Reporters on Galton

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:If the Editor-in-Chief of their outfit is anything like Perry White of the Daily Planet, then those reporters would be fired. Then sued. They'd never work in the business again. Not even in the mailroom. Not even as gofers. The fact that they will then sue Honor will make for good traction and fuel the fire of her antagonistic enemies.

Whatever the rules are for reporters, they will be known to everyone (reporters and editors alike) before anyone is allowed onboard. If anyone objects, then they are not invited. There will be no temper tantrums nor farcical firings or law suits.

I agree.

Additionally, the reporters could have given access to essentially the same information (recordings of communication, tactical summaries etc.). Each had better access to the flag officers of the ship he/she was seated on. And there could be "press conferences" where the whole leadership answers questions of all accompanying reporters.

Ah! I see the disconnect.

All of you would be absolutely correct, if all else were equal. But it's not. All else is not equal.

Honor did not invite the reporter(s) there in their usual capacity … to report. Well, they were there to report as an added benefit. But reporting was not to be their main function on this trip.

Their main function on this trip was to be witnesses.

There is a big difference between a reporter and a witness.

Remember when you were a kid and you needed your best friend to be a witness to what happened because you've got to face the courts when you got home? Your parents!

“Did you see? Did you see? Did you see how that spaceship swooped down out of the sky and stole my backpack with my homework? Did you see Wally? Dad's never going to believe me. And did you see how he… he … shot a ray beam out of his gun!?”

If your witness was not there right beside you, they cannot verify the unbelievable. They can report. On their POV. But you need someone to see your POV. Or what good are they to you and why do you have them there?

You gotta ask yourself. Why were those reporter(s) there? Honor hates reporters. Reporters hate her! She doesn't want or need that headache. Hell, it’d be a hassle just to ensure their safety. Her armsmen hates them too. They might kill one of them.

All of you do know what reporters do don't you? They report! They feret out the truth. They'll dislodge their jaws to swallow a manuscript. Their job is to get the news. Get the scoop. Period. A female reporter might smuggle secrets out by hiding them inside her body. Aboard Imperator, they might end up into a sticky situation trying to get the scoop.

Do all of you really believe that Honor or any navy would get in a habit of ferrying reporters along with them? So that they can see everything and twist it all around!?

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:I don't recall mention of reporters tagging along with Honor when she visited the SOL System. Or when the SLN invaded the MBS. Or when White Haven was making a beeline to Nouveau Paris, yada yada yada. Probably because ships' logs are usually referred to in those instances when somewhat detailed information is needed. Again, Galton, and Audrey, was a special case.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

There were already many thousands of reporters (foreign and domestic) in Haven, Manticore and the Sol System; whereas Galton was the special case of a hidden system being forced into the light of Galactic exposure. So reporters needed to be supplied.

PS: When did White Haven make "a beeline to Nouveau Paris"?

Really tlb? And where were those thousands of reporters? Well, to be fair to your point, if some of them were outside on the balcony with a stevedore looking up, or if some of them were lying in the grass with a date, they might be able to report on the pinpricks of light.

penny wrote:Ah! I see the disconnect.

All of you would be absolutely correct, if all else were equal. But it's not. All else is not equal.

Honor did not invite the reporter(s) there in their usual capacity … to report. Well, they were there to report as an added benefit. But reporting was not to be their main function on this trip.

Their main function on this trip was to be witnesses.

There is a big difference between a reporter and a witness.

An opinion columnist can write about something without witnessing anything germane, but a reporter needs to have seen something to serve as the basis for a report.

I am not sure how we are wrong, when you were the one that was saying reporters would NEVER be brought along (except for Audrey whom you must not have viewed as a reporter). I do not agree that there is a huge difference between reporter and witness: the main distinction is that after witnessing something, a reporter has to write up a good description and get it published. That is exactly what the Grand Alliance wants to happen about the events at Galton. The people are there to witness AND report.

penny wrote:Their main function on this trip was to be witnesses.

There is a big difference between a reporter and a witness.

I don't think that's correct. I don't think their purpose was to be a witness. The vast majority of reporters whom the GF took along would have been biased towards the GF anyway, so their reporting and opinion pieces would have that bias too. That's something that would set Audrey apart, though: she wouldn't have this bias.

But if what you need are witnesses, there are thousands of spacers and officers who had direct telemetry access to what was going on who can testify, plus all the personnel in all the flag bridges who would equally have received Honor's transmissions. I don't see why they would be less trustworthy than reporters hailing from the GA member systems. The fact that you have a lot of them would put to rest any accusation of fabrication, because the lifetime of a lie is inversely proportional to the number of people in on the secret.

If you tried to dupe all those people, then there's no reason to believe you couldn't dupe the reporters too, whether they were on the flag bridge or not. But then you have the problem of hiding the secret that they were duped and the moon landing was faked. I mean, that the Galtonians admitted to being the Alignment and fired first.

Remember when you were a kid and you needed your best friend to be a witness to what happened because you've got to face the courts when you got home? Your parents!

You didn't need that when there were lots of other people nearby who could vouch for this version of events.

If your witness was not there right beside you, they cannot verify the unbelievable. They can report. On their POV. But you need someone to see your POV. Or what good are they to you and why do you have them there?

No, they did not need to be right next. There are other places where adults could supervise and make a decent account of events without having to know the very important secrets the kids were sharing among themselves.

You gotta ask yourself. Why were those reporter(s) there? Honor hates reporters. Reporters hate her! She doesn't want or need that headache. Hell, it’d be a hassle just to ensure their safety. Her armsmen hates them too. They might kill one of them.

You're generalising. Honor doesn't hate reporters as a category. She and her armsmen hate the nosy ones who keep intruding in her personal life and make baseless accusations. Especially the tabloids.

Her discussions with Audrey were very pleasant, with no hint of disdain to Audrey's profession.

However, I agree she doesn't need the headache of having them in the flag bridge or following her around at all times.

All of you do know what reporters do don't you? They report! They feret out the truth. They'll dislodge their jaws to swallow a manuscript. Their job is to get the news. Get the scoop. Period. A female reporter might smuggle secrets out by hiding them inside her body. Aboard Imperator, they might end up into a sticky situation trying to get the scoop.

Which is exactly why they will all be granted exactly the same access, no more and no less, to what really matters. Since there's no way to cram a couple hundred reporters aboard Imperator's flag bridge, they'd have to be elsewhere and at best viewing through a screen. That's even assuming they're viewing it live.

Either way, you can't get incontrovertible eyewitnesses because a witness cannot see what's outside of the hull, much less 200 million km downrange. They are relying on the information shown to them on their screens for almost everything. If the GA wanted to fake the operation, they could do so with witnesses in the flag bridge anyway, so I don't see the point in allowing them there.

Of course reporters want to be there. Of course their editors want them to be there. That doesn't mean they can get on the flag bridge without permission and I don't see the military giving that permission.

Do all of you really believe that Honor or any navy would get in a habit of ferrying reporters along with them? So that they can see everything and twist it all around!?

Yes. I do expect there are embedded journalists in the fleet or fleet train of all major expeditions.

And those whom the military can show have twisted the story with baseless conclusions will not get invited again. And those who violate the embargo or attempt to compromise the OpSec will be prosecuted under the National Secrets Act.

To the extent that it's desirable to have independent witnesses at Galton the thing they need to witness isn't the battle, and not really even the communications before hand.

What they need to witness is that this system exists, these are the things its citizens are saying, this is what was found in its records (both public records and captured military records), here's what their captured officers and spacers are saying. All of which is expected to confirm what the GA has been saying about this (evil) Mesan Alignment.

And the reporters need live observation of the battle from flag bridge for exactly zero of that.

Jonathan_S wrote:What they need to witness is that this system exists, these are the things its citizens are saying, this is what was found in its records (both public records and captured military records), here's what their captured officers and spacers are saying. All of which is expected to confirm what the GA has been saying about this (evil) Mesan Alignment.

And the reporters need live observation of the battle from flag bridge for exactly zero of that.

The GA is going to show that this system had three classes of SD(P)s, something that no one outside of the Haven Sector had at this time and the SLN would have moved entire planets to get their hands on. It will show that this system had Cataphracts and Hastas, something that was either stolen from the League and Technodyne with deep infiltration or given to them -- and, in fact, that is both cases, for each one of those. Showing that this is the system that originally developed the missile that the SLN was using against the GA and also during the Operation Buccaneers against neutral and even League systems.

It will show the majority of the population is made up of genetic slaves, which in turn means it is definitely deeply involved with the now-defunct Manpower, Inc.

And of course, the records will show they made the weapons that were used during the Yawata Strike. So even if they aren't so (and I hope the GA will be able to deduce they aren't), this system was a willing accomplices of that atrocity.

It's been fascinating to read all about how reporters were and were not invited, where they could go or not go and everything else around this. Most of you have waded deep into the weeds debating about, in my opinion, niggling little details that doesn't really matter and because of that lost the bigger picture.

It's very simple, just because it's not explicitly stated in textev, in all likelihood there have been reporters on many warships on active duty but from a story telling pov that isn't really interesting to write about unless it specifically has to do with carrying the story forward or adding flavor. In a lot of naval operations there wouldn't haven been any reporters present due to operational security because who wants to read about a reporter tagging a long a task force doing mundane navy things, but when we have special operations like the raid on Galton which was intended to show the larger galaxy that what the GA and Manticore have been telling everyone about the MAlign is true it would be particularly stupid not to include any reporters.

When it comes to what reporters are allowed to access and see during an active operation, that is entirely dictated by operational security as I mentioned earlier. From a practical standpoint, having reporters on the flag bridge makes sense because you don't want them on the battle bridge. When reporters are present at the flag bridge, flag officers can restrict what information is displayed if such measures seems prudent, and when that isn't enough they will asked to leave.

This isn't rocket science because we can extrapolate from how things are done in the real world and apply it to Honorverse which makes this whole discussion about reporters a tad stupid in my opinion, especially when the discussion wanders deep into the weeds about totally irrelevant details that is of no real importance when someone is telling a story. Any war correspondent knows that when they are in a active war-zone they may well die, any arguments whether they should be allowed there or not is kind of moot because of that.

So having reporters tagging along on an operation that is of immense "propaganda" value for the GA is kind of a no brainer regardless who the reporters are because that doesn't matter unless the reporter in question plays a role in the unfolding story.

Joat42 wrote:It's been fascinating to read all about how reporters were and were not invited, where they could go or not go and everything else around this. Most of you have waded deep into the weeds debating about, in my opinion, niggling little details that doesn't really matter and because of that lost the bigger picture.

Isn't wading into the weeds why the forum is here? As you say, whether a niggling detail is important is a matter of opinion. Only what the author and his collaborators write comprises the big picture.

tlb wrote:

Joat42 wrote:It's been fascinating to read all about how reporters were and were not invited, where they could go or not go and everything else around this. Most of you have waded deep into the weeds debating about, in my opinion, niggling little details that doesn't really matter and because of that lost the bigger picture.

Isn't wading into the weeds why the forum is here? As you say, whether a niggling detail is important is a matter of opinion. Only what the author and his collaborators write comprises the big picture.

There's nothing wrong in that, but when an "important detail" being discussed takes on dimensions that don't reflect either reality or textev it isn't a discussion about Honorverse any longer even though it's being shoehorned into that context.

Consider the original question posed by markusschaber and why the discussion didn't end when it was answered.