The Combat Operator

Hey PMCs: Stop blaming “the media”

Feb 4, 2009 Commentary, Jake's Posts

By Jake Allen

It is getting very tiresome to continue hearing operators in our community complain about how the ’left wing media’ the ’muckrakers’ the ‘liberals’ the ‘the blogosphere’ and their ‘pacifist do-gooder agenda’ are bringing our industry down and giving us a bad name. Anyone who sits around whining about books or articles or blogs or news reports that attack PMCs should stop wasting their breath and start doing something about it.

Yes, it’s true there are dozens of traditional media outlets that say negative things about us. Yes, there are many reporters who wake up every day with a pre-written story in their head about how bad PMCs are. And yes, in the most powerful battle, the battle of words, they are dominating the fight for ‘mindshare’ among politicians and the general citizenry. But guess what, it has been and always will be this way. And if you as an industry professional don’t get engaged it will remain so.

It can be frustrating at times but it does not help to complain about it. It’s akin to complaining about the sun rising every morning. Just get used to it and learn to protect yourself from it. In fact, the media’s perception much like the sun is highly predictable and therefore very easy to diffuse or to counter or to mitigate. We as an industry must learn how to adapt to the environment we live in, not to wish for an environment that will never exist.

When the sun rises each day you can do a whole host of things to continue to operate effectively not only against it but with it. On the one hand you can smear your naked body in butter and layout down on an asphalt parking lot. But don’t bitch and moan about the sun’s power when you get burned to a crisp. It was not the sun’s fault. You made poor choices and took dumb actions. The sun is all powerful, and in many ways sometimes “the media” feels like it is also has monolithic power. But what most fail to see is that if you are smart enough the sun’s raw power can be harnessed and used to great positive effect. With a mirror or a magnifying glass for example it can be used to deflect the harsh rays away from something and focus them onto something else.

“The media” as such is simply a tool. Actually, it is not a tool (singular) it is a whole box of tools (plural). And the beauty of this modern-day toolbox is that no one owns the box itself or the tools inside; they are free-to-use. Today anyone can write an eBook, anyone can write and publish their own paper book, anyone can publish a magazine, anyone can publish an ezine, anyone can write a blog post, anyone can comment on other peoples blogs, anyone can make a speech, anyone can start a podcast, and anyone can start a radio program and broadcast it via the internet or even on satellite channels. The days of limitation put in place by big publishing houses or government control over the airwaves are long gone. It’s time the PMC industry wake up and started using these tools to our advantage. This is the primary reason I started TCO and I have consistently called on the community to contribute. I have reached out to my personal network and to people who I have never met and the response with a few notable exceptions has been, well, disappointing so say the least.

If your the kind of sod who sits around complaining about the media’s treatment of Blackwater but you do nothing to stand up for them in public then your not worthy of being a professional private soldier or security guard. You’re just a pathetic little mouse scared of your own shadow and you will always be scrapping to feed on the crumbs left for you by greater more brave men.

I recently took some heat for my article that was critical of Blackwater’s poor media savvy but the fact is I call it like I see it.  And it is our right, no it is our duty, as industry professionals to point out issues that need improvement. Blackwater has not made any more or less mistakes than any other company of their size or their mission-scope would have made if they were in their shoes. The criticism we waged here against Blackwater was in their classic obstinate and closed-door approach to publicly deal with the Iraqi government, the Department of State, Congress and ultimately the American people. We appreciate the quiet professional bit but given the choice the preference must be more toward professional and less toward quiet. The media’s reaction to a string of negative Blackwater news events was entirely predictable and should have been dealt with head on by a much more robust public relations effort. Perception is reality and silence allows the vacuum to be filled by the media’s agenda which ultimately drives public opinion among both citizens in the U.S. and in Iraq.

Yes the media will always recycle any stories about a shooting or an incident but you know what? They are going to do that tomorrow, the next day and the day after that. And once Blackwater is off the high pedestal it will be Triple Canopy or DynCorp or Aegis or Armour Group or Control Risks or Olive or Erinys, or whoever sits in the perceived driver’s seat of the industry that gets the brunt of the media’s focus and ultimately their abuse.  We must keep in mind that the best defense against this criticism is to run a disciplined operation and minimize the number incidents to begin with.  We cannot fault reporters for reporting news.

Any left leaning media or their agenda are not going away and neither is the sun. They will be with us every day until eternity. Stop bitching about it and start doing something to get out the message that our industry is not as we are being perceived. We are a necessary and vital component of the military portfolio and as such a contributor to U.S. foreign policy and in turn foreign impression of the U.S. This is beyond debate. It is just a fact.

We should be using these same media tools that you are complaining about to divert the attention away from the discussion of our very existence and start forcing the dialogue around the failures of the governments and the bureaucrats at the UN. It is they who have failed time and time again to do their jobs. The media is so focused on dumping on PMCs that they don’t have the moral courage to take an objective look at the innumerable failures of these other institutions. But we make ourselves easy prey to their attacks. Every misstep we take will ultimately be blown entirely out of proportion. Illogical connections will be drawn and moronic inferences made. But is this not predictable? Of course it is. So, PMCs must plan for it just like they must plan for any other kind of ambush.

The media is not the problem. The media us just a large room full of people. Right now that room is 99.9% filled with people who hate us. Perhaps because they fear us, perhaps it is jealousy but more likely because they don’t understand us. We have two actions to take. First we need to pull more people from our industry and our way of thinking into the room. This can be done quickly, easily and with little financial investment given the aforementioned toolbox. Second, we need to have reasoned and meaningful dialogue with others in that room who may not understand us and help them to see that we are not the problem. We are actually a component of the solution to the problems long ago created by others and since ignored by these other media types.

This is my personal challenge to you: Get involved. Write an article, send it to me and I will post it on TCO. Send our weekly SITREP to your friends and colleagues. Listen to our Combat Operator Radio and email us feedback and suggestions for future guests and topics. Visit the Feral Jundi blog, subscribe to his RSS feed. Follow Eeben Barlow’s Blog, listen to what he has to say. For that matter, start your own blog or write a letter to the editor of a major newspaper but please, please stop with the self-pity and the poor-us mentality because in the first place it makes you look like a sissy and secondly it doesn’t help fix anything.  So the only question that remains is what are you, as an operator, are you going to do to help change other’s perception of us?

Tags: Jake's Posts