220                                    U.s. MARINES IN THE PERSIAN GULF, 1990-1991


                                Report Card

    While the media panned the pool system in early reviews, it was generous
in its acclaim for Marine public affairs officers. The reports coming out of our
pools were so uniformly positive that some correspondents cooling their heels
in Dhahran refused to use them.       Some of our pool journalists were even
accused by their colleagues of being coopted by the Marines.
    Those Americans who pay attention to such details began to notice that
Marines were getting a disproportionate share of the war's publicity.     One
reader of the New York Daily News even wrote a letter to the editor com-
plaining about a pro-Marine Corps media bias.      As his letter read,

           Most of the war coverage centered around the actions of
           the Marines.   They did no more or less than the Army
           to bring about the victorious conclusion of Operation
           DESERT STORM.        President Harry Truman once said
           the U.S. Marines have the best public relations team and
           I think he was right.

    Accolades for the public affairs officer notwithstanding, much of the credit
for any success of the media coverage of Marines in the Gulf must go to
individual unit commanders for their hospitality and candor in dealing with
reporters and to young Marines in the desert, who never failed to impress
journalists with their intelligence, toughness, and courage.    But the Marine
Corps' apparatus for accommodating reporters in combat or in any situation in
which hostilities were imminent was archaic to nonexistent.   Some examples:

    Our system for transmitting print reports via electronic mail and fax was
jerry-built at best. We need to institute a means for more rapid return of media
pool products through satellite transmission.  Delays in transmitting media pool
products for technological reasons just reduce our opportunity to tell our story.
As we found in Southwest Asia, media that aren't in pools won't wait long for
these reports.  They'll go off on their own with their own satellite dishes and
report whatever they can find.  If we can't afford the hardware, we should at
least let the pools bring their own.  But we lose a measure of security control
if they use their own gear.

    We need to ensure that our public affairs officers have the tactical trans-
portation they require to move media and their products around the battlefield.
Our media pool transportation problems in the Gulf were exacerbated by the
vastness of our area of responsibility. In some cases we had to force the media
to bring their own wheels. Their rented four wheel drive vehicles worked okay
in the desert, but may not fare so well in other terrain or in areas where
gasoline is not readily available.