For Pentagon and News Media, Relations Improve With a Shift in War Coverage

FOR PENTAGON AND NEWS MEDIA, RELATIONS IMPROVE WITH SHIFT IN WAR COVERAGE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Thom Shanker]
The anguished relationship between the military and the news media appears to be on the mend as battlefield successes from the troop increase in Iraq are reflected in more upbeat news coverage. Efforts from the new Pentagon leadership, as well as by top commanders at the headquarters in Baghdad, have also eased tensions between reporters and those in uniform. Positive or negative, the troops’ view of the news media is set as much by the tone of commanders as by the tenor of individual news clips. At the start of the Iraq war, decades of open hostilities between the military and news media dating from Vietnam were forgotten, if only for a brief and shining moment. One reason was the embed program for the Iraq invasion that placed hundreds of reporters from across the journalistic spectrum into combat units. Soldiers and correspondents shared tents, meals and risks, and both sides said that perhaps their differences were not irreconcilable after all. Then, however, the success of the lightning-quick invasion became not the full story, but merely the early chapter of a frustrating and deadly narrative of war in Iraq.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/washington/07military.html?ref=todayspaper
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