Retired Military Media Analysts Gates

Retired Military Media Analysts

Gates urges greater clarity by military media analysts: An overview of the U.S. Defense Secretary's position

Gates urges greater clarity by military media analysts: An overview of the U.S. Defense Secretary's position

Many viewers like to congratulate themselves that they are savvy media consumers. They say they are able to discern the conservative bias of Fox News and are all too well aware that the reason their favorite character on a sitcom loves to eat cereal is because Kellogg is a leading sponsor of the program. However, when it comes to military figures, there is an often near-instinctive trust on the part of the public that the individuals they see are speaking truthfully and with candor about their knowledge of the U.S. military situation abroad. Who else could know better than an officer about the risks of withdrawal or the potential benefits of a new military system? The public is likely to think that an officer is likely to know better, even than a politician, about national security and military tactics, given his or her training and experience.

The problem, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates states in a 2008 article published in Science Daily entitled "Gates urges greater clarity by military media analysts" is that many individuals who are retired officers go on to work as private contractors. These officers are no longer people who are duty-bound to put the greater interests of the nation and the soldiers under their command first and foremost. Now they are private citizens with a financial interest that certain actions are undertaken by the federal government, and they may have a clear bias in favor of certain weapons systems, because of the position of their company.

These military analysts are often presented as "objective" observers to the American public, and no mention is made of their change in status. There is often a clear political or financial (or at times both) interest that the individual has when disseminating an opinion, just as much as a spokesperson for Kraft or Mattel might have, defending his or her company against allegations that a product is harmful, or an advertising campaign is misleading. For example, an individual working for a company that manufactures Air Force equipment might have a perceptual or deliberate bias regarding the need to bolster the Air Force to combat terrorist attacks; an individual who has started a contracting company that manufactures strategic defense shields ("Star Wars" style-defenses) is likely to be very critical of an administration's decision to no longer fund such programs.

Although former soldiers might assert that they are being objective because they are using their past experiences to support their assessments, viewers have the right to know what might influence former soldiers' perception of military evidence. This is particularly important in dealing with military speakers, because often a military title and a uniform, even of a retired officer, can cause a viewer to stand a little taller, and feel unpatriotic discounting the officer's testimony. A casual television viewer might assume the officer is reporting directly about what he or she has seen of troops in the field -- not balance sheets in a contractor's office. While Gates, as Secretary of Defense, clearly respects the men and women who have served the nation, he notes: "when they [former officers] are referred to by their title, the public doesn't know whether they are active duty or retired officers because those distinctions tend to get blurred" in a five-minute segment on television.