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Tips Sheets: Business, Law & Econ | Culture & Living | Medical Science & Health | Science & Technology Access denied: Reporting 'the real GI experience' not likely in a war today, filmmaker says Media assistance: Liam Otten - (314) 935-8494 Source: Richard Chapman - (314) 935-8238 Related: HBO Films [St. Louis, Mo., February 2003] - Among the many casualties of the Vietnam War was the relationship between the Pentagon and the American press. And though time heals most wounds, lingering scar tissue from that particular fracture likely will impede U.S. correspondents should we go to war again, says filmmaker Richard Chapman. Chapman, senior lecturer in Film & Media Studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is the producer of Shooting the Messengers, an upcoming documentary about how journalists reported the war in Vietnam. During the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. press corps in Saudi Arabia was largely restricted to daily briefings, hand-out photos and pool video footage provided by military command. However a CNN team, portrayed in the HBO film Live From Baghdad, remained in Baghdad even as the city was being bombed. Chapman also recently co-wrote the Golden Globe-nominated HBO film Live From Baghdad, which told the behind-the-scenes story of CNN's coverage of the early days of the 1991 Gulf War. He sees sharp changes in the military's treatment of journalists over the last four decades. "The United States has a very rich history of front-line reporting," Chapman says. However, "Vietnam was the last war journalists were allowed to cover uncensored." Media access to conflicts in Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf and, most recently, Afghanistan, was largely restricted to pool footage and safe zones far from the military action. "It's like boxing on closed-circuit television: You see the fight, you hear the fight, but you're not at the fight," Chapman says. "It certainly isn't Edward R. Murrow reporting from the rooftops of London, and I'm afraid it never will be again. "Vietnam-era reporters are very anxious to tell their stories, which are radically different from those of the new generation," Chapman adds. "Basically, they want to say, 'don't give up the ship.' You can be moral and ethical about reporting sensitive information yet still be able to tell the larger truth about what's happening." 'Amazingly, there was no censorship' Shooting the Messengers, scheduled for theatrical release in fall 2003, is culled from more than 50 hours of new interviews with such icons of American journalism as Walter Cronkite, David Halberstam and Frances Fitzgerald. Contrary to popular wisdom, Chapman relates how, in the early 1960s, reporters like Halberstam and Malcolm Browne of The New York Times and Neil Sheehan of UPI actually came to Vietnam "with the expressed purpose of reporting the war in favorable terms, of being 'on the team.'" While other news crews fled the city, a CNN team -- portrayed in the HBO film Live From Baghdad -- remained behind to relay live reports on the U.S. bombing of Baghdad at the onset of the 1991 Gulf War. Once on the ground, however, these reporters found themselves increasingly manipulated and lied to by South Vietnamese and American officials and "began going into the field to get the real story from the soldiers doing the actual fighting," Chapman says. What they learned, according to Chapman, was that the government of South Vietnam was pervasively corrupt and that the war was being poorly prosecuted -- not, of course, popular messages. President John. F. Kennedy attempted to have Halberstam reassigned. President Lyndon B. Johnson took verbal shots at Morely Safer after The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite aired Safer's now famous 1965 piece showing U.S. Marines burning the village of Cam Ne. Most chillingly -- in the incident that gives Shooting the Messengers its title -- the infamous Madame Nu, sister-in-law of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, drew up an assassination list that included Halberstam, Sheehan and Peter Arnett, who was then with the Associated Press, Chapman says. And yet at no time were reporters kept from the field. "Amazingly, there was no censorship," Chapman says. "If you were a journalist and you had your press card you could take a taxi or a chopper right out into a hot LZ." By contrast, during the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. press corps in Saudi Arabia was largely restricted to daily briefings, hand-out photos and pool video footage provided by military command. The most significant reporting of the war -- by a CNN team that remained in Baghdad even as the city was bombed -- nearly didn't happen. After a personal appeal from President George Bush, Tom Johnson, then president of CNN, was prepared to pull the group, which included Arnett, Bernie Shaw, John Holliman and producer Robert Wiener (co-author, with Chapman, of the HBO film). Johnson, however, was overruled by Ted Turner, the network's owner. As a result, more than a billion people had the opportunity to watch as the war began. Though he understands the potential sensitivities, Chapman disputes arguments that allowing reporters near the frontlines would endanger the lives of service men and women. "Journalists are not going to put U.S. forces in harms way" by revealing details of troop movements, locations or strategies, Chapman says. "Journalists have a code of ethics, and many that I've talked to have been privy to things that they did not report. If anything, the CNN coverage of the Persian Gulf War helped the American military track the success of the bombing -- they were getting live, on-site coverage from behind enemy lines. And it certainly didn't tip Baghdad to anything." Entering the 'belly of the beast' Chapman says that Washington's current plan to train and then "embed" reporters with potential combat units is clearly an attempt to soothe relations left raw by the Persian Gulf War restrictions. "Somebody at the Pentagon is making a great effort to cement better relations with the press, but how it translates in the field is still open to speculation. "There is a general pessimism among war correspondents I've talked to that this is largely a P.R. effort, that they'll be stuck on the periphery and not where the real action is," Chapman adds. "'Embedding' may be a slight step up from the Persian Gulf, but it certainly will not meet the standard set by reporters in Vietnam, who could and did enter the 'belly of the beast.' "War correspondents want to report on the real GI experience, to talk to the guys in the trenches and then go back and deal with the generals and the ambassadors," Chapman concludes. "To tell that story, they have to be in the thick of things. Many have lost their lives as a result, but, like soldiers, these correspondents see themselves as having a mission, a moral obligation: to report the truth as accurately as they can."
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