Lasting relationships are built on mutual respect, or so popular psychology would have it. If that's the case, it would be a good thing to have mutual respect between the military and the media, because there's no doubt the relationship is going to be lasting.
The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University has spent the past year exploring this question, and its report on the relationship between the media and the military, "America's Team: The Odd Couple," was released Sept. 22. The authors were Frank Aukofer of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and William P. Lawrence, retired vice admiral, U.S. Navy.
Fortunately, they did find a lot of mutual respect, but there are pockets of resistance.
As part of its study, the Freedom Forum conducted a survey of hundreds of military officers and media executives, aimed at those who would be in a position to make decisions about coverage and cooperation.
One survey question asked for responses to the statement, "The news media are just as necessary to maintaining U.S. freedom as the military." Not surprisingly, 98 percent of the media people said they agreed with that. But so did 82 percent of the military personnel.
On the other hand, 24 percent of the military agreed or strongly agreed with the statement "The news media are mainly left-wing doves who never want the nation to enter combat," and another 25 percent weren't sure. On the media side, only 5 percent agreed or strongly agreed with the statement "Military personnel are mainly right-wing hawks itching to get into combat," and 10 percent weren't sure.
Another pairing of deliberately provocative statements drew notably differing responses.
"The military often wastes taxpayer money on unnecessary weapons," was agreed to by 27 percent of the military and 76 percent of the journalists. But 91 percent of the military agreed that "News media are more interested in increasing readership and viewership than in telling the public what it needs to know," and only 30 percent of the news media agreed.
If the military is more skeptical of the media than the other way around, it could partly be because "few members of the media are knowledgeable about national defense," a statement that drew agreement from 70 percent of the military and 74 percent of the news media respondents.
Aukofer and Lawrence conducted dozens of interviews during their research, and they provide nearly a hundred pages of excerpts from those interviews in the report, raw material for anyone who wants to know how the two halves of the odd couple really see the relationship.
It's safe to say that material will be thoroughly studied by the military. Because of its hierarchical organization, if the top brass decides communication with the media is an important thing for officers to know, then communication with the media is something all officers will study.
During the Gulf War, the Marine Corps received a big share of the credit, and as the report notes, one reason is that Gen. Walt Boomer, the Marine commander, had been public affairs chief for the Corps before he was named to lead it. So he was comfortable with inviting reporters along and got great coverage as a result.
That lesson won't be lost on the other services.
But nothing so centralized and organized can be expected from the media.
"The competitive and independent nature of the news media is such that, with rare exceptions, the cannot organize and plan in a way that represents all of their constituent parts," the authors write.
Or to put it in current T-shirt fashion, organizing journalists is like herding cats.
Journalists and soldiers differ not so much in what they want as in what they worry about.
"The greatest fear of a military commander in a pre-invasion scenario is that something might leak that would tip off an enemy," the report says, although the high-ranking officers they interviewed agreed security breaches have been extremely rare.
News executives acknowledge that security interests may require them to change or modify coverage, although they don't want to give up the right to make the call.
"Their biggest fear," the report says, "is that military leaders -- or their civilian superiors -- might stifle news coverage by stretching the security blanket for political purposes or to enhance their public image, cover up mistakes or influence public attitudes about a war."
Whatever they worry about, though, journalists and soldiers agree that censorship of the traditional sort is dead, a victim of technology.
Not just reporters, but troops in the field and civilians too are wandering around with cell phones, modem-equipped computers and satellite dishes. Security breaches are more likely to happen if journalists aren't briefed on what needs to be held confidential and why.
Lawrence and Aukofer recommend a model for future cooperation in covering conflict that they call the "Independent Coverage Tier System." Each tier would include roughly 50 journalists, with the first tier to go in, like the current national media pool, consisting mostly of people whose reporting would have the largest audience -- the wire services, the networks, major newspapers and news magazines.
Additional tiers would be added to the pool as resources became available. And anybody else who wanted to could show up, but the military would have no obligation to transport them, or feed them, or provide them with flak-jackets or chemical-warfare suits.
The authors conclude "that our nation never has gone through a war like the next one -- with both the military and the media equipped with phenomenal advances in technology," said John Seigenthaler, chairman of the Freedom Forum.
The best time to discuss what to do about that is before the shooting starts.