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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! October 1, 2005 3/25 Marines: HomeboundBy GreyhawkBack in August the press had a field day when 21 members of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines were killed in Iraq. As a former 3/25 member reported: They broke this story so fast that the Marines could not even notify the families before hand. This led to absolute panic among the 3/25 families.They all wanted to be the first to thrust a camera into the face of a grieving survivor, of course. One intrepid reporter was able to get a quote from a manager of a donut shop near their headquarters: ?Oh my God,? she said softly. ?I?m all for protection but this is getting a little bit ridiculous.?There's a grieving survivor photo and a video report at that link. However, a few days later Cindy Sheehan set up camp in a ditch in Crawford, and the Ohio Marines were promptly forgotten. Now the 3/25 is back in the USA: Despite the national attention, the Marines arrived to little fanfare. The battalion will face about a week of debriefing and administrative tasks before they can head home, so the Marine Corps asked families not to come to Camp Lejeune.Don't miss this letter from a Captain in the 3/25 Marines, written at the height of their battles. Welcome home, Marines. Tending Distant Fires Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Posted by Greyhawk / October 1, 2005 10:58 PM | Permalink 2 TrackBacksThe 3/25 has come home, at last. Read More As the 3/25 Marines return home and memories of the very high price they paid come back to us all, there is no better time to take a look at the accomplishments made in the Anbar province over the last several months. Along with units of the 2/2 Mar... Read More 7 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
I remember reading an article published quite a while ago in the Columbia Journalism Review about media interviews with grieving families. The author went and contacted families interviewed in the immediate aftermath of accidents, disasters and the like to find out what they thought about the media having done so and to get their impressions of how they were treated.
I was a little surprised by the findings. The overwhelming majority of people contacted said that they had been treated with respect, and that they were glad they had been given the opportunity to voice their grief.
Now, I'm sure some people here will say "Columbia Journalism Review," it figures. I'm not a regular reader of it, but they're not any sort of megaphone for the press. They're pretty harshly critical of the media on occasion. So I trusted that article.
As for the media reporting it too quickly, i.e., before the families could be notified, while I sympathize with that complaint I disagree with it. The Iraq War isn't the first one that has been covered by the media. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the newspapers, radio stations, TV stations and newsreels of yesteryear waited until families were notified of the casualties to report things like this.
Families worried like crazy during the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the two World Wars and the Civil War when news of battle casualties preceded the names of those felled. It's part of the heartache of war, not the result of the media's irresponsibility.
I'm correcting you, because you're wrong. Back in Vietnam, Korea and World War II the news media did not have the ability to contact the families of specific soldiers before the Army. Why? Because the kinds of technologies that exist today did not exist back then. It might be weeks or months before news reels were played from battles in World War II and Korea. In Vietnam, news media did not have the unprecedented level of access to troop level operations that they have today. And they also did not have the benefit of the internet to transmit data across the world in seconds.
The issue here is not "coverage" of the war. The issue here are members of the media failing to respect those killed in action by putting their lust for the story over their thoughts of the feelings for those family members.
It's simply not true that it took weeks or months before news reels made it back from WW2. The battle for Iwo Jima was covered in near real time, and that's only one example. Besides, I don't think the issue were discussing concerned video coverage of the deaths in Iraq.
The complaint was about the reporting of the additional 14 deaths. To my knowledge, the names of the dead were not revealed in the reports, but only the identity of the unit. The very same kinds of news reports were a stock feature of reports in other wars as far back as the Civil War.
In fact, in the Civil War it was even worse. Big crowds of spectators would go out from Washington, D.C. and watch the battles as they occurred. In areas where this didn't happen, war correspondents sent reports back to newspapers via telegraph and the accounts were published the next day.
The Civil War really caused the birth of the press as we know it. Several things came together: The telegraph, cheaper printing technology, and demand for accurate reports of battles. People wanted information, not censorship of the news.
I hate the media. They're all newsmongers.
No shame!!
They are losing viewers,though.
Love your poem.
I hate the media. They're all newsmongers.
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Yeah, you'd really hate to have the media in the business of reporting the news. But hey, if you don't like it there are always re-runs of Leave It to Beaver on channel 162.
"Yeah, you'd really hate to have the media in the business of reporting the news. But hey, if you don't like it there are always re-runs of Leave It to Beaver on channel 162."
Reporting the news Wilson? So that's what you call them doing when they try to "catch" the guys doing something or "creating" the news to fit their agenda, right? Yeah, OK. Try selling that to someone that doesn't know any better but you won't find those types of suckers on this site. We know too much about your "reporters".
Now there are exceptions. You know the type, the ones that are actually on our side and truthfully "report" the news without putting their own bias and spin on it. The same ones that don't try to throw our troops under the bus or further endanger their lives by "reporting" something they know will inflame the ignorant.
Read Michael Yon sometime and you'll see what a real war correspondent looks like.
But as far as your "reporting" in real time please spare us. Those of us that have family fighting this war would prefer to get our loved ones' fate "reported" to us by official channels thank you very much! And if someone decides to put a micropphone in my face they'd best not be surprised if it takes a proctologist to remove it from where I stick it next!
BTW, in the War Between The States the newspaper accounts were the ONLY place the citizenry could get word of loved ones' deaths or wounds. Mail and official notification could take weeks. The newsreels of Iwo, Okie, et al were a minimum five to ten days old before they hit stateside. Notification of family was already performed by that time. There was NO real time jack squat in WWII. Period!
But then I wouldn't expect you to understand common decency for something so trivial as loved ones' notification. Why let all that touchy feely stuff get in the way of a good story huh? After all, we can't have something so miniscule as a real hero's death not used to good advantage, correct? Gee, who would think "reporting" the death of Marines in a specific Regiment, Battalion, Platoon, or Squad would cause such idiotic responses in the great unwashed family and friends of those mind numbed robots in the military anyway. It's all just false patriotism red state theatrics anyhoo. Ignorant people that would vote Dubya in office couldn't possibly be respected as they are the idiots that are tearing down the country. Who gives a rat's a*s about them anyway. They are beneath contempt and border on moronic. We get your point! Thanks Wilson, we "understand".