He said...he said

Who to believe?

Murray Brewster of CP:

NATO has imposed tough new restrictions on foreign journalists covering the war in southern Afghanistan, changes that could affect how much Canadians see and hear from war-torn Kandahar.

The new measures, imposed in early March, mirror the way the U.S. military manages reporters in Iraq.

The restrictions make it virtually impossible for Canadian journalists to leave Kandahar Airfield on their own to interview local Afghans and return unimpeded to the safety of NATO's principal base.

Last month, Canadian soldiers were required to escort newly arrived journalists everywhere on the airfield, including to the dining hall and showers. A photographer from the Reuters news agency and a handful of Canadian journalists were escorted between buildings and confined to their sleeping quarters when not working.

The practice has been temporarily suspended under pressure from the Canadian military, which has tried unsuccessfully to have the overall policy reversed.

Some of the new rules do not apply to American journalists because the measures would violate their rights under the U.S. constitution.

A Canadian defence critic and an organization that represents journalists condemned the new rules, accusing the U.S. of trying to shut down Canadian coverage.

"The media is not the enemy and this is a form of censorship — and it is unacceptable," Liberal MP Denis Coderre said Tuesday. "There is a public interest to know what's going on in the field."

The new rules came as Washington prepared to deliver an additional 21,000 combat soldiers and trainers to the country to confront the revived Taliban insurgency.

Security officials at Kandahar Airfield, including the base commander, declined to comment on the measures. Officials at the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command in Ottawa would not comment on the record, but suggested NATO headquarters in Kabul was looking at the matter.

Mary Agnes Welch, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, called on the Harper government to put pressure on the Pentagon to reverse the policy.

"You can make the argument that this is exactly one of the reasons that we're in Afghanistan — that the press have free and unfettered access to as much of the story as they can reasonably get to," she said from Winnipeg.

The Canadian military has presented NATO's southern commander with proposals to end the dispute, but none has been accepted.

Welch said the "radical shift" in policy takes away the Canadian media's ability to cover the conflict independently.

"It sounds like the more control they have over journalists, where they go, who they talk to, they'll be able to shape the story in a much effective way," she said.

"That ultimately is not effective for Canadians' understanding of what's really going on."

The new U.S. security team at Kandahar Airfield stopped issuing International Security Assistance Force accreditation to journalists in late February. Instead it gives them temporary base visitor passes, which restrict movements and require them to be closely monitored.

The reporters are also compelled to forfeit their passports to the military for the duration of their stay.

Canadian news organizations, which use the airfield as a base to cover the country's 2,850 troops and aircrew, are the most affected. Other NATO countries have sent small teams of reporters through Kandahar on a short-term basis.

Journalists routinely leave the airfield to pursue the Afghan side of the story, chronicling among other things allegations of torture among Taliban prisoners and the plight of refugees bombed out of their homes.

Early in the winter, NATO officials in Kandahar began demanding that Canadian journalists be given a full federal government security screening, involving background checks, before they would issue accreditation. It was a step up from the previous criminal-record check. Informally reporters were told the request was made because some U.S. private contractors had been accused of theft. [my emphasis]

(Instead of my normal excerpting, I've copied the entire piece here in an effort to make sure it doesn't disappear down the memory hole.)

Or Brian Hutchinson of Canwest:

Canadian Press has moved a misleading story from Ottawa that says “tough new restrictions” imposed on reporters embedded with Canadian Forces at Kandahar Airfield “make it virtually impossible” for us to leave the base on our own and report goings-on outside the wire. Stories about Afghans.

This comes as a complete surprise, because I had no trouble leaving the base on my own the other day, meeting with my local Afghan “fixer,” and traveling into town to report a story about Afghans that appeared Tuesday in the National Post and on canada.com.

I also blogged about my brief encounter with local kids at a Kandahar city swimming hole.

Canadian military personnel were aware that I was leaving KAF. In fact, a member of their public affairs staff drove me to a gate where I met my fixer. The same soldier picked me up on my return to KAF. More of an effort for him than me.

The CP story goes on to claim that “reporters are also compelled to forfeit their passports to the military for the duration of their stay.”

I am currently inside Canada’s provincial reconstruction team (PRT) headquarters in Kandahar city, a 30-minute drive from KAF. My passport is sitting beside me on my desk.

Perhaps the worst line in the CP piece is this quote, from Liberal MP Denis Coderre: “The media is not the enemy and this is a form of censorship — and it is unacceptable.”

The story does correctly inform that Canadian reporters are no longer being issued standard, all access International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) passes when they arrive at KAF to begin their embeds. Instead, thanks to a U.S. directive, we receive temporary base visitor cards to carry with us. Canadian public affairs officers at KAF have told us that they and other Canadian military brass are working to have this new policy rescinded. That would be great. It is slightly irritating and a bit deflating not to have a real ISAF pass.

But this: “[The guest passes] restrict movements and require [reporters] to be closely monitored” is just wrong. Or so it is in my experience. I arrived in Kandahar last week to start a six-week embed, my third. I haven’t heard any of the other Canadian reporters currently at KAF complaining about being tailed, watched, shadowed, or whatever “closely monitored” is meant to suggest.

It’s true that most embedded Canadian reporters are now restricted from leaving KAF on their own. But this is the result of strict prohibitions placed on them by their own news organizations back in Canada, a result of heightened anxiety after CBC TV reporter Mellissa Fung was kidnapped outside Kabul last October.

Ms. Fung was eventually released and is back in Canada.

I was told today by a Canadian civilian working at the PRT that, in his opinion at least, the dangers reporters face while traveling outside wire on their own is considerable, but no more so since the Fung kidnapping.

He may or may not be right. Going outside the wire — with or without troops in armoured vehicles — involves different levels of risk. Personally, I think reporters here on the ground are best able to assess what that level of risk is, with input from the military and from Afghan sources, of course.

There’s no mention in the CP story of travel restrictions placed on reporters by their bosses back in Canada. Rather, the story paints a false portrayal of Canadian Forces attempting to censor us. This is strange.

There are rules that all reporters in the embed program voluntarily agree to follow. We agree not to describe troop movements before they take place, for example. Among other things, these rules are designed to prevent insurgents from getting advance notice of Canadian convoys, then planting improvised explosive devices along their routes and killing Canadian soldiers, their Afghan army counterparts, and yes, embedded reporters.

As far as I know, no one inside the embed program has called these rules an attempt to “censor.” Sure, we have issues with some of the more arcane requirements, but I’d bet that every reporter who has worked at KAF would call the broad stroke embed restrictions understandable, workable, and, above all, common sense.

Including, I would wager, the reporter who wrote the disingenuous CP piece. This is the strangest part of it all: Murray Brewster is a highly regarded and reliable reporter who has embedded at KAF many times, most recently in March. [my emphasis]

Look, I'm not on the ground at KAF myself, so I have no idea which of these guys is right. Perhaps the powers that be simply haven't caught up with Brian yet. Perhaps they're cutting him a special deal because he's in their back pocket, and the rules are different for him than for anybody else. Perhaps there was another shooter on the grassy knoll.

But after his recent performance at a Carleton University forum, I'm wondering what's gotten into Murray Brewster, who by all accounts I've heard has been a decent war correspondent until now:

Murray Brewster:

- Maintained that the longer the mission went on, the more heavily politicized it has become (yet it was barely mentioned it the 2008 federal election).

- He has been stunned--yea made "aghast"--by many politicians' ignorance of Afghan issues (he's not the only one).

- Our politicians are unaware that Canadian political divisions over Afstan get considerable media coverage in the region, especially Pakistan.

- There is incredible political pressure to show progress for the mission, esp. in development.

- There are many roadblocks even to covering development projects, very hard to interview civilians.

He was particularly critical of the government's and CF's dealing with the media:

- The CF don't understand the elements that make up a good story, gave poor briefings on significant incidents when he was in-theatre.

- He was angry at the government and CF for lousy media relations--not even telling some good stories well; most military, diplomatic and aid people in Afstan are "hopelessly inarticulate".

- "Do I tell you how to plan a battle? Don't tell me how to cover a war."

- He was scathing about an article critical of our media in On Track, published by the Conference of Defence Associations Institute, by the Institute's president John Scott Cowan: “War and National Interest” (p. 11 at link).

As with most such disputes, I suspect the truth will lie somewhere in the middle: there are likely some differences in the way media is being treated at KAF as the American influence continues to grow, but I sincerely doubt they're nearly as draconian as Brewster is suggesting.

In the meantime, he's stirred up quite the little political tempest, correct information or not.

Update: Oh, and not that I always see eye to eye with Scott Taylor, but I suspect he's sitting at his computer somewhere, reading Brewster and saying to himself "So what? You don't like the rules at KAF, stop embedding! It's not like the only way to report in Afghanistan is with coalition troops..."

Put another way, what did journalists do before there was an embedding program?

Having said that, it's in the CF's and the GofC's best interest to make sure Canadians are getting the best information they can out of Kandahar. And, like it or not, that means working with journalists.

Upperdate: I'm getting e-mails which support the Hutchinson version. Not from the military, mind you, but from Brewster's own clan. His colleagues seem to genuinely like Murray, but they're just as confused about why he chose to write this non-story as I am.