210                                    U.S. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 19901991

training, and presented a potential threat to operational security. But by telling
the Marine Corps story to an audience voracious for news from the front they
helped build and maintain the support of the American public.

            The Adversary ReIationshi~Traditional and Healthy

   The media coverage of the Vietnam War left a legacy of bitterness and mis-
trust between the press and the military.  I often compare the process of trying
to get the two institutions together with mating a wildcat and a pit bull.  Public
affairs officers can get bloodied in the process, bLit if we're successful, the
progeny can be pretty interesting.
   As the Head of the Media Branch at Headquarters Marine Corps during
1985-88,   1 was responsible for setting up military-media seminars at the
Command and Staff College and Amphibious Warfare School.           Typically these
sessions included keynote speakers from the mainstream news media and panel
discussions with members of the Pentagon press corps.    I never ceased to be
amazed at the fingerpointing antipathy that was often aroused and at the depth
of suspicion that surfaced during discussions of media coverage of combat
operations.  Officers who'd never once had to confront either a reporter or an
armed opponent blamed the media for losing the war for us in Vietnam,
impugned their morals, and maligned their loyalties.
   Retired Marine lieutenant general and former New York flmes reporter
Bernard E. Trainor has seen this adversary relationship from both sides.      Last
December he wrote in Parameters,

            Today's officer corps carries as part of its cultural
            baggage a loathing for the press. . . . Like racism,
            anti-Semitism, and all forms of bigotry, it is irrational
            but nonetheless real. The credo of the military seems to
            have become `duty, honor, country, and hate the media.'

   Getting our officers to like the press was never a goal of these seminars.   A
certain amount of mutual wariness is probably healthy.     What we tried to
convey to the operators was the importance of planning for the presence of
civilian reporters in the ranks.  Whether they like it or not, commanders will
have to deal with news media on the battlefield.

                       Ualling Into the Media Pool

   In 1983 military commanders effectively banned the media from the Grenada
invasion.   The press reacted with such loud righteous indignation, all but
accusing the Pentagon of using the Bill of Rights for toilet paper, that the
Department of Defense (DOD) formed a commission to study the issue.           The
Sidle Panel, composed of officers and representatives of the national news
media, came up with a proposal that neither side particularly liked but both
begrudgingly accepted.