Are media missing the Afghanistan story? By Evan Duggan Published June 30, 2010    1 Comment

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LCol Dave Cochrane speaks to the media as he poses in front of a Hercules airplane in June.

Throughout Canada's mission in Afghanistan, many have complained that the public is not receiving sufficient information from the field about the military and its operations.

Certainly journalists have stepped up to the plate to provide what the government often does not. Opinions differ, however, on whether that reporting has been comprehensive enough, and if not, then who is to blame for such scarcity.

Last Wednesday, Senators Romeo Dallaire and Pamela Wallin, co-chairs of the Senate's National Security and Defence committee, offered an answer: The media.

During a briefing detailing their findings in an interim report on "Canada's present and future role in Afghanistan"—they concluded that Canada should continue to train Afghan security forces beyond 2011, and encouraged Parliament to revisit the debate over extending the pullout date—the senators found themselves in a discussion over the quality of media coverage.

They were asked why the mission has been such a difficult topic for Canadians to reach a consensus on. Ms. Wallin disagreed that it had, saying that during her travels throughout Canada she found that the war is a priority for Canadians, but the media contingent in Kandahar had not been getting the whole story back to the public.

"I just simply wish there was greater coverage of...what our troops are doing," said Ms. Wallin.

"Unfortunately, because a lot of the coverage is limited to what you see on a base, it's very difficult to report the story and the successes that our soldiers have had in the field."

Mr. Dallaire agreed, saying that the "A-team hasn't necessarily been getting out into the field." He said security and insurance concerns have restricted the availability of "some good, solid, consistent reporting."

"The complexity and the ambiguity of this mission cannot fit the 15 second sound byte every 15 minutes," said Mr. Dallaire. "[Coverage] needs people to be able to explain that you're integrating development, you're integrating humanitarian efforts, [and] you're integrating nation-building."

The words struck Murray Brewster, a reporter for the Canadian Press who was present at the media briefing, particularly harsh. Having spent a total of ten months embedded with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan, he felt that for journalists like him, "Senator Dallaire's characterization was horribly insulting," especially in the aftermath of Calgary Herald reporter Michelle Lang's death last year in Kandahar.

Reporters like Mr. Brewster who have covered Afghanistan say the problems with coverage are not due to a lack of effort or depth, but lay virtually everywhere else: Journalists face too much red tape. Government departments are uncooperative, and the information is often delayed or blocked due to Ottawa's vice grip on message control.

Mr. Brewster pointed to "operational security" and a veil of silence from government departments such as the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) as the major problems with getting more comprehensive information.

As a set of guidelines that restrict what embedded journalists can report, operational security has been growing increasingly arbitrary and confusing, he argued. The rules prohibit media from reporting various details such as casualty numbers, battle locations, and tactics for fear that the information could end up in the hands of insurgents. And the list keeps growing longer.

"No embedded reporter on the ground ever wants to do anything that will harm or impede the soldiers or themselves," said Mr. Brewster, "[but] you're constantly having to fight battles with public affairs officers, and sometimes commanders about what can be reported."

Military journalist Scott Taylor, who has also reported from Afghanistan, said he experienced similar headaches with government officials throughout his five deployments to Afghanistan as a non-imbedded reporter.

While traveling with the Ottawa Citizen's David Pugliese for 23 days while working on a documentary, Mr. Taylor said they were consistently stonewalled by the Canadian embassy.

He also argued that reporting as a non-embedded journalist came with other unique challenges. Having not signed the embed agreement meant that they were unable to get one-on-one interaction with the Canadian soldiers, and it also meant that their security was dependent on their ability to slip disguised and undetected into the Afghan community.

The government, for its part, considers itself to be sufficiently open and helpful. A spokesperson for CIDA's Afghanistan Task Force said in an emailed statement that their officials in Kandahar are made available for numerous interviews on a weekly basis for Canadian and international media.

When pressed on the issue in an interview later, Ms. Wallin fingered the type of stories being produced. She said she'd rather see stories about village security, day-to-day operations with local government, aid distribution, and troops working with local military and police forces.

But both Mr. Brewster and Mr. Taylor say journalists attempt to pursue other types of stories but often run into brick walls when it comes to gathering government information.

Mr. Brewster noted his frustration when he tried to get information on water from the Dahla Dam, one of Canada's signature development projects, that was being directed into a military base formerly housing one of Osama Bin Laden's training compounds.

He said his story was delayed while requests to CIDA for interviews, comments and information were channeled back to Ottawa for vetting.

Robert Bergen, a military studies scholar who has researched media coverage of the war in Afghanistan and traveled to Kabul in 2007, said he agreed that the coverage of the war has been far from adequate, but that part of the problem was the fallout from tragedies such as the death of Ms. Lang.

Concern over security has been making editors wary of sending their reporters into harm's way, he argued. The trend is to cycle numerous reporters through Kandahar for quick, two-month periods, he pointed out, and many of the journalists have never reported from a war zone and spend the better portion of their deployment gathering their wits.

The other major obstacle, Mr. Bergen said, was the arbitrary nature of the military's operational security restrictions.

Deciphering what information could compromise a mission, and what news is important for the Canadian public to know, he argued, continues to complicate and hinder reporters' performances.

eduggan@embassymag.ca