Before this week, the idea of war reporting seemed so alien and inaccessible to me.
A 24-hour excersise with the Royal Marines may not have completely changed my mind, but it certainly opened my eyes to the role of journalism in a warzone.
I spent Wednesday and much of Thursday at the MOD training area at Caerwent, in South Wales; living in a derelict warehouse, eating military stodge and spending seven hours embedded with 38 non-commisioned officers as they planned and executed an ambush.
While the excersise was a lot of fun and gave me a taste of the life of an embedded reporter, it most importantly gave me an insight into the view of the media from a military perspective.
Firstly, the Marines are much more politically minded than I ever imagined. Perhaps naivly, I assumed your average commando lived in such an enclosed world that politics, world affairs and Gordon Brown meant little to them.
But, as was explained to me by a Sargeant Major, the military have an active interest in Westminster:
“We see ourselves as an extention of government policies. So, if the media, and particularly the Sun, have such an influence on the electorate, and the government need to keep the electorate happy, we have a clear interest in what is being reported in newspapers.”
The military are now more keen than ever to involve the press in their day-to-day acrivities, thus giving them more control over content of war reports.
They are also serious about keeping journalists safe in the battleground. Though only a training excersise, I never once felt in any danger while out on patrol and had opportunities to get closer to the action than any freelancer ever could.
While the day didn’t exactly have me rushing for the flak jacket, it certainly made me more acutely aware of the role the media, particularly the printed press, has to play in foreign policy and the lives of Britain’s marines and soldiers.
2 Comments
November 21, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Interesting foresight, I’d have probably made the exact same assumption had I not read this…..It seems the marines truly are gentlemen for slowing down their operations to allow the ‘Opening Fatsmen’ to keep up.
November 24, 2009 at 5:59 pm
[...] Jump to Comments Rushing dishevelled into the Law building last week (post-Marines exercise with Tom Mooney et. al, which may feature in a later blog post), I was glad to have only missed the opening couple [...]