Tag Archives: MRE

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 The order was eventually rescinded and the papers returned to the prime locations, while further Military Times reporting “obtained and authenticated emails linking Amos to the newsstand move,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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Medill NSJI, MRE and SPJ send letter to Army Secretary

WASHINGTON — Military Reporters and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists and Northwestern University’s National Security Journalism Initiative sent a joint letter to Army Secretary John McHugh on June 19, requesting the immediate declassification of the investigation into Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ horrific crimes in Afghanistan in March 2012.

Bales was sentenced to life in prison in August 2013 for murdering 16 Afghan civilians, including many women and children, during two solo nighttime raids in small villages in Kandahar province. The gruesome murders—dubbed the Kandahar massacre—sparked angry protests and forced the U.S. military to temporarily halt combat operations in the region.

“Bales pleaded guilty to his crimes and will spend the rest of his life in prison. His clemency request has been denied and U.S. forces are no longer operating at the combat outposts where he committed his crimes. We see no reason why the investigation should remain classified,” said MRE President Amy McCullough. “The reasons U.S. Central Command gave to some of our members for denying repeated FOIA requests no longer apply, and the public has a right to know if there was anything that could have been done to prevent this tragedy. I sincerely hope Secretary McHugh will do the right thing and declassify this report before his tenure ends.”

“The Pentagon has examined the events leading to Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ crimes in Kandahar province, but the public has only the military’s word that it has done everything possible to learn from the incidents,” said Ellen Shearer, co-director of Northwestern University’s National Security Journalism Initiative. “The continued lack of transparency in this case is a shameful example of denying the public its right to know the truth about an important, terrible event in the war in Afghanistan.”

The letter reads, as follows:

June 19, 2015

Dear Secretary McHugh,

We write to draw your attention to an important document regarding SSgt. Robert Bales’ crimes in Kandahar province that has been concealed despite his conviction and the historic significance of the atrocities he committed. These obstacles are troubling to Military Reporters and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, and Northwestern University’s National Security Journalism Initiative. The gravity of Bales’ crimes argues for transparency in all aspects of his case. We ask you for your assistance in declassifying an Army regulation 15-6 investigation into Bales’ killings before your tenure as Army Secretary ends.

Since Bales’ was sentenced to life in prison in August 2013, three news organizations from the Puget Sound region near JB Lewis-McChord have submitted multiple Freedom of Information Act requests for an Army Regulation 15-6 investigation commissioned to look into whether anything could have been done to prevent Bales’ massacre in March 2012.

The News Tribune of Tacoma, The Seattle Times and NPR Seattle affiliate KUOW have had their FOIA requests denied and their appeals delayed. Normally, investigative documents used during courts-martial may be released through FOIA following the resolution of a case. That has not happened with the Bales 15-6.

U.S. Central Command rejected The News Tribune’s first request for the Bales 15-6 in January 2014. The reasons listed by Central Command included:

  • JBLM’s I Corps headquarters had not yet considered Bales’ clemency
  • Releasing the 15-6 could jeopardize ongoing operations for frequently deployed
  • Releasing the 15-6 could obstruct a law enforcement
  • Releasing the 15-6 could impair Bales’ rights to a fair and impartial

The News Tribune filed an appeal to this denial. CENTCOM has not yet considered it. CENTCOM has confirmed that The News Tribune’s appeal is No. 235 in line for further consideration, but has repeated the reasoning it offered to The News Tribune in denying FOIA requests from The Seattle Times and KUOW.

In the 17 months that have passed since CENTCOM’s denial, facts have changed that warrant an immediate reconsideration of CENTCOM’s withholding of the Bales 15-6.

  • I Corps Commander Lt. Gen. Stephen Lanza has denied Bales’ clemency request and upheld his sentence.
  • S. forces are no longer stationed at combat outposts near where Bales committed his massacre, according to open-source news reports published by the Army. Moreover, testimony at Bales’ court-martial revealed how he twice walked out of his outpost to kill civilians. Releasing more information about that aspect of this incident could do no more harm to U.S. forces than has already been done.
  • Bales has been convicted and sentenced to life in prison. There is no pending law enforcement investigation that could be influenced by the release of the 15-6.
  • The FOIA exemption that protects a defendant’s right to a fair and impartial hearing is intended to ensure that military juries are unbiased. Bales is past the point when a jury may consider evidence in his case. His fate now rests solely with military appeals

Marine Corps Gen. John Allen commissioned the report just after the massacre. He discussed it in press interviews from Kabul, assuring the public the military would do everything it could to learn from Bales’ killings.

“I will be satisfied when I get the report that we have looked closely at the potential contributing factors that might have permitted this event to have unfolded tragically,” Allen told reporters in March 2012, two weeks after the killings.

Bales committed a terrible crime and is serving his sentence. The public and the press still deserve the answers to the questions Allen aired when he announced the 15-6.

Sincerely,

Amy McCullough, MRE President
News Editor, Air Force Magazine

Isaac Cubillos, MRE Vice President
 Editor, Military Media Group

Otto Kreisher, MRE Treasurer
Freelance Reporter

Bryan Bender, MRE Board member
Defense Editor, Politico

Kristina Wong, MRE Board member    
Defense Reporter, The Hill

Dan Lamothe, MRE Board member 
National Security Reporter, The Washington Post

Alex Quade, MRE Board member 
Freelance War Reporter

Greg Mathieson, MRE Board member
Combat Photographer

Jenn Rowell, MRE Board member
Military Reporter, Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune

John Grady, MRE Board member
 Freelance National Security Reporter

Ellen Shearer, Co-Director National Security Journalism Initiative
Professor, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism

Dana Neuts, SPJ President     
Freelance Journalist

Paul Fletcher, SPJ President-Elect
Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Karen Peterson, Executive Editor        
The News Tribune

Kathy Best, Editor
The Seattle Times

Patricia Murphy, Military/Veterans Reporter
KUOW

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Encryption Becomes a Part of Journalists’ Toolkit

TEXT AND PHOTOS BY J. ZACH HOLLO FOR THE GROUNDTRUTH PROJECT & REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION.

WASHINGTON — When whistleblower Edward Snowden used an email encryption program called PGP to contact documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, only a tiny fraction of journalists used it. The precaution, designed to scramble messages so only the sender and receiver can read them, was essential for Snowden to leak the information.

The series of stories that followed shocked the world and radically altered the way people think about government surveillance and the Internet. Now, encryption is becoming a standard item of the journalism toolkit, a must-have for anyone hoping to report on sensitive issues that might upset institutions of power. It was also the subject of a workshop recently held at Northwestern’s Medill newsroom in Washington, DC, which walked about 15 journalists through the basic software installations involved in setting up PGP, which is short for “Pretty Good Privacy” and ironically named after a grocery store in Garrison Keillor’s fictional town of Lake Wobegon.

Aaron Rinehart displays the GPG encryption download suite for those at the workshop to follow along. (J. Zach Hollo/THE GROUNDTRUTH PROJECT)

Aaron Rinehart displays the GPG encryption download suite for those at the workshop to follow along. (J. Zach Hollo/THE GROUNDTRUTH PROJECT)

For Aaron Rinehart, one of the workshop’s leaders, the goal is to protect the relationship between journalists and their sources, “to get journalists confident using these tools so sources feel they can give them information safely,” said Rinehart. Without that possibility, he said, the Fourth Estate could be fundamentally crippled.

And it’s not just the NSA journalists and sources need to protect themselves from, warned Rinehart. He used an example of a story exposing pharmaceutical malpractice. “It’s not that sexy of an issue, right? But just think of the potential adversaries.” There’s the government whose regulators screwed up, the drug companies who are poisoning people, and their stakeholders who don’t want to lose profits. With any story, there are likely a host of people who want to hack the journalist and sources to prevent the information from being aired.

The workshop was taught by Rinehart and digital security advisers David Reese and Ferdous Al-Faruque. Rinehart and Reese recently founded TestBed Inc., a technology consulting company. And Al-Faruque is a master’s journalism student at the University of Missouri who said he wants to establish a class there on encryption and cyber security.

Rinehart, who spent time in Djibouti while serving in the Marine Corps, said his motivation for putting on the workshop came from a time when journalism salvaged his college career. “The media saved me,” he said. About a decade ago, Rinehart faced a bureaucratic nightmare at the University of Missouri, when he returned from serving abroad and was not permitted to complete his studies. A local paper led an investigation into the problems veterans were having there, and the university changed policies. Since then, Rinehart said he tries to do all he can to help journalists.

Of the reporters who attended, many are intent on investigative work like the kind that exposed the NSA’s mass, indiscriminate surveillance. “Since I cover national security and defense, I would definitely use this to coax sources to communicate with me or send me documents that they don’t want their government or our government to see or know about,” said Kristina Wong, a reporter for The Hill.

But others also attended, including a cryptologist who said he comes to events like this out of professional interest, and a human rights worker.

“In a lot of countries, activists and human rights defenders especially are really targeted,” said Sarah Kinosian, who monitors American security assistance in Latin America for the Center for International Policy. “So we want to make sure [victims] can pass documentation to us in a safe way.”

The workshop began with Rinehart and Reese playing a segment of Citizen Four, Poitras’s documentary on Snowden and government surveillance that recently won an academy award.

“I would like to confirm out of email that the keys we exchanged were not intercepted and replaced by your surveillance,” a narrator said, reading Snowden’s correspondence with Poitras as a line of ominous tunnel light split darkness on the screen. “Please confirm that no one has ever had a copy of your private key and that it uses a strong passphrase.” Rinehart interjected: “That is what we will be teaching you today.”

He then spoke for a while on the importance of responsible password management, recommending a program called KeePass, before moving on to downloading email client software and installing extensions designed to encrypt communications.

The way it works can seem daunting and complex, especially for anyone not tech-savvy. The email extension, called GPG or PGP, generates both a public and private key for each user. When PGP is used to send an email, the sender uses the receiver’s public key to encrypt the contents of the email so only the receiver’s private key can decrypt it.

Also on the other end, the receiver can see that the sender’s identity is confirmed. A public key is just what it sounds like: something meant to be made public along with an email address so the owner can be contacted by anyone. The private key must be kept secret by the owner, and is used to decrypt messages sent using his or her public key.

In essence, it’s is the same concept of an email. Anyone can send a message to someone but only that someone can read it. But encryption makes it nearly impossible for that message to be intercepted. And while subpoenas can force Google or Yahoo to turn over peoples’ emails, PGP makes it impossible for Google and Yahoo to read the messages, so they’d be turning over incoherent nonsense (although it is still possible to see who the sender and receiver are, and the subject line of the email is not encrypted. Ergo, aliases are commonly used once initial contact is made).

Click here to see my public key.

Encryption’s complexity has deterred it from becoming widespread, even in newsrooms. “At The Hill, not many people use it at all,” said Wong, something many would deem troublesome given the publication’s focus on politics and aim to bring transparency to Washington.

But most people agree the complexity is in the technical details behind the process, not in its application. “The world of cryptology and algorithms and coding that goes into encryption tools is difficult for just about anyone to comprehend,” Rinehart said. “But using the tools is quite simple for people who take the time to learn.”

While the majority journalists still do not use encryption, it is becoming common practice for many organizations who do investigative work. The New Yorker, The Intercept, Washington Post, and ProPublica are a few of the early sign-ons for Secure Drop, a new encryption system for journalists designed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and originally coded by Kevin Poulsen and the late Aaron Swartz. Gawker is another publication that uses it, showing encryption may become more widespread for groups focused on less hard-hitting subjects as well.

[Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared in The Huffington Post.]

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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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