US History/US History (Bureau Development Inc.)(1991).ISO/dp/0092/00927.txt

Text File | 1990-12-23 | 23KB | 450 lines

$Unique_ID{USH00927}
$Pretitle{84}
$Title{Vietnam 10 Years Later:  What Have We Learned?
Remarks of Winant Sidle}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Defense Information School}
$Affiliation{Department of Defense}
$Subject{press
public
get
media
affairs
vietnam
really
command
news
bad}
$Volume{}
$Date{1985}
$Log{}
Book:        Vietnam 10 Years Later:  What Have We Learned?
Author:      Defense Information School
Affiliation: Department of Defense
Date:        1985

Remarks of Winant Sidle

Public Affairs; Open Lines Important

     Retired Maj. Gen. Sidle was the chief public affairs officer in Vietnam
for two years.  He argues for the necessity of public affairs officers to keep
open lines between the press and the military even when antagonism exists.
Other points for PAOs: Use backgrounders; don't use press conferences to
announce good intentions; treat the bad news the same way good news is
treated.

     I'm not sure we learned too many lessons.  They were there for the
learning, but I haven't noticed any great change in how we are operating
public affairs at the top level of government. We're still making the same old
mistakes we made in Vietnam.

     I'd say the big lesson we should have learned from Vietnam in media
relations was one of attitude.

     About the necessary adversary relationship between the government and the
press - I think it's necessary.  I also think the press is correct when it
says it has a watchdog role over the government, and, having that kind of
role, it's obvious that they're going to be at least a little bit suspicious
of the military spokesmen for the government and the military itself. And we
are a little suspicious of them, and we should be.

     The point is, having an adversarial relationship does not mean having an
antagonistic relationship, and one of the problems since Vietnam that I've
seen in a lot of the public affairs officers, is that they hate the press and
their commanders hate the press.  I can understand this, but it's something we
cannot afford to do - we, the public affairs officers, and we, the commanders,
cannot hate the press.

     Now, how are we going to talk ourselves into at least not hating the
media?  I have always felt that the proper attitude to have as a public
affairs officer is to consider yourself the primary representative of the
press to the command, as well as being the primary representative of the
command to the press - in other words, a genuine two-way street.

A PAO's Job

     Let's rationalize this some more.  A very good definition of public
relations or public affairs is very simple: Do a good job and get credit for
it.  We usually do a good job, so you've got the first half of your job done
for you.

     Your job is to help get credit for it.  The only way you can get really
decent credit for it is through the media.  You can put your commanding
general on television, you can go on television, you can make speeches to the
Rotary Club.  You can get directly to the public without going through the
media.

     However, this is really a drop in the bucket.  All too often, the real
impact on the public and, also, I might add, on the Congress and on the
administration, is what comes out in the media.  So you've really got
something going for you if you recognize that you should be the representative
of the media to the command.

Credibility

     In April '67, over the dead bodies of all the public affairs people
concern the president ordered General Westmoreland back to the United States
to speak to the Associated Press managing editors conference and then to the
Congress.

     He got a lot of coverage.  But he destroyed his credibility. He was over
a barrel.  He had to spout the administration's position on everything.  What
else could he do?  That's why we didn't want him to come. . . because we knew
he would have to do this.

     And, when he went back to Saigon, after the very next backgrounder he
had, I grabbed the Washington Post the next morning - nothing; the New York
Times - nothing.  No coverage.  In fact, that's the way it continued to go.
Finally, he was dissuaded from having any more backgrounders.  His credibility
was gone, thanks primarily to his exposure on television.  Keep that in mind.
That may be an unusual example, but I don't think so.

     The point of all this is what I said to start with.  You have to use the
media to get your job done.  You have to represent them and help them as much
as you can in doing their job.  If you don't do this you're really not going
to be successful.

     Granted, there'll be occasions when the media's wishes and the command's
wishes are totally opposed.  All ties are in favor of the commander, but
otherwise represent the media as well as the command and do it cheerfully and
willingly.

Vietnam Commanders

     Both General Abrams and General Westmoreland, the two I served under over
there, agreed with me on the need for the public affairs officer to represent
the press.  I had absolutely direct access to both of them at any time.  I was
allowed to interrupt anything, provided I thought the press problem was so
great that something had to be done about it.

     But, the boss has to agree that you are to be his press representative.
Now, where did Abe and Westy differ on this?  It was in the matter of
informing the media.  Westy liked to have press conferences; he liked to have
backgrounders; he liked to get on television.  I'm not knocking Westy at all,
but it turned out in the end to be somewhat counterproductive.

     Now, General Abrams took an entirely different view of this. He had no
press conferences the whole time I was there.  He said, instead, "I'm going to
help you help the press.  I'll talk to everyone of these guys individually.
You just line them up for me, and I'll talk to them."  And he did.  He spent
literally hundreds of hours in one-on-ones with every significant newsman in
Vietnam who wanted to talk with him.

     But, he not only talked to them, he'd spend two or three hours with them.
In fact, his aide would get mad at me every time I would mention one of the
interviews.  Abe would say, "Block out half an hour with George Esper."  But
everyone knew it was going to be two or three hours, not half an hour.  But
those guys invariably said, "Boy!  That General Abrams is a great man."  Now
this is great public relations.

     Excuse me for using PR.  As you know, I'm in industry now. Public affairs
is the same thing as PR, exactly.

     The Abrams approach was a real winner and the MACV (Military Assistance
Command Vietnam) press coverage, say from March '68 until Vietnamization
started, was pretty good.  I've read several studies, especially of TV
coverage, and they confirm that the coverage for that 12 to 14 months was
really good for favorable stories.  They far outweighed the unfavorable.  I
think most of us have forgotten that because it got bad after that and stayed
bad.

     It's a great thing if you can get your boss to agree to do this and he's
capable.  It's a great public affairs tool and part of your important job of
representing the media to the commander.

     That's the first big lesson - make a sincere effort to represent the
media to the command.  I have four more lessons I want to tack on to that.

Informing the Press

     First: Since the media is the best way for you to get your story to the
public, let the media do your work for you.  That's simple.  View it as an
opportunity, or a challenge; but don't look on media relations as a problem.
If you consider it a problem, it will be a problem.

     Now, a key part of letting the media do your work for you is to keep them
informed.  We tried to keep the press informed during the '67 to '69 period.
There's been a lot of comment in the media and among ourselves about the 5
o'clock Follies.

     They were essential.

     One of the problems we had with the 5 o'clock Follies was you had to have
good briefers.  That is basic.  We needed briefers who were articulate.  They
had to resist being browbeaten and not get mad at questions asked.  On top of
that the briefer had to know his subject matter.  He had to spend all day
getting ready for the briefing, to include anticipating dirty questions.

     One key thing is that the public affairs officer has to do the important
briefings himself unless he wants his boss to do it, or the key staff officer
or the commander involved.

     Incidentally, with 20-20 hindsight, I have concluded that I should have
handled much more of the briefing job.

     In addition, the press had my phone numbers.  They could call me any
time, day or night.  You have to give them this kind of service.  It's kind of
a pain in the neck sometimes, but you have to do this, both to get maximum
credit for accomplishments and to get out the facts on unfavorable stories.
you don't get a chance to tell them the facts, there is little chance of a
story being correct.

Backgrounders

     Two: Most of you won't have any need for a weekly backgrounder, (but) it
might be worth considering if you represent a major command - perhaps a
quarterly backgrounder, possibly with your boss, but certainly with you
depends on how much news you have and how much news potential your command
has. It worked in Vietnam.

     Another thing we did that blew hot and cold was have regular intelligence
briefings for the press.  Both General Westmoreland and General Abrams agreed
to this, and the J2 (intelligence officer) at the time was PR conscious.  He
provided three very good briefers.  These briefings were extremely helpful to
the press.  They never violated the ground rules.  The result was that the
press really knew what was going on, so they usually didn't get trapped with
some of the rumors that kept flying around about what was happening.  They
could call me up when they got a story that they suspected wasn't correct, and
I could straighten them out.

     Later, one of the worst times we had in Vietnam was when these briefings
were cut out.

     It's worth the effort to line up on your staff certain principals who are
willing and able to talk to the media.  Your intelligence officer, your
operations officer, maybe your logistics officer.  This is a must in a
Vietnam-type situation and it's pretty much of a must anywhere.

Announcements Three: Rest on your accomplishments.  Lay off press
conferences to announce plans or to merely put out a lot of statistics.
What's better is to announce something that's going on or has been completed
and invite the press to go see it for themselves.  We're doing a good job in
the military most of the time, and the press may not know it because they
don't get out to see it.  Look for positive things you're doing and work so
you can get newsmen to go out to see them for themselves.

     Don't talk about your plans or give a lot of statistics.  Let them go
see.

     Battles, of course, should fit into the accomplishment area. We got some
good coverage out of some of the battles when we handled them right.  The
system we used for that is a good one. It's not new; it's pretty standard.  We
briefed the press in advance of any major military operation.  We called them
in - usually the bureau chiefs only - we gave it to them off the record with
embargoes; they couldn't release anything.  After the attack began, they were
not allowed to have stories appear in print or on television until we said so,
and our say-so decision was after we thought the enemy was generally aware of
what we were doing so there wouldn't be any harm.

     They appreciated that, and there was only one case I know of where one
guy blew one.  He announced something - it was a mistake I know.  We had to
call off the operation.  He got his accreditation suspended.  But, one bad one
like that out of all those operations - that's not bad.

     The other thing we had to do in operations was make sure the commander
and the responsible public affairs officer did the job right.  That was kind
of tricky because the newsmen had to be escorted.  You can't let them run
around the division area willy-nilly and perhaps give away troop positions.

     But the problem was not having enough public affairs escorts.  In any
American division, for example, if the good public affairs officers knew what
company commanders and what battalion commanders could handle the press well,
they'd assign them there as often as possible.  The times we got bad coverage
with this system were when either the commander or the public affairs officer
didn't do his part of the job.

Bad News - Good News

     Four: This is probably the most important one, other than the attitude
one, and that is: Treat the bad news the same way you treat the good news,
which is another way of saying, admit your mistakes.  Be frank.

     When General Abrams took command, the first message he sent out to the
field was the assumption of command message.  The second was a public affairs
message and he called it his good news-bad news message.  He told his
commanders to treat the bad news with the same speed and thoroughness as the
good news.  Keep Military Assistance Command Vietnam informed early on both,
he said, and we're going to admit mistakes.

     And we did.  You can't be credible without admitting mistakes.  We all
know that security considerations, political sensitivities and all that sort
of thing will keep you from being totally frank sometimes, but admit every
mistake you can.

     I can't recall Secretary McNamara ever admitting a mistake. His
credibility was bad.  Let's face it.  You've got to admit mistakes for several
good reasons.

     I'm sure you are all aware that if a reporter is digging around and finds
a bad story, he's got a winner from his standpoint.  He writes a big story
saying the Army blew this or blew that and then he follows up on it.  Other
reporters get on the bandwagon and, first thing you know, you've got a two -
or three-week story that you could have eliminated if you had admitted the
mistake right off the bat.

     I remember an occasion where a platoon captured two "Viet Cong nurses."
Seventeen members of the platoon raped both these girls.  Then they got to
thinking they'd get in trouble, so they killed them both, buried them and went
back as if nothing had happened.

     One of the members of the platoon blew the whistle to the inspector
general.  This was flashed down to Saigon in a hurry, and we put it out very
soon after.  Furthermore, we invited the press to attend the court-martial
when it came up.  Guess how many attended.  Three.  Remember, at that time we
had a least 500 newsmen in Vietnam.

     Three attended the court-martial.  How many stories?  One.  I think it
was Time magazine that ran a little story as part of its Vietnam wrap-up.

     Now, if that had not been announced, if an investigative reporter had
found out about it - like the well-known photo with the American soldier
holding a severed head by the hair (we didn't know about it). . . .  That
picture appeared all over the world.  This other example was twice as bad,
maybe worse than that.  But, we got one little story in one magazine.

     So, admit your mistakes.  Think about My Lai, and believe me, I can speak
with authority on that.  We did not know about My Lai in Saigon.  We did not,
nor did the media.  That was well covered up, because I was in Saigon when it
happened and no one knew about it at the time.  We would have admitted it
under our policy had we known about it.  Just think what a difference that
would have made.

     As it happened, My Lai was about a three-year story and all bad.  What
would it have been if we had admitted it?  Two weeks?  Two months?  It was a
terrible thing and merited much adverse publicity.  But admitting it would
have eliminated the cover-up allegations and the story would have run a lot
less than three years.

     Admit your mistakes.  The dividends of good credibility are tremendous.

     Another thing that happens, and it's happened to me so many times that I
know it's true.  If the newsman gets to believe that you are going to fight to
admit your mistakes, he begins to look on you pretty favorably, and this often
creeps into his overall coverage.  I've seen many reporters in Vietnam begin
to pay attention to what we were saying after they realized that we were
really trying to help them and to be honest.

Know the Press

     Last point: Get to know the newsmen who normally cover your command.  I
mean get to really know them.  Take them into your confidence.

     My experience has been - and even today when we are loaded all over the
world with advocacy reporters - that if you really get to know these gentlemen
and ladies, you can have a real impact on them.  It helps a lot, even if they
don't realize it, to find out what their hangups are, what they're pushing,
what they don't like.  Do they hate big business?  Do they hate the military?
If you get to know all these things about them, it will help you a great deal
in being able to support them and your command.  It usually winds up in you
getting their trust.  Remember, this is not a facade.  You're not trying to
fake getting his trust.  You really want it.

     Let the media do your work for you.  Conduct a positive, planned, and
even aggressive program of letting the media see your accomplishments.  Admit
your mistakes, and really get to know the reporters with whom you deal
regularly.  That's my prescription for a successful public relations program,
provided your command is doing a good job in the first place.

Censorship

     Next point: Censorship.  I think this is important.  Mr. McNamara
committed people to do two separate studies on censorship.  Both had to go out
to Vietnam; both went to CINCPAC (Commander in Chief, Pacific).  Both came up
- at separate times - with the same recommendation: No censorship.  The
reason?  Our government's position was that we were the guest of a sovereign
power, so if you've got censorship, the South Vietnamese have to run it.  Need
I say more?  It would have been an unusual censorship because they really
weren't ready to be censors.  General Westmoreland agreed with this.  Mr.
McNamara agreed with this.  And that was it.

     I had two delegations call on me in 1968, well after Tet.  It was the
middle of '68, and these were pretty important news representatives in Saigon,
including a lot of bureau chiefs in both groups.  They asked me to start going
again on censorship.  They wanted censorship.  The reason they wanted
censorship was because, by our ground-rules system, we were forcing them to be
their own censors, and they didn't like that.  They'd much rather have
censorship and this thought appeared to be fairly universal.  Not a hundred
percent, but perhaps a majority.

     So, I don't think there'll be too much of a furor if we have censorship
the next time we have a war.  I hope we don't have one, but if we do,
censorship may be a must.

     Now the Pentagon's position has been, for the past six or seven years: no
censorship.  They've disbanded the Army reserve units that were being trained
to run it, and I think we are in pretty sad shape if we do happen to go to war
somewhere.

     My lesson learned out of Vietnam is we've got to have censorship and the
press will like it.

Losing the War

     I get mad when somebody says the Army lost the war in Vietnam.  It's hard
to lose a war when you win all the battles.

Remarks from Question and Answer Session

Vietnam Press

     The Vietnam press was one that, as the war went on, got less and less
favorable.  They sent over a lot of people who really weren't qualified to
cover the war.  They had no military background.  For example, take a
23-year-old man just out of journalism school who has been taught to be an
advocacy journalist.  He's the worst guy you can have covering a war, and
you've really got to work on him to make him really see the light of day.
First he's got to have on-the-job training.

Press Handling

     We did not always level with the press.  In the Pentagon we put out a lot
of information, but we didn't always put it out at the right time.  We
sometimes put it out too late. I've already mentioned we rarely admitted a
mistake.

     Our whole press handling was hampered by blocks put on various types of
information.  Art Sylvester was accused of managing the news.  He didn't
really manage the news - I think the newsmen manage the news.  But, I don't
blame Art for the press handling, either.  It was higher up.  We were not
always frank.  Too often, people were being tricky.  We sometimes didn't tell
the whole story.  Those of us in public affairs often didn't know the whole
story.  I mean we weren't even told, so there would be no danger of it getting
out.  It was poorly done, in my opinion, and we did not realize how bad it was
at the time.  As the credibility gap grew, and everybody began knocking
everybody else, it became apparent that we'd done very poorly with it.

     We tried to rectify it but it was a little late.  The next time I think
we've just got to, from the assistant secretary for public affairs on down,
recognize my point about representing the press.  How many White House press
secretaries considered themselves a representative of the press to the
president?  Damn few.  The two I can think of either got fired or quit early
because they realized the president didn't go along with this.  If you're
going to get fair coverage of what you are doing, you've got to treat the
press fairly, yourself.

     This is kind of an intangible, and you can't set down a specific set of
rules, but the attitude has to be there.  The president has to have it.  How
many presidents have had that attitude?  It seems to me they always are too
interested in not telling certain things and pushing other things, and I don't
think that's the way to go.

     Anyway, you probably can't beat that part of it, but at the lower levels
you can, and I'm talking about Department of Defense being a lower level.  You
can say a lot more, a lot more clearly, and a lot more honestly.

     It takes an assistant secretary with the guts to do it.  As you go down
the chain of command in any war, the guys in charge have to do that.  If
they're going to worry about public opinion and getting a fair shake in the
media, they just have to adopt this attitude.

Reservists

     We should have activated a couple (mobile press camps) but at that time,
they didn't want to activate any reservists.  So we had to make up our own
team out of the active Army.  That's part of how Mr. Johnson handled the war,
and I guess we can't argue with that.

     We all know he did it wrong.