper published a Dec. 10 story on the removal of battle-damaged military vehicles.
The rule they broke was not widely known by military reporters, because it had been changed since the start of the Iraq War.
Major Matthew Mclaughlin of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the embedding program,
acknowledged to
Editor & Publisher that the Army command in Kuwait had issued a new set of ground rules, including tighter photography control.
Military Reporters and Editors (MRE) Vice President Jim Crawley, a military writer with MediaGeneral, was among those protesting the rule change, pointing to photos on the U.S. Army and Marines official websites that clearly show damaged vehicles.
When asked about the military websites posting of damaged vehicle photos, Mclaughlin said he had not seen them. "I think it is (the Army command's) contention that there is a good deal of difference between the photos," he said.
But that sort of spin isn't appeasing the trade group, which plans to urge the Pentagon to review its embed rules next year.
"
Our job is not to be stooges of the administration or the Pentagon and be complicit in their attempt to manage the news," Sig Christenson, MRE president and a military writer with the
San Antonio Express-News, told
E&P. "We are here to tell our readers about the war."
***
This item first appeared at
Journalists Against Bush's B.S.
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