Ignorant Journalists

Think American journalists might bone up on their military history to improve their coverage of the Global War on Terror? Think again:

If more journalists had military experience, the New York Times would not necessarily have published a faked missile photo from a Pakistani village in the aftermath of an American attempt to kill a marquee-level terrorist two months ago. Lacking that experience, editors at that publication and several others did not realize that the ordnance shown could not have been fired from a Predator drone or from a helicopter. Accordingly, they accepted an erroneous caption first written by a stringer for Agence France Presse.

As the source of that particular debacle makes clear, ignorance of military matters is not unique to American journalists. Last week in Moscow, embarrassed officials yanked a poster meant to honor veterans of the Russian military from 20 billboards after belatedly discovering that it used the image of an American battleship rather than a Russian one. Britain's Guardian newspaper reported that the U.S.S. Missouri appeared on the poster because employees at the civilian firm handling that billboard contract for the Defense Ministry mistook the Mighty Mo for a Russian cruiser. The Guardian quoted a former commander of the Black Sea Fleet railing against what he called "the incompetence of the designers" even as he graciously allowed that it wasn't a big deal to confuse "two heroic ships."

True, any one episode of confusion over martial matters is not a big deal. But when paying moderate attention to current events gives one enough ammunition (pun intended) to dredge up several such examples in a few minutes, it's time to recommend remedial reading in military history to any journalist who has never worn khaki that he or she couldn't find at a Banana Republic outlet store.