Wired is reporting that the U.S. Army has just ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or even send personal email messages without clearing everything with a superior officer first. “This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging,” said retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War anthology. “No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has — it’s most honest voice out of the war zone. And it’s being silenced.” Extremely unfortunate.
Adds Jason in comments: “I’ve always found it interesting (and fairly horrifying) that those who refer regularly to soldiers as defending our freedom do not give them the same freedom to speak out that the rest of the population has.”