policy - The Black Vault

THE BOM CORPORATION
H. LESSONS
* News censorship is unlikely to be exercised in any future military
situation in which the US
major war.
is directly involved, short of a
e Volatile reaction by ranking officials to embarrassing news
releases tends to exacerbate existing problems and to widen any
gaps in relations with tne media; establishing forthright publ];
affairs policies and ensuring the best possible relations with
the media normally minimizes embarrassing releases and secirity
violations.
e C£1i;is-information transfer in a free society may worsen the
naturally adversa;'ial relations between media and the government
or other bureaucracy involved because of their separate and
independent chains of communicatiron which provide different data
at different speeds and because of the different purposes for
which the information is intended.
This phenomenon is most pronounced
time.
in serious emergencies that extend over long periods of
4 To prevent acrimonious press-military rela+ions during crisis
situations, the military must emphasize media public affairs
education at all levels of military education, to include senior
NCO
schools and officers' basic and career courses, command and
staff colleges, and war colleges.
Public affairs officers and
commnanders and their staffs must understand that it is the legitimate
role of the media to investigate the news, including that
which might embarrass a given commander, subject to security
considerations, and that the approaches of the media and the
military will naturally differ, but that this difference need not
lead to strained relations.
* It is not the job of the Department of State or the Department of
Defense to set up a comprehensive information service for the
media--it iF the job of the media to collect the news.
Instead,
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