Shaffer
05-06-03, 07:38 AM
The high-ranking Marine officer took his helmet off, sat down in a folding chair with a thud and laid out the ground rules for the interview. It would all be off the record. And when he said off the record, he meant off the record.
"If I see any of this in the papers," he warned with a glare, "I'll find you and cut your ****ing balls off." The four of us, all experienced journalists from major American news organizations, laughed a bit nervously. He didn't. "I'm serious as a heart attack," he cut in. "I'll find you and make you hurt."
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the shotgun marriage between the military and the media called embedding started out with a bit of suspicion. Three decades of misunderstanding and mistrust had left both sides convinced of the other's ill will, exacerbating a natural cultural divide between an organization that inherently values saluting smartly and a profession that encourages questioning authority.
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=2993
"If I see any of this in the papers," he warned with a glare, "I'll find you and cut your ****ing balls off." The four of us, all experienced journalists from major American news organizations, laughed a bit nervously. He didn't. "I'm serious as a heart attack," he cut in. "I'll find you and make you hurt."
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the shotgun marriage between the military and the media called embedding started out with a bit of suspicion. Three decades of misunderstanding and mistrust had left both sides convinced of the other's ill will, exacerbating a natural cultural divide between an organization that inherently values saluting smartly and a profession that encourages questioning authority.
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=2993