E-Media Tidbits

longwarjournal.com "Milblogs" like The Long War Journal can add useful perspective to coverage of current international and domestic conflicts and military issues.

This topic has been interesting me lately because I've been finding military blogs an intriguing complement to mainstream media coverage of the war in Iraq and other trouble spots around the world. If you've never read milblogs, a good place to find them is Milblogging.com, Powerline, and Military.com.

The panelists were:

• Christian Lowe, editor of Defensetech
• Bill Roggio, who blogs at The Long War Journal
• Uncle Jimbo, who blogs at Blackfive
• Steve Schippert, who blogs for Threatswatch
• Eric Egland, a current California candidate for the U.S. Congress, contributing author of the book The Blogs of War, and founder of Troops Need You.

One thing that struck me about this session was the emphasis on milblogging as a response to what the panelists claimed was inaccurate or biased coverage of military issues and actions by mainstream journalists.

Schippert, whose family includes several Vietnam vets, expressed this sentiment: "During Vietnam, the American public never heard from the soldier on the ground. A handful of media outlets were defining that conflict in Vietnam. Now there's a mechanism for the deployed soldiers on the ground to describe events from their perspective. In a lot of ways, milblogs are outpacing the old media. A handful of checkpoints on information can never, ever again dominate discourse of military actions."

A watershed moment for milblogs happened in 2005 when CNN's then-news chief Eason Jordan was reported as saying at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that he knew of 12 journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq. (Jordan later backpedaled from those remarked.)

Said Schippert, "Milbloggers banded together over that. The gauntlet was laid down, and we told Jordan to put up or shut up. We asked him to release the tape from this conference and own up to what he said. That got milbloggers a lot of attention, and Jordan left CNN not long afterward."

So what exactly is a milblog? The panelists consider this field to include blogs by active-duty soldiers, as well as their families and friends, and former soldiers -- as long as the cover current military issues.

In contrast to the highly competitive mindset of many mainstream journalists, the panelists indicated that milbloggers operate in a very collaborative fashion, with considerable backchannel communication. Uncle Jimbo explained, "We check each other's facts and information, both before we post and after. That's a big part of our credibility. Because we're all kind of riding in the back of the same truck. We keep each other honest."

One point I asked about was whether personnel from military contractors such as Kellogg Brown Root or Blackwater are blogging (not official company blogs, but blogs by staff in the field). Since those companies are increasingly fulfilling roles that used to be played by military personnel, I thought theirs might be a useful perspective to round out from-the-field coverage. The panelists didn't know of such contractor blogs, and they seemed uncertain of whether they'd consider such blogs "milblogs." Also, according to the panelists, contractor staff aren't generally part of the backchannel communication that occurs regularly among milbloggers.

Do you read milblogs? Do you mention or link to them in your coverage? Why or why not? Please comment below.