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Michael Yon's latest - on British Media Ops 25/09/09
He tells it like it is for him.
I wouldn't like to be the REMF major, openly taking the piss out of proper soldiers and bullying to get ahead... Bull**** Bob |
As an aerial photographer & writer myself, if there is any justice in this world Mr.Yon deserves the highest awards going...
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To date I've been a fan of Yon, but this blog piece left a sour taste. It's not journalism at all, it's a rant, with diversions about going to the Netherlands, the ending of the embed etc, and it suggests he's allowed his ego to get bigger than the story.
A good journo leaves all that for the autobiography much later, and in the meantime gets on with putting together accurate and timely stories that give insight to the reader, something at which he normally excels. |
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I have to agree with AA on this one. Whilst normally I really enjoy his work, there didn't seem to be any substance in this report, and as AA said, it seemed more like a rant at the way he was treated.
As far as the major goes, unfortunately there's always some REMF to ruin your day! You just have to ignore them and get on with it as best you can! Look forward to his next report, hopefully will return to his normal v.good standard!! |
That sort of report will win him no friends with the powers that be and may well hinder his chances of being embedded in the future.
Arseholes some of them may be, but he should know by now that you have to work with them whilst biting your lip if you want to get anything done. |
Careful Mr Yon, despite the problematic approach by the rude Major, sometimes you just have to do what you are told.
Please stick to your reports of the fighting and leave the infighting to the pros. BTW, I do like all of your other work. |
Although I agree with the view that perhaps his ego has got the better of him this time does the suggestion by 'Saintsman' mean that he should be expected to tow the party line to keep media ops happy? Should the integrity of his reporting suffer so that he can keep the powers that be (inc. Lt Col 'Twaddle' Richardson) happy and on course for a good pension or should he tell the truth? We hear enough bullsh!t from our politicians and their b!tches in MoD Media Ops, reports for the likes of Michael Yon are the only chance Joe Public gets to understand the realities of a war they'll never see and develop a small drop of empathy for the British service personnel who face a constant battle against enemies both in Afghanistan and Westminster.
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Do we learn nothing? Our handling of the media during the Falklands was dreadful - and acknowledged. At Staff College, we were taught how to work with the media and ran (CPX) exercises where real media personnel came and conducted interviews on our conduct of the exercise - it benefited us and them to understand each other and talk through the hypothetical situations afterwards. We saw the benefit of working with them and, if you did not bullsh1t them, they would also realise that there were wider interests than sales volume. Michael Yon is one of the most respected journalists I have heard of and everything he reports shows our guys to be excellent soldiers. If he says we don't have enough helicopters, he is not revealing a state secret - everyone is saying that. I understand the frustration evident in this outburst from Michael Yon and would suggest that the "British Major" be first in line for consideration of any redundancies - or just plain fired!
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Just because it is a touch unpalatable to read does not mean that it is still not good journalism.
As we have swallowed his previous blogs, surely that gives a degree of provenance to this one. |
Readers might like to view Richard North's take on the spat, here at Defence of the Realm website, under the heading of "The naming of names".
The theme: Michael Yon is back with an excoriating condemnation of the MoD publicity machine in Helmand, lifting the lid on a little-discussed but vitally important aspect of the conduct of the war there. |
Hmmm. I can see why Michael Yon has become so agitated. I particularly like the part in the above Defence of the Realm link which says:
That a military officer (REMF major) would share a foul word about a combat soldier who was prepping for battle was offensive. Especially an officer who lives in an air-conditioned tent with a refrigerator stocked with chilled soft drinks. Just outside his tent are nice hot and cold showers. Five minutes away is a little Pizza Hut trailer, a coffee shop, stores, and a cookhouse. This very Major had earned a foul reputation among his own kind for spending too much time on his Facebook page. I personally saw him being gratuitously rude to correspondents. Some correspondents - all were British - complained to me that when they wanted to interview senior British officers, they were told by this Major to submit written questions. The Major said they would receive videotaped answers that they could edit as if they were talking with the interviewee. |
I'm more than a little surprised by some of the responses on here.
The bloke was poorly treated and lied to, at the highest level, having been the provider of much lauded, highly accurate reports from Iraq and Afghanistan. The facts are clear for all to see. I think that the man is entitled to a 'rant' as some chose to put it. If you don't like it, don't read it. As has already been pointed out, the British military has been rubbish in it's ability to deal with the media and continues to be so. Knob Ainsworth has been telling lies for years and I look forward to seeing the back of him. AA, Are you the Major in disguise? |
anita - agreed.
More from the same link. I think Michael Yon is doing us all a huge favour by revealing what is going on with Media Ops in Afghanistan. But if xxx is the "roach" leg, the king roach is the boss of Media Ops in Afghanistan, Lt-Col. yyy. Says Yon, yyy is doing more damage to the war effort than the Taliban media machine. By perpetrating falsehoods that undermine our combat capacity, yyy has helped the enemy. He thus writes: Some of the smokescreens are less important but they are demonstrative of the pattern: On 20 August a, CH-47 helicopter was shot down by a Taleban RPG during a British Special Forces mission. yyy reported that the aircraft landed due to an engine fire. Some hours later, while I was on a mission nearby, the Taleban were singing over the radios about shooting it down. I heard the rumble when the helicopter was destroyed by airstrikes. The Taleban knew they hit the helicopter. So who is yyy lying to? Not the enemy … unless the enemy is the British public. Quite how serious this is Yon himself points out. The British people are demanding truth and they deserve accountability. They aren't getting it from Camp Bastion, he writes. Given the importance of the home front, it is impossible to stress how important it is that we are able to judge what is going on out in Helmand. For a long time, we have known that we are not being told the full story – or even part of it. For its contribution to that failure, "Media Ops" – with Major xxx and Lt-Col yyy in particular - is losing us the war. |
Anyone still see the political will to remain in Afghanistan much past the next change of government?
I dont.:hmm: |
Anita - I'm not defending the Major one bit, and there's an article in there that Yon doesn't really finish about the spin/lies that he alleges from Media Ops.
My complaint about Yon's blog was that it was pretty self-centred. He's not the story, but he seems to be in danger of thinking he should be. That's not good journalism. I'm not entirely happy with the outing of the Major, either. Seems to be at the least a Persec issue, and he's not been offered the right of reply, either, which is where citizen journalism a la Yon is very different to the kind of thing you'd see from someone writing for a UK broadsheet. It seems that the Major may be ex-regular RM, now in the TA, which is far from being a REMF, too. |
Anotherpost75,
You state that he is doing us all a big favour. Rubbish... He may well be doing a massive disservice to the boys and girls on the ground. Ac getting shot-down, Taliban radio traffic etc etc etc. There's a reason that some (note SOME, not all) things aren't talked about and it's called OPSEC. If you'd been anywhere near the military you'd understand it. Just because you'd like and want to know, doesn't mean you need to. Until this time, I thought Yon was effective and hard-hitting. This latest piece is a self-centered rant, simple. He may not like the blokes in media ops, but they are doing a tricky job to the best of their abilities. Outing them with no right to reply is pretty low. Grow up Mr Yon. |
but they are doing a tricky job to the best of their abilities Thats the problem. They have been turned into noo labour spin machines, which doesnt exactly do the population service when its the nations boys and girls laying down their lives for the labour spin machine. Quite frankly, I find that far more disgusting. |
Equivocator You seem to be entirely missing the point which Michael Yon makes. How is OPSEC breached if the Taliban already know that they have successfully downed a Chinook and Yon is merely telling our side the truth of the matter?
Is it a satisfactory state of affairs that everyone (military/civilian taxpayers) should be treated as mushrooms (in my fairly lengthy military service it used to mean "kept in the dark and fed on horse-****" - have things changed?). I note with interest that the American approach to Media Ops is not to rely on obfuscation and mendacity under the cover of OPSEC. I further understand that no American breach of security through media brief has ever benefited the Taliban. |
Equivocator You seem to be entirely missing the point which Michael Yon makes. How is OPSEC breached if the Taliban already know that they have successfully downed a Chinook and Yon is merely telling our side the truth of the matter? Not everything is a Government conspiracy to keep the public in the dark, but there are aspects to reporting warfighting that are best kept vague at the very least. |
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