New Media Policies Reported in New York Times

Background: This New York Times article chronicles the creation of many of the controversial media policies that were implemented during the First Gulf War, most notably the use of restrictive press pools. Press pools are utilized in circumstances such as military or political press briefings when news organizations will combine, or pool, their resources together for news coverage.

AFTER THE WAR; Long Series of Military Decisions Led to Gulf War News Censorship

The American military operation in the Persian Gulf was still in its frantic, tentative youth on Aug. 14, 1990, when Capt. Ron Wildermuth of the Navy sat in his office at United States Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and sent a classified message flashing across military computers on three continents.

As Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf's chief aide for public affairs, Captain Wildermuth had spent days drafting the message, a 10-page document known as Annex Foxtrot, which laid out a blueprint for the operation's public information policy. The movement of troops, weapons and materiel was to become the largest since the humiliating -- and televised -- Vietnam War defeat. And in the officer's mind, one point bore repetition.

"News media representatives," he wrote, "will be escorted at all times. Repeat, at all times."

The drafting of Annex Foxtrot was one step in a long march of decisions that, by war's end, left the Government with a dramatically changed policy on press coverage of military operations.

The gulf war marked this century's first major conflict where the policy was to confine reporters to escorted pools that sharply curtailed when and how they could talk to troops. And within months, Americans were receiving news accompanied by words that had not been connected with combat accounts for nearly 50 years: "Reports reviewed by military censors."…

*Pentagon officials decided early in the operation to radically change the purpose of press pools, taking what had been set up as a temporary device to get reporters to a combat zone and turning it into the sole means of combat coverage. Despite that decision, Mr. Cheney's spokesman, Pete Williams, held a series of autumn meetings with news executives that encouraged them to believe that traditional independent reporting would follow.…

Public opinion polls have shown overwhelming majorities backing the military over the press. …

"I'm not sure the public's interest is served by seeing what seems to have been such a painless war, when 50,000 to 100,000 people may have died on the other side," said Ted Koppel, host of the ABC News program "Nightline."

"Obviously this was done so they could maintain the closest possible control over public opinion, to increase support for the war."

Guiding Principles: No Accidents in This Campaign

When he arrived in Saudi Arabia, Captain Wildermuth, the Schwarzkopf aide, compiled a list of ground rules that journalists were required to sign in exchange for credentials. From the correspondents' standpoint, the trouble began with these words: "You MUST remain with your military escort at all times."

Captain Wildermuth said he added that provision on his own. "You needed an escort to provide a liaison with the units," he said. "That military guy speaks military. It's just smart." For that reason, he said, escorts were a standard part of press pools.

But critics say this decision fundamentally changed coverage of military operations, by transforming escorts into a permanent part of the news-gathering process. . . .

While lack of access to troops brought one set of reporters' complaints, the conduct of escorts brought another. The escorts helped choose whom reporters could talk to. Some hovered over interviews and others stepped in front of cameras to interrupt ones they did not like.

But others argue that leaders set a restrictive tone by design. After this newspaper quoted a private criticizing President Bush, General Schwarzkopf called the enlisted man's commanding general, asking for an explanation.

Aides to General Schwarzkopf said they screened requests for interviews by researching the reporter's past articles "to be aware of what the person's interests were," as one said, adding that such research is standard peacetime procedure.

Stories about angry commanders traveled quickly, and Mr. Hoffman, the former Pentagon spokesman whom Mr. Williams consulted during the run-up to the war, said escorts understood that they risked being called to task for negative stories.

Source: Jason Deparle, “After the War; Long Series of Military Decisions Led to Gulf War News Censorship,” New York Times, May 5, 1991, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/05/world/after-the-war-long-series-of-military-decisions-led-to-gulf-war-news-censorship.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.