General Petraeus and the
'Information War'
Thursday, June 12, 2008
A third
article from the New York Observer:
General
Petraeus and the 'Information War'
'He
likes to talk to reporters as he's walking through
the street. He doesn't like being filmed in front of
blown-up buildings.'
BY
FELIX
GILLETTE |
JUNE 12, 2008
Jamie
Tarabay, the former Baghdad Bureau Chief for NPR, was
stationed in Iraq in the early months of 2007 when
General David Petraeus arrived to take over command
of the U.S. forces there.
In the weeks and months to come, like many of her
professional colleagues in the war zone, she
eventually accompanied Mr. Petraeus on a number of
walk-along interviews as he strolled through the
streets of the occupied city.
"He does the same thing every time," Ms. Tarabay
recently told the Observer. "When he goes to a market
area, the first thing he does is that he takes off
his helmet and puts his soft cap on. There are a set
number of things he does. He buys bananas, and he
buys tea. If his aide has a soccer ball, he'll give
the kids the soccer ball. He likes to talk to
reporters as he's walking through the street. He
doesn't like being filmed in front of blown-up
buildings."
"He's very aware," she added. "He knows how to play
the media."
In his new book, War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq,
(which the Observer reviewed this week), Richard
Engel of NBC News puts it a slightly different way.
"Petraeus understood how to use the media," writes
Mr. Engel. "He could boil down his thoughts to
fifteen-second sound bytes, and always tracked the
camera during interviews … He had what actors call
'camera awareness.'"
According to Mr. Engel, it was a drastic change from
Mr. Petraeus' predecessor, General George Casey, who
led the U.S. forces in Iraq from June 2004 to
February 2007.
"Casey had no camera or media awareness at all,"
writes Mr. Engel. "Most reporters were completely
shut out…When General Petraeus took command in
February 2007, nearly every reporter, including
journalists from tiny foreign television stations and
even American college newspapers, could be guaranteed
an on-the-record interview within a few days."
Some sixteen months later, a number of the seasoned
TV reporters in Baghdad told the Observer that they
continue to appreciate Mr. Petraeus' style of media
engagement—i.e. less press conferences, more personal
access, increased transparency, and the occasional
banana in the market place.
"I'd say it's night and day compared to under Casey,"
said Terry McCarthy of ABC News. "Petraeus came in
and he made it very clear that he wanted the media to
see what was going on in Iraq."
"Not only is Petraeus quite accessible to the media,
but he's managed to convey down the line to his
colonels and captains that it's okay to talk to the
media," added Mr. McCarthy. "Under Casey, they were
really trying to spin us. In Petraeus' case, if it's
a bad day, he'll say 'it's been a bad day.'"
"Petraeus is really well organized," said Courtney
Kealy, a correspondent for Fox News in Baghdad. "He
really wanted to engage the press with the surge.
They made sure we were able to move around with them
and get on embeds and see how it was working with our
own eyes--which is the most important thing, rather
than just give us press conferences."
"His administration is very pro-engagement," NBC's
Mr. Engel told the Observer. "Part of it is that they
have a good story to tell."
"I
find the command of General Petraeus to be much more
media savvy than his predecessors," said Michael Ware
of CNN. "That could be said of their approach to the
conflict in general. Their awareness of and inherent
understanding of the requirements of counter
insurgency lends itself by its very definition to a
much more accessible approach to the media. That's
not to say that the military does not continue to
obfuscate, blur the lines, and to ignore certain
realities."
"General Petraeus has a relatively refreshing
approach towards the media," added Mr. Ware. "But by
no stretch of imagination is it accommodating, nor
simple. There is still somewhat of an adversarial
nature by definition, because you're dealing with the
military. It's almost ingrained to have distaste for
the media. There has been an abject failure by the
U.S. mission from the beginning of this war to fight
a real information war. In many ways, in
insurgencies, that's where the wars are won or
lost--both here in the conflict and back
home."