Tag Archives: military reporting

Winners of the 2015 MRE Journalism Contest announced

Congratulations to all those who submitted their work to the MRE Journalism Contest. Below are the winners, and the judges’ comments.

The Joe Galloway Award

David Wood of Huffington Post for a powerful, fascinating, thoroughly reported, humanized and particularly well-written, well-produced three-part multimedia package examining the prevalence, complexity and impact of “moral injury” that plagues so many who have fought sought since 9/11. “Moral injury is a relatively new concept that seems to describe what many feel: a sense that their fundamental understanding of right and wrong has been violated, and the grief, numbness or guilt that often ensues,” Wood wrote in his introduction to the series. “However we individually feel about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, these enduring moral wounds, to young Americans who fought on our behalf, must be counted among the ultimate costs.”

The James Crawley Award

Lance Bacon, reporter; Andrew deGrandpre, digital news director; Alex Neill, executive editor of Military Times, for their investigation into whether a Marine Corps order that removed Marine Corps Times publications from prime locations at the front of base exchanges around the world was the result of reporting it was doing “detailing whistleblower allegations suggesting the service’s commandant, Gen. James Amos, abused his authority and interfered in several high-profile criminal cases.” The order was eventually rescinded and the papers returned to the prime locations, while further Military Times reporting “obtained and authenticated emails linking Amos to the newsstand move, raised troubling questions about the Marine Corps’ attempt to limit troops’ access to an independent news source.”


Overseas Large Newspapers Category:  Betsy Hiel, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review foreign correspondent Betsy Hiel filed a series of eye-opening, deeply reported stories from Iraq in 2014 detailing the people and conditions as ISIS swept toward Baghdad. One of the first Western reporters on the ground after ISIS invaded, she reported on Christians who found temporary refuge from ISIS in an ancient monastery before fleeing as the terrorist group advanced; she explained Kurdish soldiers’ belief that the next target of ISIS is the United States; and she shed light on the sectarian divisions that stand in the way of achieving peace in Iraq.

Overseas Small Newspapers Category: Drew Brooks, Fayetteville Observer

Drew Brooks’ detailed and emotionally stirring series of stories on the Green Berets from Fort Bragg who led the war effort in Afghanistan for 13 years provided an inside glimpse of the lives of Green Beret soldiers deployed to Afghanistan as well as an analysis of why they ended up in such a dominant role and the toll of large numbers of casualties.

Domestic Large Newspapers Category: Mike Wereschagin, Adam Smeltz and Carl Prine, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

The two-part series by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review disclosed that emails and documents obtained through a FOIA filed by the paper show that congressional testimony given by Veterans Affairs officials investigating a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak that left at least six dead in Pittsburgh was, at the least, obfuscatory and basically contradicted information in the private documents. The work is investigative reporting at its best.

Domestic Small Newspapers Category: This award is shared by Meghann Myers of the Navy Times and Hope Hodge Seck of the Marine Corps Times

Meghann Myers of Navy Times and Hope Hodge Seck of Marine Corps Times separately covered two aspects of a critical gender issues facing today’s military.

Meghann Myers revealed that some of the first women to serve in the submarine force were secretly filmed undressing by their shipmates. The Navy Times story, first reported online, drew immediate attention by Pentagon officials and created national attention.  The commander of the submarine force condemned the tapings as a “breach of trust” and Myers pursued the story and its consequences not only for the sailors but also for the entire service.

Hope Hodge Seck wrote a more complex but equally important Marine Corp Times story about concern that the Marine Corps is under so much pressure to prosecute alleged sexual assaults that the accused are no longer innocent until proved guilty. Sensitive to the reality that sexual assault cases were too easily dismissed in the past, Seck wove actual legal cases with new policy initiatives to explain how the Marines are trying to deal with a significant problem.

Photographer Small Paper Category: Andrew Craft, Fayetteville Observer

Andrew Craft’s collection of domestic and overseas images give a sense of dimension, depth and flexibility as a visual storyteller. Entries included a well-composed, solemnly powerful image of a flag-draped casket being carried; a playful shot of an Army officer horsing around with his young sons before heading on a 9-month deployment and a wide landscape shot of a soldier standing guard over the rugged terrain in Kabul.

Commentary: Marketta Davis, Pensacola News Journal

Marketta Davis is a military brat and military wife whose Pensacola News Journal column, “Military notes,” has an authentic, all-in-the-family tone that is both engaging and enlightening. Writing on everything from stolen valor issues to a 100-year-old veteran reminiscing about World War II, Davis is open in sharing her reactions and feelings and then translating them into larger lessons about military life.

Domestic, Large Broadcast Category: ESPN

ESPN’s compelling Outside the Lines,“Friend Who Fired,” told the story of the Army Rangers involved in the fatal accident that killed Ranger and professional football player Pat Tillman. None of the Army Rangers who fired upon him spoke publicly about the episode until ESPN found Steven Elliott, who agreed to break the silence. William Weinbaum is the producer; Mike Fish and John Barr are the reporters.

Honorable mention: Chas Henry’s “Almost Equal: The U. S Military Three Years After Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” at 99.1 WNEW radio.

Online Reporting: Jeremy Schwartz, Austin-American Statesman

Jeremy Schwartz’ “Lost Opportunity” explores the “failure of good intentions” surrounding an expensive, powerful mobile MRI that was believed to be among the most powerful in the world and was planned to scan the brains of troops before, and after, combat, as part of overall traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress syndrome research by the Veterans Administration as part of its $2 billion in yearly research spending. A “fiasco” is what it proved to be, leading to an “inglorious decline” that included no appreciable research, few actual scans, a chronic lack of technical expertise and a key fatal flaw: moving what was to be a portable machine meant for several bases and hospitals required expensive re-calibration after each move, so it stayed put. Now, “The scanner idles 24 hours a day because it’s more expensive to turn an MRI machine off and on than to keep it running.” One use suggested for the unit that houses it: Housing for lab rats. The online package is crisp, well-written and illustrated and nicely designed with intuitive navigation and flow.  Given the topic, it could well have been deadly dull and bureaucratic, but was not in the least; instead, it was driven by good context, insight, perspective and tight writing.

Blogging: Beth Ford Roth, Home Post

Beth Ford Roth’s “Home Post” blog entry included a diverse and interesting collection of posts, ranging from whether Marines should be able to roll up their sleeves (wives, the blog says, find this sexy; the Marines declared it is OK again to roll them up); an essay from a dad whose sailor son was lost as sea; and a post about famous people who fought on D-Day.

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Gitmo: al-Qaida defendant rejects Pentagon-assigned lawyer

Terrorist suspect Abd al Hadi al-Iraqi told a military court in Guantanamo Bay he no longer wished to be represented by two Marine lawyers — one of them had also defended another Gitmo detainee.

Published in conjunction with Military Times Logo

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Twentynine Palms: The Best Training (But the Worst Social Life)

  • Pfc. Ryan May on the right with Pfc. Jonathan Saldivar taking a break from heavy artillery training. (Niccole Kunshek/MEDILL)
    Pfc. Ryan May on the right with Pfc. Jonathan Saldivar taking a break from heavy artillery training. (Niccole Kunshek/MEDILL)

 

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. – Getting stationed in California should sell itself: Sun, sand and mountains. But that’s not the case for some Marines assigned to Twentynine Palms Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Command and Combat Center — an hour northwest of Palm Springs in Southern California.

The base is centrally located between the mountains, ocean, Las Vegas, San Diego and Los Angeles, but all are several hours away. The nearby town of Twentynine Palms – population 26,000 — offers few entertainment options, especially for young Marines without a car.

Some Marines describe Twentynine Palms as a “difficult duty” station because of the limited free-time activities. Others see the isolation as a tradeoff to get the exceptional training offered at the base.

“I did not pick it, but you know you’ll be the best if you go here,” said Pfc. Ryan May, who works with heavy artillery. “So, you can’t really be mad about it.”

May and others said the opportunities to hone their training are almost as boundless at Twentynine Palms as the base itself. It is slightly bigger than Rhode Island, offering Marines the chance to do live fire exercises daily.

“That’s what the Marines like to do: Make things go boom,” said Mike King, a former Marine who served 15 of his 20 years at Twentynine Palms. “You can’t do the things we do here on this base anywhere else so it’s practical application of what they’ve been trained to do.”

The U.S. government created Twentynine Palms in 1949 because more live-fire ranges were needed for training. Many Marines not stationed there often cycle through it for training. The Integrated Training Exercise is a month long program focusing on warfare maneuvers for global operations. Currently, the base is used for pre-deployment training for missions in the Middle East. The desert terrain at Twentynine Palms mimics conditions troops will face in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Exercises also are conducted in a mock Middle Eastern village on the base.

The size of the base allows Marines to do more than just shoot large guns. The desert space also gives tank units room to practice moving their machines, which can be limited on other bases. Fewer space restrictions give the Marines more opportunity to see how the tanks perform, move and break down.

Tank mechanic Staff Sgt. Adam McPherson chose to be stationed at Twentynine Palms because of the hands-on experience it would provide.

“The tanks get used a lot,” he said. “We go to the field quite often out there and mechanics get that first-hand experience fixing them.”

McPherson believes because there are so many field exercises at the base he has more knowledge about his vehicle than a Marine who has not been stationed at Twentynine Palms.

The base also features the largest urban warfare training center, Range 220, in the Department of Defense, not just the Marine Corps, according to King.

“When you’re talking Range 220 here in Twentynine Palms, 1,500 buildings compose the size of about downtown San Diego. There’s no other place on the planet you can get this type of training.”

But after the training ends, the boredom begins – at least for some Marines. Most are males between the ages of 19 and 24, according to King. About 7,000 of the 10,500 Marines are single, said Capt. Justin Smith, the base’s public affairs officer. Drive around the city of Twentynine Palms and you will find many tattoo parlors and barbers, but you will not see any of the strip parlors that cater to many other military bases.

“Twentynine Palms, the city itself, is more family-oriented,” said King.

With limited entertainment options round the base, boredom can drive Marines to extremes. There is a saying at Twentynine Palms: Marines either become drinkers, gym rats or find religion.

Capt. Jonathan Zarling admitted single Marines can struggle with their social lives.

“You’ve got to travel to it,” he said. “Single guys on the weekend are usually wondering, ‘What do I do?’”

“We have each other out here to hang out with,” said Cpl. Jacob Evans. “We’ll just hang out at each other’s houses and grill, have a few drinks.”

For some, the desert has advantages for entertainment.

“I actually enjoy it because I’m a dirt bike rider,” said Sgt. Ricky Bajo. “There are a lot of dirt places here.”

Bajo has spent six years at Twentynine Palms and rides his dirt bike almost every weekend. Other Marines said they found the seclusion of the desert and base comforting.

“I like it here because I come from a small town where I was already isolated,” said McPhearson, who also has spent six years on the base. “The quiet is nice. I don’t like the hustle and bustle of the city, so for me it’s OK.”

The base offers discount entertainment options. There is a movie theater where Marines can see first run movies, restaurants, a fitness center, clubs, concerts, sporting events, stories, classes and seminars. Different commands throughout the Marine Corps also host various functions depending on the amount of recreational funds they receive, including day trips to popular destinations said Smith.

King advises young Marines to save money to buy a reliable car so they can take advantage of the ocean, mountains and big cities all a few hours’ drive from the base.

“If you cannot find something to do, you’re not trying hard enough,” he said.

 

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VIDEO: ‘Reporting Vietnam’ a gritty look at reporting the war

 

Marking the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Vietnam War, a new exhibit allows visitors to take a retrospective look at the war’s legacy through the lens of American journalists.

It opened Friday at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

“With the exhibit,” said Curator Carrie Christoffersen, “we really hope that people will gain the better understanding of how and why journalists did what they did, how they brought coverage of the Vietnam War to a divided nation.”

The exhibit, called “Reporting Vietnam,” showcases historic photos, news footage, newspapers and magazines, evocative music and more than 90 artifacts that characterized the war era.

Challenging perceptions of America’s first televised war, it considers the question, “Did the press lose the war?”

The answer was “no” for Neil Lakdawala, a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

“The media was not always just trying to portrait what the government wants,” he said. “I think they did a good deal of work to bring the truth to the light.”

For both Lakdawala and Christoffersen, the highlight of the exhibit was the collection of Larry Burrows, an English photographer known for his pictures of the war.

On display is a helmet found at the site of the 1971 helicopter crash in Laos that killed Burrows and three counterparts.

There also are iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning pictures that symbolized the brutality of the war, such as “Napalm Girl,” which triggered worldwide controversy over the image of a nude, screaming South Vietnamese girl whose clothes and flesh were burned off by napalm.

“What’s a better way to learn about Vietnam and the war than by people who were actually in the war,” Lakdawala said.

The exhibit, accompanied by the screening of an original documentary chronicling the war’s key moments, continues through mid-September.

Published in conjunction with Military Times Logo

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In the middle of the Mojave, Marines make millions off bullet casings and bomb fragments

  • Piles of bullet casings sorted for recycling at the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center’s Qualitative Recycling Program Range Sustainment branch. (Amina Ismail/MEDILL NSJI)
    Piles of bullet casings sorted for recycling at the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center’s Qualitative Recycling Program Range Sustainment branch. (Amina Ismail/MEDILL NSJI)

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. — On a stretch of California desert the size of Rhode Island at the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, thousands of Marines train for combat each year. And the casings, shells and bomb fragments fired in these exercises are making the Marine Corps millions of dollars each year.

“You have tank parts, you have 120 tank rounds that are made up of aluminum, you have 40-mm rounds. Everything that’s made out of aluminum is sitting back there in that pile,” said Jay Jones, work leader for the seven-person team at the Qualitative Recycling Program’s Range Sustainment branch. “Believe it or not, an airplane crashed out here one year, and it stayed out there. Once the investigation was over, we went out and got it brought back. Someone’s probably driving around a car in it now.”

The Qualified Recycling Program started in 2000 and collected over 5.6 million pounds of range residue last year. The recycling program manages trash and household recyclables as well as exploded munitions and hazardous materials from across the base. Items are collected, sorted, processed and recycled or sold to government-approved contractors for profit, saving the base removal costs.

Range Sustainment

Heaping piles of shells and casings lay sorted in material-specific containers at the Range Sustainment branch, which processes some 900,000 pounds of spent munitions from across the base each year.

“Everything that’s been shot at, shot up, blown up, that’s what we recycle in here,” Jones said. “The Marines themselves bring it in, plus we have contractors that go in and they bring in the bigger pieces of gear. The blown up tanks, the airplane.”

Every unit that trains at the base’s live fire ranges must return expended ammo to the Range Sustainment branch. Staff members sort them into piles by raw material and conduct quality assurance checks for live ordinances

Norman Troy, an explosives ordinance specialist who supervises the Range Sustainment branch, said he identifies each spent munition by sight based on its fusing system and does not consider his job a risk to his life.

“We make sure nothing is live,” Troy said. “It’s once in a very blue moon does something unexploded come in that’s dangerous. And if it does come in, then we call the explosives ordinance disposal, and they come down. And they’ll hopefully go blow it up somewhere.”

Hazardous Materials

The hazardous materials branch acts as the Qualified Recycling Program’s innovative hub. Branch staff process and recycle hazardous materials from across the base, including oil, grease, paint and anti-freeze. According to Patrick Mills, program manager for hazardous materials, the major cost-saving components are the recycling of anti-freeze and the reconditioning of batteries.

Every piece of military rolling stock uses batteries worth $300 to $500, Texas company PulseTech donated machines that recondition the batteries by using an ultrasonic technology that breaks up phosphates that cocoon the lead plates within the batteries. These machines cost $5,000 a piece, but using them saves the Marine Corps up to $1.5 million dollars a year.

Projects like this have caught the eye of think tanks that work with Mills and his team to maximize their technologies.

“DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is one of the many different think tanks,” said Mills. “They find technology, they try to do a cross application to a [Department of Defense] use, for example, and then they would find guys like us who like to step out on the edge of that limb. And that’s what I do.”

Maximizing technology is a key driver of innovation for the branch, which reduced the amount of hazardous waste shipped off-site in 2014 by 192 tons compared with the previous year.

“We are going through a fiscal tsunami right now,” Mills said. “We just fought two long sustained wars. Not one, but two. And we’re still fighting other different neo-intensive operations. There’s ISIS.”

“The think tank, basically they’re trying to get us out of a stone age into new cutting-edge technology. The battery’s one example,” Mills added.

Profit Management

An environmental award submission to the secretary of Defense cited a variety of issues the base faces, including budget reductions, increased environmental requirements, greater public scrutiny and pressure to privatize commercial-like functions. But despite these pressures, the base’s recycling business is thriving.

Last year, the Qualified Recycling Program amassed $2.5 million in profit. Half of this amount went toward labor, maintenance and upgrade costs for the recycling program, and half went to the base’s Marine Welfare Program.

Scrappers

The recycling program staffers aren’t the only ones who see the lucrative potential of the Marine Corps’ leftovers. The Marines training at Twentynine Palms from dawn until dusk have turned the arid sand into a goldmine of metals primed for scrappers, who sneak onto base property illegally, collect discharged munitions, and sell them for profit to local recycling centers.

“They have the ability to just pick up as much as they can pick up,” Troy said. “They’re looking for high-value material. So our brass is a high-value material.”

Besides latent threats these scrappers face like unintentionally stumbling across a live fire training exercise, Troy said there are also risks of unexploded ordinances in the field.

“There have been a couple of incidents where they’d go out and find somebody. They found a couple scrappers that had died near their vehicle. They found a few vehicles that had been stranded out there that had materials in the back that were unsafe.”

Troy said the recycling center cooperates with San Berdardino County Sheriffs Office and conservation law enforcement officer Russell Elswick to prosecute scrappers who have illegally taken metal materials from the base.

For its environmental efforts, including recycling and water reclamation, the Twentynine Palms MCAGCC was awarded the 2015 Secretary of Defense Environmental Non-Industrial Installation Award.

 

 

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FOIA update: USDB releases Manual for the Guidance of Inmates (USDB Regulation 600-1, Nov. 2013)

WASHINGTON — On Monday, the United States Disciplinary Barracks’ Directorate of Inmate Administration released “USDB Regulation 600-1, Nov. 2013” entitled “Manual for the Guidance of Inmates” to the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative in response to an April 17 Freedom of Information Act request.

The 141-page document serves as the official rulebook for the treatment and behavior of inmates held at the military prison (including WikiLeaks firestarter Chelsea Manning) and addresses everything from media contact with inmates to rules regarding their appearance and hygiene.

The FOIA request was intended to increase transparency regarding the U.S. Army’s regulation of USDB inmates held at Fort Leavenworth, to better inform the press about rules regarding their contact with prisoners and to shed light on the status of civil liberties within the prison’s walls.

You can view the entire document below:

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Hard-luck vets find therapy partners in rescue dogs

CHICAGO — For many in the armed services, valor means courage against impossible odds. But for one group in Chicago, valor has a different meaning. Veterans Advancing Lives of Rescues, VALOR, is the name of a new program created by Safe Humane Chicago. The nonprofit organization pairs veterans working through tough times with dogs that have been confiscated in criminal cases for abuse or neglect and are now property of the city of Chicago.

“They are a little on a parallel track, in the sense that they have suffered some setbacks in their lives emotionally and sometimes physically,” said Janice Triptow, manager of behavior and training at Safe Humane Chicago. “So the marriage of these two populations is interesting and I think heartwarming.”

VALOR’s eight-week pilot program finished in November, when five veterans from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps learned training techniques and socialization skills to help the dogs become more adoptable. All of the veterans in VALOR are part of Thresholds, a Chicago-based provider of recovery services for people facing mental health challenges.

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, “more than 1.3 million veterans received specialized mental health treatment from VA for issues related to mental health.” The 2014 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress estimated that 49,933 veterans were homeless in the U.S. on a given night in January 2014.

Christa Velbel, VALOR co-founder and a Safe Humane Chicago volunteer, said the goal of the program is “to use this magical but scientifically documented human-animal bond to take people and dogs who have been through a lot of difficulty and a lot of pain and make their lives happier again.”

Donald Birdsong discusses why he joined the Army in the 1970s.

Army veteran Donald Birdsong, who suffered setbacks after losing his job, participated in VALOR’s second session along with four other veterans and graduated from the program on March 23. Of the 19 dogs that went through his session, seven have been adopted, nine are in foster homes, two remain in city custody and one was returned to its owner, according to Velbel.

VALOR’s next eight-week training session begins Monday and will include five more veterans. Learn more about this endeavor here.

Published in conjunction with Military Times Logo

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Cracking the code: Workshop gives journalists a crash course in encryption

  • TestBed's Aaron Rinehart lectures to seminar attendees prior to the hands-on portion of the day on April 3, 2015. (Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory/MEDILL NSJI)

WASHINGTON — The minds behind TestBed, Inc., a Virginia-based IT consulting firm specializing in IT planning, analytics, testing, prototyping and business advice for the public and private sectors, gave journalists a crash course in digital safety and encryption techniques at an April 3 seminar in Washington.

The daylong event, “Cyber Security Skill Workshop for Journalists: Sending Secure Email,” was co-sponsored by the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative and the Military Reporters & Editors Association, and held in the Medill Washington newsroom.

The seminar began with an introductory lecture on cybersecurity basics and common misconceptions about online privacy and security. Security-related superstitions, such as the idea that browsing in so-called “incognito” or “invisible” modes will keep your digital whereabouts truly hidden, were promptly dispelled.

TestBed’s Aaron Rinehart and David Reese then transformed the event into a hands-on lesson in PGP – an acronym for “Pretty Good Privacy” – as well as understanding other aspects of digital fingerprints (including how to create a public key, how to register it in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s PGP directory so that you are more widely contactable by those in the encryption know and how to revoke (or deactivate) a key for security reasons.

The program also included a brief introduction to the Tor network, a group of volunteer-operated servers that allows people to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. Tor, originally developed by the U.S. Navy, hides the route taken from a computer’s IP address to its eventual browsing destination.

Learn how Tor works via Medill reporter William Hicks’ helpful primer and infographic here.

When asked for the top three lessons he hoped attendees would take away from the event, Rinehart emphasized the importance of “good key management,” or not sharing your private PGP key with anyone, operating “under good security practices”(such as updating software and antivirus programs) and making email encryption a regular habit.

“Don’t compromise convenience for security,” Rinehart said in a post-workshop interview. “Try to make this something you can use everyday.”

The event drew a mix of reporters, security experts and students, which included military veterans and defense journalists.

Northwestern University in Qatar journalism student James Zachary Hollo attended the event to research encryption resources available for foreign correspondents and to report on the workshop for the Ground Truth Project in Boston, where he is currently completing his Junior Residency.

Hollo said the seminar gave him a better understanding of how to use PGP.

“I had sort of experimented with it before I came here, but this gave me a much better and deeper understanding of it, and I got to sort of refine my ability to use it more,” he said.

Hollo said he was surprised that many attendees came from military service or military reporting backgrounds, since, in his view, “one of the blowbacks against the NSA story [involving whistleblower Edward Snowden] was that it’s like reporting is like betraying your country.”

 

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