{"id":10907,"date":"2015-08-11T08:30:53","date_gmt":"2015-08-11T13:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10907"},"modified":"2015-08-11T08:31:43","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T13:31:43","slug":"10907","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10907","title":{"rendered":"The New York Times Warns About the Pentagon Labeling Journalists \u201cUnprivileged Belligerents\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times Warns About the Pentagon Labeling Journalists \u201cUnprivileged Belligerents\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n
\"Screen<\/div>\n

This post is a follow up to a piece I published in June titled:\u00a0New Thousand Page Pentagon War Manual Potentially Lumps Journalists in with \u201cUnprivileged Belligerents.\u201d<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0Here\u2019s an excerpt:<\/p>\n

A 1,176 page Pentagon war manual\u00a0was recently released that\u00a0hasn\u2019t\u00a0received the attention it deserves. The book of combat instructions, titled \u201cDepartment of Defense Law of War Manual,\u201d apparently\u00a0covers rules of war for all branches of the U.S. military.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

One passage in particular is generating controversy, where journalists seem to be thrown into a convoluted and opaque category, in which they could be seen as \u201cunprivileged belligerents\u201d as opposed to civilians. Naturally, this has sparked concern that journalists the U.S. government doesn\u2019t like could be lumped into the\u00a0\u201cunprivileged belligerents\u201d category and subsequently murdered at will.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0is concerned as well, and rightfully so. In\u00a0an Op-ed today<\/a>, the paper explains that:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

The Defense Department earlier this summer released a comprehensive manual outlining its interpretation of the law of war. The\u00a01,176-page document<\/a>, the first of its kind, includes guidelines on the treatment of journalists covering armed conflicts that would make their work more dangerous, cumbersome and subject to censorship. Those should be repealed immediately.<\/em><\/p>\n

Journalists, the manual says, are generally regarded as civilians, but may in some instances be deemed \u201cunprivileged belligerents,\u201d a legal term that applies to fighters that are afforded fewer protections than the declared combatants in a war. In some instances, the document says, \u201cthe relaying of information (such as providing information of immediate use in combat operations) could constitute taking a direct part in hostilities.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The manual warns that \u201cReporting on military operations can be very similar to collecting intelligence or even spying,\u201d so it calls on journalists to \u201cact openly and with the permission of relevant authorities.\u201d It says that governments \u201cmay need to censor journalists\u2019 work or take other security measures so that journalists do not reveal sensitive information to the enemy.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times Warns About the Pentagon Labeling Journalists \u201cUnprivileged Belligerents\u201d This post is a follow up to a piece I published in June titled:\u00a0New Thousand Page Pentagon War Manual Potentially Lumps Journalists in with \u201cUnprivileged Belligerents.\u201d\u00a0Here\u2019s an excerpt: A 1,176 page Pentagon war manual\u00a0was recently released that\u00a0hasn\u2019t\u00a0received the attention it deserves. The book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[462,483,4285,6174,525,1921,620,938,8007],"class_list":["post-10907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-journalism","tag-liberty-2","tag-liberty-blitzkrieg","tag-michael-krieger","tag-military","tag-new-york-times","tag-pentagon","tag-press-freedom","tag-war-manual"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10907"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10909,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10907\/revisions\/10909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}