Journalistic Ethics and Military Ethics

The topic of journalistic ethics has come up on a maillist of which I am a member. Are American reporters Americans first and reporters second, or does the job transcend the nationality? This is a fairly important topic for current and former military people, what with a war going on and all.

Consider this exchange on the topic from 1987:

Nowhere was this mindset more vividly displayed than in a 1987 installment of the series Ethics in America, hosted by the late Fred Friendly, former president of CBS News. Each program in the series featured a moderator and panel of experts discussing ethical issues in business, medicine, or what have you, and the topic in one episode was ethics in the military. Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree was the moderator, and among the well-known panelists were retired General William Westmoreland and media heavyweights Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace. (Hadley Arkes wrote about the series in the June 16, 1989, issue of National Review. The series is available on video here.)

Ogletree asked the panel to imagine a war between the hypothetical countries of North and South Kosan. The United States was backing South Kosan, and indeed American troops were deployed in the field alongside South Kosanese forces. The North Kosanese offered to allow Jennings and a crew to film them behind their lines. Would Jennings go? Of course, he answered.

Then Ogletree introduced the ethical dilemma: While filming the North Kosanese, you see they are setting up an ambush for an approaching column of American and South Kosanese soldiers. What do you do? Would you stand by and film as the North Kosanese opened fire on the Americans?

Jennings pondered the question. "Well, I guess I wouldn't," he said finally. "I am going to tell you now what I am feeling, rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans." He went on to say he would warn the Americans even if it meant losing the story, even if it meant losing his life.

But this admirable display of patriotic duty was short-lived, for he was then upbraided by Mike Wallace.

"I think some other reporters would have a different reaction," Wallace said. "They would regard it simply as a story they were there to cover." Wallace was "astonished" at Jennings's answer, and he began to lecture him as he would an errant schoolchild.

"You're a reporter," Wallace scolded. "I'm a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you're an American, you would not have covered that story."

Didn't Jennings have a higher duty, Ogletree asked Wallace, than to roll film as American soldiers were being shot? "No," Wallace said. "You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!"

Properly chastened, Jennings backed down. "I chickened out," he said. He had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached from the story.

After more interplay between the newsmen (the sage and the cub), Ogletree turned to another panelist, George M. Connell, a Marine Corps colonel in full uniform.

Connell looked at Wallace and Jennings as he might a pair of stains on his dress blues. "I have utter contempt," he said. "Two days later they're both walking off my hilltop, two hundred yards away and they get ambushed. And they're lying there wounded. And they're going to expect I'm going to send Marines up there to get them. They're just journalists. They're not Americans."

"Oh, we'll do it," Connell continued, "and that's what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get a couple of journalists."

There was complete silence all around. Even Ogletree was at a loss. Finally Newt Gingrich, then a junior congressman, summed it up perfectly. "The military," he said, "has done a vastly better job of systematically thinking through the ethics of behavior in a violent environment than the journalists have."

What's the right answer? To be honest, I wouldn't expect Jennings, a civilian, to give his life for American servicemen. That's not the job of an ordinary civilian. Wallace's answer was unconscienable, and Ogletree's was brilliant.

On the maillist came this situation:

It is 18 April, 1942. You are navy CAPT Bill Wilson of the light cruiser, USS Nashville as part of Halsey's battlegroup escorting aircraft carriers
Hornet & Enterprise, steaming 600 miles from the coast of Japan. Your entire
mission success and the survival of LTC Doolittle's bomber crews depends upon
your ability to maintain/enforce security. Radios are to be assumed on any ships
you might encounter.

Situation A -- At 550 miles out, Your group encounters small boats clearly
identifiable as Japanese fishing vessels.  You are ordered by Halsey to open
fire upon these ships immediately and sink them. 

Do you fire upon them?

Situation B: -- The vessels are flying the flag of a well-known international
civilian Environmental/Peace group, which has publicly vowed to interfere
with any war activities in the Pacific. You are ordered by Halsey to open
fire upon these ships immediately and sink them.

Do you fire upon them?

Situation C: -- The vessels are flying US flag, are known to carry Press from
an American media organization with leadership having publicly stated their
intent "... to try to find where the Americans are.  `The game of reporting
is to smoke 'em out,...  We don't represent the government.  We represent
history, information, what happened.' "   The vessels are in violation of
wartime orders from the President of the United States to clear the area.  They are
manned by US citizens.   You are ordered by Halsey to open fire upon these
ships immediately and sink them. 

Do you fire upon them?

What would you do? The comment section is open.