During the Gulf and Afghan wars, the Pentagon had a clear policy about press access to U.S. troops—the less the better. That’s changing. Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon spokeswoman, outlined a new policy in a background meeting with Washington bureau chiefs this week, and the Pentagon helpfully posted a transcript on its website (if the link happens to be down, as it was this afternoon, you can download the file by clicking here). The transcript offers a rare glimpse into the give-and-take between the military and the media over coverage of a war. The good news is that the Pentagon will “embed” a significant number of journalists with military units, and if the journalists wish, they will be “embedded for life”—from the time a unit leaves the U.S. until it returns home. The bad news is that all “embeds” must be organized and approved by the Pentagon; commanders in the field will not have the authority to invite reporters along for the ride to Baghdad. As it happens, Clarke and her colleagues in the Pentagon have an interesting tendency to refer to war stories as “the product.” The word appears 13 times in the transcript, as in, “It might be that your equipment can’t get the product out and we may be in a position where we can move your product and commanders are going to be encouraged to assist you in that.”
