(Army Times) Editorial: Let families decide

[unhappycamper]

Editorial: Let families decide

The Army’s new rules allowing better media access to burials at Arlington National Cemetery, Va., are inadequate to the task.

The rules further an administration policy that has consistently aimed to restrict media coverage of dead troops, including photographing flag-draped coffins arriving home and funerals at Arlington.

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Under the new rules, remarks made during a ceremony must be made audible enough for reporters to hear from a distance — but determining that distance is left up to the same Arlington staff that has consistently stiff-armed the media in the past.

~snip~

Gina Gray accused her boss, the No. 2 official at the cemetery, of doing what media organizations — including this one — have long suspected: systematically keeping the media unreasonably distant from burials, even when families requested coverage. She also said he overstepped his bounds by trying to dissuade families from inviting media coverage.

Yet the new Army policy lets that same individual hold sway over how the policy is implemented. That’s baloney. The new policy is but a Band-Aid on a festering wound. The Army can, and should have, done better.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/community/opinion/army_editorial_anc_100608/%2e