NOT AFRAID OF TROUBLE: "I got in massive amounts of trouble because I was always trying to tell the truth," Marshall Thompson tells a USU crowd. His Media & Society Lecture was sponsored by the department of journalism and communication. / Photo by Gideon Oakes

• Thompson recalls his long and winding road to standing up for truth and peace

By Dave Archer

January 31, 2007 | Truth in war reporting, or the lack thereof, was the central theme of Army Reserve Sgt. Marshall Thompson's lecture Tuesday at the Eccles Conference Center.

The 2003 Utah State graduate and soldier/journalist spent a year in Iraq covering the war for the military and saw firsthand how officials attempted to regulate what information was passed to the American public through the media.

According to Thompson, there is a general feeling that the military holds an attitude of "if journalists come to Iraq, they're going to write what we tell them to."

Thompson completely opposes that sentiment.

"I've always seen myself as being completely biased . . . toward the truth," Thompson said. "I got in massive amounts of trouble because I was always trying to tell the truth."

Unfortunately, the truth is something that Thompson feels is often distorted or hidden before it can reach the eyes and ears of the American public. Power trips, cover-ups, policy regulations and a general contempt for the media are just some of the rationales Thompson listed for military censorship of the media.

"You show up with a camera, and a lot of soldiers are predisposed to be mad at you,"? he said. "(Censorship) happens quite a bit in combat zones."

There are instances, however, where Thompson feels that military censorship is necessary. Preserving the security of soldiers and others, for example, should outweigh the rights of the press.

"Would you rather see someone die, or would you rather know the truth?"?Thompson asked.

Yet too often Thompson saw military officials abuse that censorship power, using security as an excuse.

He related one instance where a high-ranking officer called him a "murderer" for having printed a photo that showed the face of an Iraqi soldier. The soldier was apparently killed by rebels who opposed the army after his identity was revealed through the photo. Thompson and his companions decided that they would no longer show the faces of Iraqi soldiers to protect their identities.

However, after Thompson further investigated the matter, he learned the soldier never appeared in the newspaper that Thompson worked for, nor in any other publications around the area. In his opinion, the officer merely sought an excuse to censor media coverage.

"Too often in a combat zone, security is used to censor when it actually isn't a security issue," Thompson said.

Cover-ups of events that would be "embarrassing" to either the military or U.S. allies are also a regular occurrence. He noted the Haditha massacre in 2005, where a number of Iraqi civilians, including women and children, were killed by Marines in retaliation for an insurgent attack earlier that day.

"This was covered up for months because nobody wanted to get in trouble for it," Thompson said.

He also noted an instance where soldiers who were performing a mortar exercise targeted a house and accidentally fired a live mortar shell, destroying the house completely. No investigation was done, and it was unknown whether civilians had died in the accident, he said.

"Just imagine what you are not being told, what will never surface," he said.

While understanding the need for discretion when reporting war time events, Marshall says that he is always in favor of the truth.

"I hope I've got you thinking about the role of censorship and when it's necessary and when it's not,"??he told audience members. "I would hope that we would err on the side of truth, because truth is the only hope for countries like Iraq and countries like our own."

Marshall Thompson shows an election-day slide from his yearlong service in Iraq. It was not widely reported that Iraqi soldiers guarding the polls, seen in the background, could not vote. / Photo by Gideon Oakes

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