When Chief Warrant Officer Lucky Mertes guided Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Katherine Skiba to a foxhole after an Iraqi missile attack in Kuwait, she called him “my hero” in a newspaper story and gave him a copy as thanks. Following the attack, Command Sgt. Maj. Donald Gregg addressed the troops while Skiba addressed Gregg.
“After I eased my way out, I approached Gregg with open arms, saying, ‘I need a hug,’ ” recalls Skiba, assigned to a United States Army unit for 50 days in 2003. “If it was unsoldierly, I didn’t know better – or didn’t care.”
Do embedded reporters get too close to their assigned units? Based on her recently released book, Sister in the Band of Brothers: Embedded With the 101st Airborne in Iraq, Skiba seems to be the poster child for conflicted embeds.
Alternately a war story, tell-all memoir and romance novel, Skiba’s book exemplifies the good, the bad and the ugly sides of the military’s controversial embedded media program.
On the bright side, when Skiba sticks to reporting, her detailed accounts of Army life have an endearing, relatable, fish-out-of-water appeal. If a key purpose of the ongoing embed program is to bring the war closer to home, Skiba was at times an effective, informative eyewitness.
“Benning was drenched in testosterone, saturated with machismo and crowded with men of action in crew cuts and combat boots, the home of 33,423 active-duty personnel, 6,639 Reservists and 11,940 military retirees. It was Boy Land, to be sure,” Skiba writes of Fort Benning. Of wearing a gas mask and chemical suit during a drill in the Kuwaiti desert, she says, “Having on all the gear in the heat was like wearing a scuba-diving mask and calf-length fur coat in a steam bath.”
The bad news is that her book offers no explanation of why embedded journalists have accepted millions of dollars worth of supplies and services from the military since 2003 without reimbursing taxpayers. Curiously, Skiba puts a dollar amount on almost everything she and the Journal Sentinelbought, but she never once discloses the value of military favors she accepted.
As Milwaukee Magazine revealed in 2003, the military gave Skiba and other embeds free boot camp training, gas masks, nuclear/biological/chemical suits, chartered flights to the Middle East and food, water, shelter, protection and transportation while staying with their assigned units in the war zone. “The military’s paying for these guys,” admitted Maj. Timothy Blair of the Pentagon.
Of course, most news organizations have ethics policies against accepting anything free from people they cover, including military personnel. By accepting so many freebies, embedded reporters have added fuel to long-smoldering criticism that their coverage is too friendly because they are too close to or beholden to the military.
How friendly did Skiba get? She declined an interview, yet her book speaks volumes.
Skiba: “Anybody in the Army who was enthusiastic about me tagging along automatically fell into the ‘friend’ camp.”
Skiba: “By now I was so hand-in-glove with these guys that they let me test-fire one of the machine guns over the desert.”
Skiba: “There were my battle-tested buddies: the captains and lieutenants and sergeants, the warrant officers, the specialists and privates.”
Skiba: “Sometimes it felt as though in the time it takes to snap a finger, I had a half-million brand-new friends, Army war fighters all.”
There are countless other references to “my first real friend,” “my new friend,” “my best buddy,” “my friend the flight surgeon,” “friend of mine,” “my buddy,” “my best friend,” “my boys,” “my old buddies,” “friends of mine,” “pals,” “my friends” and “my fast friend.”
Imagine if Skiba, a Washington bureau reporter for the Journal Sentinel, ever referred to Wisconsin Sens. Russ Fein-gold and Herb Kohl in such cozy terms.
It gets uglier. Skiba, who is married to former JS reporter Tom Vanden Brook, confesses to hugs, kisses, gift exchanges, crushes and flirtations with soldiers and officers.
“Tell me about your sex life,” Lt. Col. Robert Ruiz typed on Skiba’s computer. “It’ll be the most sex I’ll have in two months.” Skiba writes of the episode: “I was drawn to Ruiz, although what I did next was motivated as much out of charity as the desire to leave a last impression that I was certifiably hot stuff. On the computer I dashed off a few zingers from long ago and far away, grinning like a Cheshire cat and handing the laptop back to Ruiz.”
Then there’s “drop-dead-gorgeous” Capt. Carlos Goveo.
“I just tried to enjoy what there was: a cigarette, a conversation, a picture postcard sunset, maybe a glimpse of Goveo at night wearing only a T-shirt and running shorts,” she says. “I wasn’t the only admirer of the amiable Puerto Rican native with coffee-colored eyes; he was un hombre guapo.” Translation: a handsome man.
Is this journalism or a Jackie Collins novel? Perhaps American taxpayers should ask for their money back.
