Two's in You write:
The balance to be struck is between providing truthful and accurate reports but at the same time not aiding the enemy by the nature of those reports. How could they be aiding the enemy? Quite simple really, if you understand the value of Battle Damage Assessment (BDA). suddenly the bad guys are getting confirmation of weapons effects and ranges, things they might have suspected before, but here we are confirming it in the name of good journalism. I don't belive Michael Yon is guilty of this here, but others have.
I absolutely agree that reports should not aid the enemy by providing accurate BDA (the value of such assessment, I fully understand). However, in this case, as stated by Yon, the Taliban were able to make their own, on the spot BDA, confirming weapons effect and range (which, if they didn't know until then, such knowledge deficiency could easily have been rectified by viewing the movie
Black Hawk Down). Hence, in this case, the Taliban had no need to suspect anything - the confirmation was in front of their eyes. Therefore, a double triumph for the enemy as they had downed a Chinook and later MOD obfuscation (spin) confirmed to them that not only was the UK Government at war with them but also seriously at loggerheads with its own populus as evidenced by an inability to tell them the truth of the matter. A bit of an own goal I think.
I had a trawl through the
Defence of the Realm website. Run back two or three pages (click Older Posts) and the article covering the event can be found with the title "Chinook shot down". Interesting to note that the article states:
The MoD, initially, quite deliberately did not rule out enemy action, and have now confirmed that the aircraft was brought down by a combination of "RPG and small-arms fire".
Has Michael Yon therefore been aiding the enemy by confirming what the Taliban already witnessed with their own eyes and which MoD later concurred? Perhaps also wiser heads further up the MoD chain realised the potential "own goal" and decided to come clean. Are we being best served by the Major and Lt Col. in country?