War Story-
We learn best from experience. This experience shaped me and is applicable to you and your brigade today.
During the surge in Iraq in 2007 I became the Brigade PAO with no training. I was just coming out of my third company command, the Army had selected me to be a PAO, I had a great relationship with my Brigade Commander and our PAO got fired; so I was the guy.
Because we were in a fairly contested area and it was the surge we had a regular stream of national media embeds. I would regularly send these embeds to my old battalion, to areas I knew well. This week I sent Sudarsen Raghavan from the Washington Post to travel around with my good friend and battalion XO.
Raghavan asked some good questions and saw what we wanted him to see. On the way back, the battalion XO had to make a quick stop to check on a Civil Affairs funded project. Raghavan was interested. We hadn’t planned on this stop.
The project was a disaster. Nearly $100,000 was dumped into this poorly constructed Iraqi government building which was falling apart before it was even occupied. We continued to spend more to try to fix it. My friend and battalion XO ended up with his full-color mug on the front page of the post, underneath it read his name and the words, “angry and frustrated.”
I learned this:
Reporters are always reporting. They can and will get a story on the way to a story. Like wearing a mic, consider them always on. Always.
Don’t go blindly. Seems obvious but think about how quickly a short stop turned into a national level story which was read by Congress. Our XO was only planning on a 5 minute stop to check on progress. Know what you are going to see, before you see it.
People tell the truth. Our battalion XO was a man of character. The reporter asked him how he felt about the project and the XO told him, following all the rules of SAPP. Have an idea of what people are going to say before they say it. Never put someone in a position where telling the truth has negative consequences.
Work fast. Once I got hint of what happened I alerted our Division PA shop who hooked the reporter up with additional background and context. This information rounded out the story better than if it focused only on this building.
A hundred people reading this blog will point out that this was my mistake and I should have done things better. Yep, that’s the point.
