In anticipation of Veterans Day, NSJI co-director Tim McNulty spoke with two veterans, one who is engaged in running an Internet “incubator” office and other in developing a unique web application for ordering and paying for restaurant meals. Tom Day, a former journalist and Army veteran, is one of the founders of The Bunker Incubator, an office based in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart. Seven new affiliates of The Bunker are set to open around the country in coming months. One of the veterans who have benefited from the Bunker is Jeremy Adkins who co-developed the Dyner app that will be released next January. Jeremy and another colleague came up with Dyner and other potential web applications as they drove their Army vehicle. Both Tom and Jeremy discuss how many veterans who have dealt for years with high-tech military systems are well qualified to apply that familiarity to civilian systems.

Posted Jan. 29, 2014

These are the images that compel us to look: the photos that come charged with high emotion and human drama.  The images of war and conflict are especially arresting because of their life and death context.

Capturing the moment of death has a profound impact on the viewer. Robert Capa’s 1937 image of a “Falling Soldier” during the Spanish Civil War still speaks volumes today.  The blurry black-and-white photo of Senator Robert F. Kennedy dying on the floor of a hotel kitchen in 1968 also tells a whole story of hope and despair.  More recently, the crowd-sourced video of Neda Agha-Soltan, a young Iranian protester shot dead in the streets of Tehran in 2009, provides the story of conflict and election corruption.

Life Magazine’s iconic image of bodies on Buna Beach.
Photo by George Strock.

Now with video-equipped iPhones and other smartphones, the numbers of images grow into the millions each day whether made by professional photographers or amateurs. But only a few will achieve iconic status.

Some iconic images disgust: Iraqi prisoners humiliated and tortured in Abu Ghraib, or a South Vietnamese police official executing a prisoner with a single shot to his head during the Vietnam War.

They also may inspire, such as the lone Chinese dissident standing and blocking a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square.  The older iconic photos keep their vitality: four generations still recognize the jubilant image of a sailor kissing a nurse in New York’s Times Square when V-J Day was announced and World War II ended.

These images easily substitute for a thousand or more words whether they are used to send a message, to symbolize compassion, to sum up a triumphant moment (raising the flag at Iwo Jima), to establish a poignant truth about the human condition  (Kevin Carter’s photo of the vulture and the emaciated African child) or bring the reality of violence as close as possible.

Photos also may be used as propaganda, to score political points or even to mislead.  So knowing the story behind the photo, even iconic photos that seem to sum up the entire story, is often to know more than what your eyes are telling you.

The story of the photograph of Buna Beach is one of the best illustrations of a single stark image that reflects the immediate consequences of battle and the sad, larger truth of war.

But it is the story behind the photo that provides insight into the tension and the cooperation that often exists between the media and the military.

The photograph was made well after Pearl Harbor and beginning of the American effort to beat back Imperial Japanese forces in the Pacific.  From early 1942 until Japan’s surrender in 1945, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps were engaged in “island hopping,” fighting entrenched Japanese forces in places with familiar names —Guadalcanal, Okinawa, and the Marshall Islands.

As it became clear through the years of war, these were deadly battles and often the most dangerous moments were the first landing on the heavily defended beaches.

Buna Beach was one of the early engagements.

Through the first year of war, gruesome images of dead Japanese and German soldiers were shown in newsprint and on newsreels, but well into the war’s second year no one yet had seen a dead American despite the daily death and casualty reports from the War Department.

Access to images of the war and American troop deaths was kept from the American public by a decision of the White House and compliance by the military and the media.

Concern about the public’s morale was real and long. Before the U.S. entered the war there had been lively debate between those who wanted to intervene in the fighting in Europe and isolationists who opposed American involvement in what they saw as a “European war.”   Pearl Harbor silenced most of that and invigorated the American public to sign up for duty and ramp up production of war materiel.

President Franklin Roosevelt and his advisors, however, worried that images of dead American soldiers would be dispiriting to civilians just as the war effort moved into full swing. Widespread mobilization was under way and the administration insisted that any photos of dead Americans would hurt the war effort and harm national security.

The media agreed to go along with the military censorship.

In the offices of Life magazine, the nation’s premier photojournalism magazine, a young photo editor named A.B.C. (Cal) Whipple focused his attention on a photo taken of three dead American troops on a Pacific beach.  Their bodies are half-buried in the sand; a destroyed landing craft is visible in the background. Their faces are not visible, but the image has a desolate, even haunting aspect.

The picture had been taken many months earlier by one of the magazine’s staff photographers, George Strock.  Despite Whipple’s lobbying his editors and their entreaties to the Pentagon, military censors wouldn’t budge and the news media of the time would not think of going against their decision.

Whipple died just last year at 94 and his New York Times obituary quoted from a memoir he had written for his family about that photo.  “I went from Army captain to major to colonel to general until I wound up in the office of an assistant secretary of the Air Corps, who decided, ‘This has to go to the White House.’”

Perhaps unbeknownst to Whipple and his editors, Roosevelt and his advisers already were worried that Americans were getting frustrated by the length of the war and the required rationing and shortages of everything from foods to nylon to rubber tires.  The grumblers, Roosevelt and others felt, should be reminded that other Americans were making far greater sacrifices.

So in September 1943, nearly eight months after the Buna Beach fighting, Roosevelt and Elmer Davis, the director of the Office of War Information, gave Life editors permission to run Strock’s photo—and they gave it a full page in the large format magazine.

Opposite it, an editorial said that the administration believed “that the American people ought to be able to see their own boys as they fall in battle; to come directly and without words into the presence of their own dead.”

And, finally, one of the war’s most iconic photographs made it to the public’s eye, late and because of an ulterior motive, but also because of a journalist who recognized a stunning image and persisted in wanting to show the truth of battle.

Tim McNulty is co-director of the Medill National Security Journalism Initative and a lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School. He was a longtime foreign correspondent and senior editor at the Chicago Tribune. He helped direct the newspaper’s coverage of the September 11 tragedy, the American strike into Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq.

Posted Sept. 9, 2013

How much can you discover about your own life by tracking just the destination of your phone calls, texts and e-mails?

National Security Agency officials, as revelations of their surveillance programs continue, insist they are not interested in the actual content of the millions of communications they track.  In the past several weeks, however, they have admitted collecting email messages of Americans by the tens of thousands.

The continuing revelations piqued my curiosity about what some company or government agency might learn in even the most casual collection of daily personal communications.

I asked seven graduate students to record the destination and number of their calls and online contacts during a two-day period in early July.  I chose the dates at random and in the past so they could look up their own records of online banking, credit card purchases, social media posts, websites and cell phones.  Their telephone calls, of course, were almost entirely by cell phone and the called numbers were easy to discover.  The GPS tracker embedded in most modern cellphones and nearest cellphone towers that record every signal help pinpoint the caller’s location.

Following the NSA rationale, the students’ goal wasn’t to establish who they called or texted or even the content of their conversations.  The idea was simply to “connect the dots,” the phrase intelligence officials have used since 9/11 to justify the secret surveillance programs.

I asked the students not to identify their contacts’ names, just call them “subject one” or “person one.”  So, for instance, I don’t know but I could make my own assumption about the student who texted “person three” 17 times one day and 12 times the next day, interspersed with several phone calls to that person each day.

However, I may be wrong.

The students also took note of electronic contacts that could be viewed by a third party and thus considered “public.” Their credit card information, for example, is readily accessed by a credit reporting agency and that private company routinely shares it with retailers and banks. When and where they used a transit pass is available to local government transit and police agencies, and the movies they viewed on Netflix or the books on their Kindle or Nook are accessible.

In the online world we have become used to Google’s all-seeing eye overseeing what we search for and the messages we send.  We tacitly accept that Amazon will use its algorithms to determine our likes and dislikes on books, music, clothing and kitchen appliances. We readily trade privacy for convenience. We even acknowledge that advertisers target us because of our previous purchases and even references in our mail.  Basically, we rely on these electronic contacts for the stuff of our daily life.

One student made a concise accounting of her communications:

“During the days of Tuesday, July 2nd and Wednesday, July 3rd I engaged in 25 texts, 35 emails and 21 calls.  In addition, I submitted my insurance card to Walgreens for a prescription, took two trips to gas stations where I used my credit card to get gas, used my I-Pass six times on the tollway and completed one ATM transaction to get cash.

Moreover, I used Google maps three times to get directions, used my fitness app to record my physical fitness activities and ordered takeout over the phone using my credit card.  Lastly, I engaged in several social activities online including 2 Facebook posts, uploaded three photos online and visited 51 websites.”

“A majority of Americans – 56% – say that federal courts fail to provide adequate limits on the telephone and internet data the government is collecting as part of its anti-terrorism efforts. An evenPerceptions of the Governments Data Collection Program larger percentage (70%) believes that the government uses this data for purposes other than investigating terrorism.” (Pew Research Center)

Prior to the Fourth of July holiday, several made travel arrangements.  A few students used their CTA passes while another bought an airline ticket online and signed up for the air carrier’s credit card, providing a great deal of personal information.

On the first day, he made five calls to a Canadian telephone number using a Magic Jack application on his smartphone.  He called Canada again three times the next day, calls to or from foreign countries that presumably were collected by NSA supercomputers.

Undoubtedly, so was the video call on Skype that another student made to her family in Pakistan.

As with most of us, we go through the day barely conscious of how much personal data we trail along our electronic contacts.  Another student recalled her typical day begins with checking e-mail and Facebook and Twitter.  She uses a charge card for coffee at Starbucks and for all her meals away from home.

Students often are on the move, literally.  One changed apartments during this period and as soon as she had wireless access, she was on her iPad, calling, browsing and checking e-mails.  “I called Subject 2 on Viber, which is an online free app for calls and messages. I texted Subject 4 on the iPhone and we exchanged 5 messages.” She also has an application on her phone that records every step she makes.

“Those under the age of 30 stand out for their broad concern over civil liberties. By about two-to-one (60%-29%) young people say their bigger concern about the government’s anti-terYoung People More Concerned that Anti-Terror Policies Go Too Far in Restricting Civil Libertiesrorism policies is that they have gone too far in restricting the average person’s civil liberties rather than not going far enough to protect the country.” (Pew Research Center)

The use of social media appears to increase the younger the generation.  Besides checking email and text throughout the day, one student reported posting Instagram photos, as well as “liking” many of her friends’ pictures and posts.

She used an application called Vine that allows her to post six-second videos for friends to share.  Because Vine is fairly new, many friends have never bothered to make their images private.  “I think we should take added precautions when using Vine because it incorporates text, location and video,” the student said.  “With video, you can actually see where you and your friends are. I don’t know about you, but video just adds an extra level of creepiness versus pictures.”

Government officials contend they are not interested in the vast majority of citizens and that laws and safeguards are already in place to protect the innocent from government snooping. But if there were intrusions by some person or agency, they would find the numbers to reveal that this student shopped at Macy’s and had access to a bank reference number because she deposited a check online. She also browsed Craigslist, shopped at Trader Joe’s and used her credit card to buy flowers at one store and clothing at Express.

Another student signed up for an e-newsletter from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for a reporting class.   She wasn’t going to account for that but then realized she already has between 20 and 25 newsletter subscriptions and many organizations have her information.

We are so used to tracking and being tracked only one student mentioned using her Northwestern University “Wildcard” to borrow books from the library.  She recalled that when mailing a package, she received a tracking number along with the receipt.  Later she picked up medications at CVS and verified her insurance number, then booked a flight and used her award miles to pay for it.

The same student sent and received at least 10 emails from her NU account to story sources, five emails to family from her Gmail account and one to a company to get a replacement for a product.

“I watch a lot of shows on Hulu, and even though I don’t have a Hulu account, it tracks which shows I watch and where I stopped watching on each show. The same goes for YouTube; although I don’t have an account, there are still advertisements and suggested shows.”

She found targeted advertising most irritating.  In one graduate class she reported on elderly issues and researched many topics dealing with seniors. She said the advertisements she began receiving were for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia information, senior care homes, and other elderly issues. “My mom told me that I received an application in the mail to join AARP. My parents have been retired for years, but the application was addressed to me, not them.”

The impact of knowing your calls, texts and emails are collected can be more ominous, however.

“If some sort of surveillance entity (government or otherwise) got hold of my electronic information for last Tuesday and Wednesday, it’s a little surprising how much they would know about my life – from smaller details (what neighborhood I live in in Chicago) to larger themes (what sort of issues I’m interested in, politically, and what medications I take).”  She also said it would also be obvious from a web inquiry that she was planning a move to Washington and could also determine that she has a strong personal connection to downstate Illinois.

Upon reflection, one student balked at sending her own collected totals to me in an email message.  While another described most of her “trackings” as mundane and uneventful, she said she felt very protective of her work with the Medill Justice Project, which looks into possibly wrongful convictions.  She said her communications with fellow students and possibly witnesses demands an “extra layer of protection from government inquiry.”

Another student has set up her computer so that her web history doesn’t save overnight.  Or does it?

[field name=”tim-tagline”]

Posted Sept. 6, 2013

I Googled “Saudi Arabia” the other day and got a suspiciously even numbered 461,000,000 results.  It will take awhile to sift through all of those links.

At the same time, news reports based on leaks about National Security Agency programs describe the raw collection of “metadata” on American citizens and others, electronically scooping up hundreds of millions of telephone numbers and other communications every day.

This ocean of data both amazes and confounds. (Yes, we want security. No, we don’t want our government spying on us.)  In this age of the terabyte and more, we’ve come to think that very little is unknowable if we are searching or if someone else is searching for us. We all just need more data.

Many of us sit at desks in classrooms and offices staring at screens for information. We relate to news and often to each other in electronic bytes, share photos and interact with the rest of the world in ways our parents, much less our ancestors, never imagined.  We sit in a rarely changing environment, we have “Google” perceptions of life outside our range and much of what we write and talk about is second-hand at best.

Those mammoth amounts of raw information are in stark contrast to a journalistic project so traditional and counterintuitive that it stirs both excitement and wistful thoughts in most who hear of it.

Paul Salopek’s “Out of Eden Walk” is immersive in every sense. He is relying on his senses, and his own physical endurance, to report what it is like now to walk through the world, or at least a good part of it.

Paul Salopek
National Geographic Photo

Salopek, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is already more than 1,000 miles into a planned 21,000-mile trek tracing the prehistoric migration of humans from the “Eden” of the Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia up to the Middle East, which will be  his bridge to central Asia.  (See where Salopek was as of Sept. 5).

Through China and then Siberia, he intends to cross the Bering Strait (by boat) and continue walking down along the western edge of the North and South American continents, ending in that most romantic of ending places, Tierra del Fuego.

“I am a discursive walker. I zigzag. I stop. I veer. I scribble with my feet,” Salopek wrote on his website as he set off on this most excellent adventure.  “Why am I doing this. . . . For the usual knot of reasons. To transport my brain into the Pleistocene. (The mind-frame of the primordial African hunters whose footsteps I am retracing.)

“To tell stories. To see, to listen, to think, etc. But also, it must be conceded, because of peccadillos: odd notions absorbed from 19th-century Transcendentalists  (Thoreau: “We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return; prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only, as relics to our desolate kingdoms.”)”

Salopek’s planned route. The red circle in the Mideast shows the trek he’s completed so far. See closeup below, right.

Salopek’s first 1,000 miles

Salopek, who once spent the better part of a year walking the Sierra Madre, has an almost monastic approach to journalism.  He dismisses most of the comforts of travel because he believes they interfere with getting to the actual stories. He embraces modern technology and social media in every form if it brings the story home.

But he isn’t in thrall to technology and dismisses unnecessary bells and whistles; once when I was his editor he was driving up the Hindu Kush in northern Afghanistan to meet up with the Northern Alliance as it prepared to battle the Taliban. He threatened to throw his new, fancy but malfunctioning computer under the tracks of a passing tank.  He wanted his old trusty computer back, the one that survived desert and jungle trips. Perhaps it was a sign that he finished his trip on horseback.

For those who imagine what it would be like to traverse continents on foot, here is how Salopek described part of his walk near Jeddah, along the western edge of Saudi Arabia:

“Days of molten chrome, nights of damp black velvet.

“We walk north through the desert near the Red Sea coast. We drip asterisks of sweat into the sand. We take shade in the scalding afternoons beneath highway overpasses that moan with traffic. We cross other shores.”

Retracing on foot the path our ancient ancestors traveled as they migrated across the world.

Another friend, Evan Osnos, who writes for the New Yorker, once asked Salopek for advice when Osnos was planning a trek through China’s Sichuan Province.

In his New Yorker blog, Osnos wrote that Salopek took the question seriously and replied:  “If you’re going to take a mule, give yourself enough time to learn how to handle it. It’s more difficult than flying a plane.”  Osnos noted Salopek was speaking from experience; a mule had broken his nose.

Osnos repeated his favorite tweet from Salopek when he was in Ethiopia:

No wells. Bummed murky water off nomads in this enormity. Electric blue moonlight the color of pure thought. #edenwalk

— Paul Salopek (@PaulSalopek) January 26, 2013

While he uses the best electronic equipment to send back reports, plots his progress on a digital map feature, take photos and video, Salopek is gathering stories, meeting and interviewing people, and taking the measure of life at a very human pace.

National Geographic is sponsoring the first two years of the walk, and there are two educational partners, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and Project Zero at Harvard, that are creating learning programs around the walk.  Salopek is not only a personal friend, but I am also on the board of advisers for his journey.

“Yet the experience of pacing off the continents, one yard at a time through 2020, will still expose, I believe, an inescapable biological reality. We’re built to walk. We’ve been wired by natural selection to absorb meaning from our days at the loose-limbed gait of three miles an hour. . . . To watch. To listen. To glance over our shoulders, seeking older compass bearings. Those first bands of Homo sapiens who blazed the trail to our becoming a planetary species—hunter-gatherers we know oddly little about and who may have numbered, researchers say, a paltry few thousand individuals—have valuable lessons to impart. They were, after all, consummate survivors.”

There’s nothing better than listening to Salopek himself describe the journey in his own cadence, as he did in a recent interview with National Public Radio.  Listen below.

As a journalist, he avoids chatter and focuses on the experience. While most of us sit in controlled environments, he doesn’t look up weather reports but feels the warmth of the sun on his back. He is walking through the world and doing his own reporting, making little clouds of dust all along the way.

Tim McNulty is co-director of the Medill National Security Journalism Imitative and a lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School. He was a longtime foreign correspondent and senior editor at the Chicago Tribune. He helped direct the newspaper’s coverage of the September 11 tragedy, the American strike into Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq.

Posted July 11, 2013

The cat-and-mouse Edward Snowden/National Security Agency (NSA) scandal has fueled the summertime news cycle with a high tech — though drawn-out — version of a police chase.

Reporters flocked to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport to search for the contractor who revealed secret NSA surveillance activities, and booked seats on flights to countries where Snowden might find refuge from the long arm of the United States government — only to discover he was a no-show.

Meanwhile, the diplomatic posturing of Latin American officials who feel the U.S. is bullying them into refusing asylum to Snowden added a side drama to media coverage of the actual crime — assuming that the courts will judge his actions a crime.

But the core issues have been more difficult to pursue.

While revealing that the NSA was able to scoop up all the calls from a willing Verizon network, the crime story for the last two weeks has overshadowed the larger issues:

• What information has the NSA absorbed into its electronic storage facilities?
• How long it will keep such “metadata?”
• Will Americans have the right to know more about what the government is doing in the name of national security?

Only in the last few days has the media, specifically The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, revealed more of the underpinnings of the operations that Snowden described.

On Sunday, The Times reported, “In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects,”  but also others who may harm national security.

Since 2007, according to The Times, the 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, “has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court” that alone decides what amount of surveillance of Americans and others is permissible.

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal followed up with its own front page story that claimed the FISA court has expanded the definition of “relevant” data to include essentially everything the intelligence agencies want to collect. Officials have defended their actions, saying that they are not recording individual conversations or text messages.

They claim that there are safeguards in place.

That may be true at the moment. But in her blog early last month, New Yorker writer Jane Mayer warned about the government’s use of metadata. She quoted Susan Landau, a security expert and author of Surveillance or Security on the impact of metadata.

“The public doesn’t understand, it’s much more intrusive than content,” Landau told Mayer. “(Learning) who you call and who they call.  If you can track that, you know exactly what is happening — you don’t need the content.”

These reports seem to buttress earlier warnings by two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado.

The Journal noted that both men “have argued repeatedly that a “secret interpretation” of the Patriot Act is being used to collect the electronic data of almost all Americans.

The notion of a secret court allowing the government to follow secret rules is mind-boggling.  Interpretations of other court decisions that could extend the intrusiveness of the state into the private life of every citizen seem impossible to justify, whatever the goal and the marginal risk.

I suspect that most Americans are only vaguely aware of the amount of information the NSA and other intelligence agencies are collecting to track potential terrorists.  Even as more becomes known, I also suspect that most Americans would not complain if some of that information includes their own records and movements.

That governments go beyond their own laws to seek ever greater control is neither surprising nor new.

David T.Z. Mindich, a professor of media studies, journalism and digital arts at Saint Michael’s College, in  an op-ed column for the Times, described how Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in 1862 received permission from President Abraham Lincoln to control the country’s telegraph lines, and then used that power to impose censorship.

The difficulty, of course, is that some secrets need to be kept.

There is a legitimate reason to work the “dark side,” as former Vice President Dick Cheney insisted, just as Stanton argued that the government must have control of the telegraph traffic to ensure a Union victory.

The Snowden affair has made it painfully clear that the Obama administration — and the Bush administration before it — have stretched our thinking about national security law and how the courts should deal with state secrets.

But the job of the media is to throw light on such subjects, especially where the government may be overreaching, violating the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights and threatening civil liberties.

Given the secret nature of the FISA court and the NSA programs, it’s unfair to blame journalists for not having all the details.

But reporters need to pursue the story with members of Congress and the Internet providers who are cooperating in the wholesale collection of information about Americans.

It is not enough to accept the “trust us” language of administration officials, or the nice round number of “50 terrorist plots” they claim were stopped or prevented by these intrusions. How about releasing one or two or three good examples, and let them be tested to see if the metadata collection is really warranted?

There is a proposal to appoint an adversarial attorney who would look at the government’s presentations before the FISA court — something that should have been in place from the beginning.

It is never enough to have just sincere government assurances; the role of a free press is to challenge and test those official explanations

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” — a saying often attributed to Thomas Jefferson but in fact widely used by many thinkers in the 18th and 19th centuries — should be in every reporter’s DNA.

Every administration says it is working in the best interests of the United States. What is becoming increasingly clear, however, is that leaders will often justify anything they wish to accomplish by drafting opinions, often in secret, about how to apply the law.

It is also clear that vigilance is needed, even if we think government intentions are benign.

What seems benign may seem like a violation of privacy when the secret attention of the state is focused on you or me.

Tim McNulty is co-director of the Medill National Security Journalism Imitative and a lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School. He was a longtime foreign correspondent and senior editor at the Chicago Tribune. He helped direct the newspaper’s coverage of the September 11 tragedy, the American strike into Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq.

Well into a summer of shelling, street fighting and sniper fire, several of the scores of correspondents covering the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982 would joke, a bit wistfully, about the “courage not to file.”

That summer was long and, despite the Mediterranean breezes, the air was steamy and fear prevailed one day to the next. Fighting between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Israelis surrounding the western half of the city was sporadic and intense, and from early June to the end of August stories of the destruction and urban warfare dominated front pages around the world.

Writing about military conflict has its dangers, of course, but adrenaline-infused reporting also carries a strange excitement. Some reporters and photographers become known as “war junkies” because they often move from covering one conflict to another. For many, a quote attributed to a young Winston Churchill describes the experience nicely:  “Nothing is as exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”

Reporters recorded the events but soon recognized that even accounts of bombings and shooting can sound the same or only marginally different from the day before.  Beyond recording the incremental news, the latest outrage or attempts to create a cease-fire, journalists became hungry for sidebars, those intriguing stories that personalize the conflict or explore a quirky consequence.

One day, for instance, I was delighted to interview a tall and elegant French prostitute who retired to Beirut to open a tiny, checked-tablecloth restaurant.  “You must tell me when to leave,” she said rather plaintively as I sat down with two other reporters for lunch. It was a week or so into the conflict and the Israeli Defense Force had dropped notices over the city telling civilians to leave and detailed a number of safe passage streets they could use in the next day or two. Everyone believed that street-to-street fighting was inevitable and would be vicious.

I suggested to the retired and anxious woman that if she was afraid for her life, she should get out immediately.  No, that wasn’t the concern, dying is easy, she replied, her worry was being disfigured.

A week or so later, I walked past the shuttered café and learned that she finally had left, after gunmen aiming to settle a private score with others had burst into the restaurant. In the exchange of gunfire, they shot her pizza oven, fatally.

Such stories, though ephemeral, gave readers a taste of life and the people in a besieged city.  They also gave reporters a chance to of get away from the daily grind, the “feeding the beast” mindset of so much journalism that we practiced then and even more now in the era of a 24/7 news cycle.

Richard Ben Cramer
(SOURCE: Simon & Schuster)

The death of an old friend and colleague a few months ago reminded me not only of my own mortality and of such primitive tools of journalism, but his passing also brought back memories of that odd longing for the “courage not to file.”

Richard Ben Cramer, the friend who won a Pulitzer for his coverage of Middle East conflict and went on to win accolades for his extraordinary book What It Takes, about the 1988 presidential campaign, exemplified the admonition that arose in the heat of reporting so many scores, hundreds of relatively easy front-page stories.

Cramer understood what it takes to have that courage, and he was supported by the legendary Gene Roberts, then executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, but who worked before and after at The New York Times.

A Telex machine. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

The PLO had agreed to a cease-fire and accepted international offers to evacuate their fighters onto freighters and with their safe passage guaranteed, to sail into exile in Tunisia.  Other events were yet to come in that tumultuous time, the massacre at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps by Christian militias was not long away; the following year, the American embassy in Beirut would be destroyed by a bomb; and later, a suicide bomber would drive his truck through the gates of a U.S. Marines compound at the Beirut airport, killing 241 servicemen. Yasser Arafat would return to Lebanon once again, but this time further north in the town of Tripoli, to fight and flee from a Syrian-backed force.

But this day was the denouement of the deadly summer-long fight, and almost every journalist in the city was focused on seeing and recording the climatic departure of PLO fighters from the port. The news would be atop every front page in the U.S., Europe and throughout the Middle East and Africa.

I saw Richard in the lobby and invited him to join me on a ride out to the port. “Naw,” he replied.  “I think I’ll give it a pass today.”

He and his editor had decided to use the wire service reports, allowing Richard to concentrate on finishing the long piece he had been working on:  the life of raggedy but disciplined Palestinian fighters and their street fighting ways against a powerful, indeed overwhelming, army.

To devote that day to writing his narrative and to ignore the surefire front-page story of the climax of a three-month war was simply astounding to me.  Scores of other reporters were conscientious, hardworking and all the rest; Richard’s (and his editor’s) belief was that it was more important to give readers a well-reported and fascinating read into the minds and actions of these young fighters.

The attitude was audacious and exemplified ever after for me what the “courage not to file” really meant. So much of that summer and the years before and after were absorbed in daily, dutiful stories.  Perhaps even more than my fair share appeared on the front page, but so many of them are not memorable, not really worth the time and attention I gave to them. As Frank Sinatra sang, “Regrets, I’ve had a few. . .” and this was one that I never fail to mention.

Richard showed the same confidence and courage in more peaceful circumstances as he wrote about outsize sports figures such as Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. But his major work began in 1988 as we followed presidential candidates around the country.

He knew his book exploring the background and emotional motivations behind each candidate wouldn’t come out for at least a year or even longer. Actually it appeared four years later, in time for the 1992 election. But he believed it was essential as a good journalist to tell a more developed and important story about what it takes for a candidate to believe he should be the president. 
For many, Cramer’s book is a classic of political reporting, outliving dozens of campaign books before and since. Twenty years after Cramer’s book came out, a young reporter at the Medill school at Northwestern asked me about the best political book I ever read. I told him, “What It Takes.”

When Richard died earlier this year, there were many tributes to him and his craft. Among them, this Washington Post blog, his obituary in The New York Times, and a Daily Beast appreciation.

There are many fine examples of the type of literary journalism practiced by Richard and those who preceded him as far back at John Hersey and even Stephen Crane. Their ranks include contemporary writers from the New Yorker’s John McPhee, Susan Orlean and, more recently, Katherine Boo.

But most of contemporary journalism, or what passes for it, is focused on shorter, quick-hit, daily, perhaps hourly updates.  These stories are not memorable nor are they meant to be.  They address a hunger for the latest information; they feed the beast not in large, satisfying meals but in spoons full of fact or, worse, just attitude.

I don’t mean to crank that daily reporting is not worthwhile; it is the lifeblood of good journalism.  How else would we keep track of political shenanigans and corruption; how many organizations would send observers to sit in courtrooms and take note of justice denied; how many would devote the time and expense required to expose the operations of shady businesses?

But what I learned from Richard and others who had the “courage not to file” was that so much of what passes for reporting is not worth your time.  I learned that it is better to follow your instincts when you come across a good story that demands your attention and takes serious effort.  These stories won’t all win Pulitzer Prizes, or become best-selling books or be transformed into successful screenplays.

What they will do, however, is give you stories for years to come, and memories of how you spent a life of reporting.

Tim McNulty is co-director of the Medill National Security Journalism Imitative and a lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School. He was a longtime foreign correspondent and senior editor at the Chicago Tribune. He helped direct the newspaper’s coverage of the September 11 tragedy, the American strike into Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq.

With the wide range of topics that journalists cover, training in military and police affairs generally ends up falling by the wayside. But, for those journalists that do interact with the military and police, knowledge of military and police activities can be the only way to ensure accurate reporting.

“We realize that most area media, especially, have what we call ‘limited military knowledge,’” said Ryan Brus, Public Affairs Officer for Fort Knox in Kentucky.  “Basically, we explain things that we do as if we’re talking to our grandmothers.”

When speaking with journalists, military personnel attempt to refrain from using acronyms and advanced military concepts to keep from confusing journalists. But, according to Brus, reporters that are more familiar with military terminology are better prepared to ask the right questions and, thus, receive more in-depth information.

The same can be said for reporters covering police affairs. Reporters that are more familiar with the workings of the police are better equipped to ask applicable questions and gain the respect of the subjects that they are covering.

“Inexperienced reporters sometimes feel the need to ask questions that are not appropriate,” said Commander Jason Parrott of the Evanston Police Department. “The biggest thing for reporters to understand, we’re not going to give an answer that’s going to potentially jeopardize a case.”

Not only is knowledge of the military and police important in accurately reporting, it can also help in extracting information by gaining respect from the personnel.

“The lion’s share of media are just ones that are not too familiar with Fort Knox or the military,” Brus said. “It can make some of us in the military chuckle with what they come up with.”

Having an understanding of the workings of military and police business can give reporters credibility with their subjects and encourage them to be more forthcoming with information.

Embedded in Operation Iraqi Freedom

When Operation Iraqi Freedom commenced in 2003, journalists found themselves closer to the action than they had anticipated. Unlike previous military actions, the Pentagon allowed an unprecedented amount of journalists to report from frontline combat units as embeds with troops.

To make this transition more manageable, the Pentagon created a program for embeds that began with a weeklong boot camp. Over 600 future embeds were taught military policy, command structure, weapons capabilities and survival skills.

“Some of it, for a lot of the reporters that covered the military, was kind of redundant,” said Washington Post reporter Monte Reel, one of the trainees that went through the boot camp in December of 2002. “But a lot of the reporters that went to those embed assignments didn’t have much experience on covering the military.”

Reel’s boot camp focused a lot on logistical training to keep journalists safe and out of the way during missions. Journalists were taught how to ride in Bradley Fighting Vehicles, ride in helicopters, and parachute out of airplanes. Most of the exercises featured basic training to keep them safe in general combat and specific emergencies like the release of chemical weapons.

But the camp also spent time ensuring that the both the journalists and military could properly communicate with one another. Officers would lay out guns and weaponry, and give demonstrations of their function. This gave the embeds basic knowledge of the weaponry they would witness while in combat.

“It also gives you a little more credibility with the people that you’re writing about,” Reel said. “It can open up avenues of conversation if you can speak with them about it. In general, people really like talking about that stuff.”

This knowledge was important in gaining credibility with the personnel Reel dealt with on a day-to-day basis. But it was also important in his ability to accurately report what he witnessed, and gain credibility with his readers.

“’Make sure you get the weapons right when you write these stories,’” Reel remembered the foreign editor of the Washington Post warning him. “He said there was nothing they got called about more often than obvious mistakes in reporters describing weapons. If you make a mistake… it kind of casts doubt on everything you write.”

Journalists on the police beat

The Evanston Police Department does not offer specific training for journalists who cover police or crime beats, but Cmdr. Parrott has met to informally talk with reporters who frequently write about police matters.

“Usually it’s kind of a work in progress, so they can have a feel of where I coming from and I can have a feel of where they’re coming from,” Cmdr. Parrott said.

As a spokesman for the department, he said it is smart to speak with reporters before they start filming to discuss the story and address any questions that may arise.

Cmdr. Parrott stressed the importance of journalists clarifying information with the police.  They should be more careful about details, especially when they are reporting on the scene.

“Just because they’re getting information from the public, there may be slight inaccuracy with it,” Cmdr. Parrott said. “We always find discrepancies [because] they’re only getting one side.”

Details such as descriptions, actions, and properly identifying the offender can be misrepresented if journalists only write based off of what they see.

“Law enforcement [is] interviewing everybody and we may have access to some things they  [journalists] don’t have access to,” Cmdr. Parrott said.

Journalists should not assume what a certain term means if they are unfamiliar with it. Cmdr. Parrott explained that it is easy for journalists to get information from the Internet, especially regarding weapons. While the Internet can be a good foundation for knowledge, it should not be relied on.

“I think it’s always best to get law enforcement’s perspective on those weapons just because law enforcement is much more knowledgeable in the function and operation of weapons or trained in those weapons instead of just going off information on the Internet or somebody who doesn’t have proper credentials to talk about those weapons,” he said.

However, Cmdr. Parrott said the most common inaccuracies he sees in articles are misquotes and spun statements, rather than details. For both, gaining experience on the job is the most important factor in being able to be accurate, more so than specific training.

“The more experience they [journalists] have in dealing with different police departments or different law enforcement agencies, they have a little better grasp on what to ask and what not to ask and to help them guide their story that they’re trying to present to the public,” Cmdr. Parrott said.

Unlike journalists who cover war, journalists who cover crime do not face much danger while reporting. In situations where police and journalists are on the scene of a dangerous event, the police make sure the media is separated and not in the way.

“They’re not going to be anywhere near the area where there’s potential harm to them and/or the public,” Cmdr. Parrott said.

Because they are separated from police action, journalists covering crime to not need weapons training for their protection, as could be the case with journalists who cover war, but some familiarization with weapons and police operations is helpful to inform their stories.

“Get it right”

Kerry Luft, an editor at the Chicago Tribune, also stressed the importance of getting details right. He said he frequently sees basic errors in stories that should be preventable. Luft, who has competed in target shooting, sees a lot of misinformation regarding weapons.

“Most [errors] are in the category of typos, but it calls the credibility into question,” he said.

Luft said because many readers have a least some rudimentary knowledge about firearms, small inaccuracies could make them less willing to trust the rest of the article.

“If we were this inaccurate about everything we wrote about, the recipes in our food section wouldn’t work and no one would trust us,” Luft said.

A detail that might be insignificant to someone who is not familiar with weapons could have a big impact on the story for someone who is familiar with weapons. Reporters sometimes confuse an automatic weapon to mean a fully automatic weapon, which fires as long as the trigger is held down, while the term automatic weapon also describes a semi-automatic weapon, which fires once when the trigger is pulled.

Another misconception is the comparison between an AK-47 to a squirrel rifle. “Most people’s knowledge of firearms comes from what they read and see–TV shows, news reports,” Luft said.

This media portrays AK-47s as the more dangerous and frightening weapon. In reality, a squirrel rifle, while it may sound less intimidating, is similar in power and can be modeled to look like an AK-47.

Luft referenced the coverage of the sniper attacks that took place in October 2002 in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. He said the speculation about the sniper and his background in firearms caused a lot of hysteria. The speculation was not accurate, and the situation could have been better handled if the media was more informed.

Accuracy in reporting about weapons is even more vital because firearms and gun laws are such controversial issues.

“You don’t want to add to that by being inaccurate,” Luft said.

Journalists today make more errors about weapons than in the past. Luft said less journalists are exposed to firearms growing up, and there are less veterans in the newsroom. His own experience with shooting makes it easier for him to see others’ mistakes regarding weapons. He said most journalists do not take advantage of opportunities to familiarize themselves with weapons, such as a firearms class.

While it may not be practical for all journalists to go through extensive training on weapons, some better research and clarifying with experts or police would be helpful.

“The more you know about any given topic, the better off you are as a journalist,” Luft said.

Journalists’ knowledge of what they cover is key in being able to best inform their readers.

“It’s incumbent on the media to be more educated than the public,” Luft said.

For journalists who are not fully educated on the technical details in their stories, they still must strive for accuracy. Luft said the most important piece of knowledge to have can be summed up in three words: “Get it right.”

When Capt. Dustin Cammack joined the National Guard in 1996 to help pay his tuition at the University of Illinois, he planned that his commitment would be short and he would not likely be deployed into armed conflict.

“My first thought was, ‘Six years, and then I’ll get out of the military,’” said Cammack, Chicago Public Affairs officer for the Illinois National Guard.

Cammack’s “six years” became a 17-year history with the National Guard. He watched it transform from a standing force to an operational force in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In 2004, he served in Iraq for two years. He was redeployed in 2009 to Afghanistan. He now continues his service out-of-combat as a PAO.

“There wasn’t a whole lot going on in the world before 9/11,” said Cammack. “I guess you know it can happen when you enlist, but it really wasn’t on my mind at the time.”

As the armed forces began withdraw from the Middle East, the National Guard was poised to make another transformation. The question stands as to whether the Guard will remain an operational force, revert back to a standing force or take on a new role all together.

The Guard

The National Guard, the longest standing component of the Armed Forces of the United States, serves a dual purpose: they have an obligation to both state governments and the national government.

“Our first priority is the state of Illinois. You’ll find that across all the state guards,” said Cammack. “But our second is to the federal government to fight the nation’s wars, although we didn’t see a lot of action pre-9/11.”

The National Guard, which serves as a reserve force of the military, is comprised of mainly volunteers. These volunteers are diverse in their age group and level of experience with the Military. Like Cammack, many are seeking financial relief, especially from student loans. Maj. Brad Leighton, the current Illinois Public Affairs director of the Illinois National Guard, attended the University of Massachusetts on the National Guard’s pay.

“Looking into college, my father had just lost his job and I’d just spent a year at a Catholic school which was very expensive,” said Leighton. “The Massachusetts National Guard had a bill that waived a tuition at state schools, so I joined and went to U-Mass on a free ride.”

The commitment to the National Guard is also less time consuming than any other military branch, allowing guardsmen to separate civilian life from military life.

“It’s just one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer, with the obvious potential of being deployed on a mission at home or abroad,” said Leighton. “We get the great benefits of being in the military and we do our jobs, but we also live civilian lives. When you’re deploying the guard, you’re deploying America.”

The missions vary year to year, but the Guard’s focus remains the same: protect and serve those who need it. The National Guardsmen all live by the same motto: “Always Ready, Always There.”

The National Guard during Iraq and Afghanistan

For over 375 years, the National Guard has been called to respond to natural disasters, emergencies and issues that arise across the globe.

“From the American revolution through the most recent wars, we’ve been called up to help with floods, snow storms, and, as in the case of Hurricane Katrina, some of the worst natural disasters,” said Leighton. “It’s our duty as a dual-mission service to be ready for the call.”

But before the turn of the century, foreign deployments were usually one-month stints. Since the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing war on terrorism, most deployments abroad are a minimum of 12 months.

The Illinois National Guard has deployed more than 22,000 soldiers and airmen to Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11, and lost 33 soldiers and one airman overseas. Leighton was in the Guard for 16 years before even being deployed.

“I’d been in the guard since 1988, and still not traveled abroad,” said Leighton. “I heard earlier in probably 2004 that I’d be going into the war. But I volunteered because I owed it to the military.”

When President George W. Bush declared a war on terrorism in 2001, the National Guard watched its role change from a reserve force to an active member of the military. The federal deployment of units abroad became common, as troops were sent overseas to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I don’t think there was anyone who joined the Guard after 2001 who didn’t expect to go overseas,” said Leighton. “But war doesn’t make things easier on families.”

But with the deployment of most other military branches in effect, the National Guard was essential in support of the war efforts. According to a Congressional Research Services report from 2008, the National Guard made up seven percent of the U.S. forces in Iraq.

“We have become an operational force as opposed to a strategic reserve,” said Brig. Gen. William Cobetto, the Illinois National Guard’s Assistant Adjutant General. “If you go back in our country’s history the National Guard was a strategic reserve.”

Members of each unit leave behind unique responsibilities to their families, education or careers. Others were called on multiple deployments, and find that each tour presents different challenges. Cammack, for instance, went on two deployments. During his first tour he was single, but he left for his second just 60 days after his wedding. He said that the responsibility of having a family changed his outlook on the deployment.

“As a single guy, I was out there doing my training and I was very much focused on me,” said Cammack. “When you have a family, the whole paradigm shifts.”

The process through which members are called up to assist the federal government is complex. Cobetto says that most of the men are willing to volunteer to go in to combat, but find it difficult to explain the decision to leave to their families.

“If you tell your wife and kid, ‘I volunteered’ versus ‘I mobilized,’ there are some nuances there,” said Cobetto.

With its increasing deployments overseas, however, the Guard changed. The six-year commitment people expected often became longer than 10 years. The brief periods spent overseas began to lengthen.

“Deployments change everybody,” said Cammack. “It was kind of a shock, but if I’m needed and I’m asked to go, then I’ll go.”

As the responsibilities of the National Guard shifted, leaders worried that the possibility of fighting in the Middle East would hurt recruitment among those people that sought a lesser commitment. However, Cobetto said that recruiting was only minimally impacted.

“Coming off 9/11, it didn’t hurt recruitment because there was a lot of patriotism, our numbers were up,” said Cobetto. “Right now, as this war continues to be the longest war this country has ever had, our recruiting numbers are down just a little bit. As a matter of fact, we’re still surprised our numbers are where they are.”

The Guard also has to compete with the same work force that is suitable for careers in law enforcement. However, the poor economy has helped the Guard’s recruitment numbers stay higher. It provides jobs that relate to many different backgrounds, such as those in communication, medicine and engineering. But with the drawdown of troops overseas as the war on terror comes to an end, the Guard still has an important role both nationally and internationally.

The Future of the Guard

In 2011, President Obama announced the U.S. would begin withdrawing forces from Afghanistan in an attempt to phase American troops out of the conflict. Leaders at the Chicago NATO Summit in May 2012 reinforced this notion. They reached an agreement to turn over control of security to the Afghan National Security Forces by the end of 2014.

With a larger portion of the Guard serving overseas in recent years, a few challenges have presented themselves. PTSD, homelessness and unemployment are a few of the many hurdles veterans face.

While these issues were apparent in the active forces for some time, the National Guard was not used to so many of its members returning from combat. The Washington Post reported in 2011 that suicides among soldiers serving on active duty decreased modestly in 2010 while the Army National Guard saw an increase in the number of soldiers taking their own lives.

Cammack said his personal struggle with returning from combat was the struggle of adjusting from the structure of the military to married life and a civilian job.

“Instead of answering to a colonel, you’re answering to a wife,” said Cammack. “You have to communicate differently. You can’t talk to her like a soldier.”

As the Guard made a transition into a more operational force, the Army had to recognize and devote resources to new issues among its reserve troops coming home. Once this issue was acknowledged, Congress created the Yellow Guard reintegration program was created in the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008. It provides information, services and outreach programs to National Guardsmen and their families throughout all phases of the deployment cycle.

“We had to recognize that a problem that the active forces had already recognized,” said Cobetto. “Since then, the Guard has been a tremendous help to those coming home”

Cammack and Leighton each had a unique reintegration experience. Leighton says his relied on family to help make the transition easier.

“It was absolutely terrific to return home,” said Leighton. “It can cause some stress to get back in the fold but being away actually strengthened my relationship.”

Additionally, Cammack says working as a PAO for the Guard after deployment did a great deal to ease his transition home. The Guard provided a work experience with people from a shared military background and job security.

“One increment of stress coming home both times came from the question, ‘When I leave, will my job still be there when I come home?” said Cammack.

As it was before, the National Guard’s first priority will continue to be the security of each state. National Guard troops were essential to Hurricane Sandy. According to the United States Army, more than 61,000 Guardsmen were available to assist local law enforcement in affected states.

“The threats on our homeland will keep us occupied and busy,” said Cobetto. “A lot of states do not have the capacity to respond to the national disasters we’ve been seeing. That’s where we come in.”

The Illinois Guard, in particular, will continue to train with local law enforcement to prepare for local flooding disasters and to protect resources. If the active duty forces shrink, the Guard is a good place to put them.

“Right along with serving overseas, we’ve had a domestic focus too,” said Leighton. “We’re not deploying the whole guard overseas. We always have guardsmen back here.”

With the drawdown, it is more difficult for those reserve troops who want to transition to active duty to do so.

“It’s tougher and more competitive,” said Cobetto. “We take all those members we can get and that’s what helped our numbers stay really high.”

The transformation of the Guard into an operational force was a significant investment, and the Guard is not likely to revert to a standing force. The National Guard is also more cost-effective than the active force. It is an inexpensive force to maintain.

“It’s important to keep the guard strong,” said Cobetto. “I don’t think the work will diminish just because we wind down in Afghanistan or Iraq. We’ll help stabilize their region.”

This stabilization is one way the Guard will revert to a role it had years ago as a building capacity. Many state Guards are in partnerships with developing countries. They help governments and militaries develop their own forces. Illinois is the only state partnered with Poland. This relationship is unique because Illinois has the largest state population of Polish immigrants and their descendants.

Although the tasks of the National Guard may change in the near future, their objectives will not. They will continue to have a place internationally as well as nationally. Cobetto says the strength of the Guard is its ability to respond to whatever the future may hold.

“It kind of depends on what happens,” said Cobetto. “The whole idea of remaining an operational force is any time you can get called. And we are ready to answer that call.”