Re: New to the list...

[Patrick Cain <patrickcain@snappingturtle.net>]

At 13:07 16/02/2021 -0800, Bradley Sallows wrote:
>
>Cultivate relationships with the Public Affairs Officers (PAFFOs) on your
beat.
If you can, bypass the PAFFOs and go directly to the decision-makers. It's
much better to have someone who makes decisions explain himself to you
personally than to have to talk to the gatekeeper.
>Consider spending two or three years as a reservist.  It will at least
help you
>learn the language and a bit about the organization.
This is a good idea, so long as your goal is not to become someone whose
role is to be an external cheerleader for the organization, but rather
someone who can call events as they see them. There are PAFFOs, who are
paid to be cheerleaders, and there are reporters, who are paid to be
reporters. In a situation where reporters become cheerleaders, it will be
true that it will be more honest to just put the PAFFO in front of the
camera; it would make it clearer to the public who is speaking. 
Re. joining the reserves: Squeeze the highest-quality experience you can
out of it (leadership courses are good for this, as are overseas
deployments; getting in trouble is educational, too), then pick your moment
to get out. Do it intensely, and when you leave, *really* leave. The one
thing I regret from my several years in the militia, and would change if I
could rewind a couple of years (other than a different MOC), is not having
done a UN tour. 
The other thing to remember is that the army is so factional (regs vs.
militia, infantry regiments vs each other, 5CMBG vs everybody, gunners vs
everybody they think underestimates them, and so forth) that almost nothing
you do as a reporter covering the military, no matter what it is, will
enrage absolutely everybody absolutely all the time. 
Two good books on the whole complicated, interesting subject of the
interaction of the press and the military are William Prochnau's _Once Upon
a Distant War_, about the group of (mostly) American reporters in Saigon at
the beginning of the Vietnam War, and Philip Knightley's _The First
Casualty_, about war correspondents in general.
Patrick Cain
voice: (416) 539-0939
fax:    (416) 515-3698
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