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The information gap

12 Jun 2007

It is the media's responsibility to bring information from the government and the military together with eye-witness accounts, research, interviews, learned observations, and critical analysis to fill in the gaps so that the public is given the information it needs to understand what the military forces are doing. [...] But in the lead-up to the ships' departure, the media failed to cover the complex preparations for the mission, such as training and logistics, and the navy never clearly answered the question of the ships' role.8 Dr. [...] Certainly the fact that the navy was protecting the U. S. Marine Expeditionary Unit embarked in the Amphibious Ready Group off the coast of Pakistan would have been an interesting story for the media, but the navy was not talking.13 Finally, in mid-December 2001, the navy began providing information to the media on what was going on.14 But by that time, the media was more interested in the land fo [...] Mitch Potter, of the Toronto Star, was one of the first reporters to embed with the CF, and he says the first embedding agreement, which was signed on-site instead of prior to arriving, was “written in the language of the first Gulf War,” and that “I think there was generally a spirit of mistrust from the military towards the journalists, just a baseline feeling that we were people that had to be [...] That incident and one in January 2004 in which another soldier was killed, precipitated brief flurries of stories on the suitability of the unarmoured vehicle for the Afghanistan mission.28 The military continued to defend the use of the Iltis, but it began using the armoured Bison for patrols in more dangerous areas, claiming the threat had changed.29 At the same time, the CF shipped more light a
afghanistan government politics media armed conflict canada international security armed forces international relations military science national security international security assistance force military equipment military defence isaf coalition forces canadian armed forces military weaponry afghan war, 2001- embedded journalism afghan national army graham bill graham provincial reconstruction team operation medusa joint task force 2 armed forces and the mass media

Authors

Hobson, Sharon

Pages
21
Published in
Canada

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