In the wake of the McCrystal incident, things might be getting tougher for journalists covering the war in Afghanistan. On Friday, the NYT reported on new orders issued by the Secretary of Defense:
The memorandum requires top-level Pentagon and military leaders to notify the office of the Defense Department’s assistant secretary for public affairs “prior to interviews or any other means of media and public engagement with possible national or international implications.”
Two of the most prominent TV news foreign correspondents, ABC’s Martha Raddatz and NBC’s Richard Engel, weighed in on the memo with Yahoo! New’s Michael Calderone.
Both agree that the order will have and is having an effect on how they cover the military, with Engel anticipating “reduced media access for all reporters” for the next few months. And both also expressed concern about the consequences for reporters with less experience dealing with the U.S. military beat.
“I worry about reporters just coming onto the beat who haven’t dealt with the military for years…And the military who haven’t dealt with reporters,” Raddatz said.
Engel told Calderone he’d never seen “military spokespeople go into lockdown to the degree they did following the Rolling Stone article.”
Previously: ‘Media Blackout’ in Afghanistan