T2k and the Media
 

Sitting around, enjoying my vacation and thought I'd start a new thread QUIT YOUR CRYING!!!!! Sit back and enjoy!

Had this pop up at a recent FTF game...one of the players wanted his character to be an embed reporter from CNN, complete with his GI-issue camera man. Now, in true CNN-fashion, this player proceeded to annoy the ever-living $@$#@^#$#$^#$$*(!(%$ out of all of the other players, with his man-in-the-street interviews, and maneuvering to get the best shots of whatever combat that we were involved in. It was an intresting, if over-down treatment of a real-life situation, sooooooooooo...

Anybody else have this happen or any thoughts on how to game this one?

We've had a similar discussion in the past, about reporters in the T2K environment. I had a look through the thread map but couldn't find it. There is an interesting thread about the USO in T2K here: http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=1408 . Not exactly the same but a related concept I suppose.

I think there were NPC journalists in the Eternal Soldier #1 (there weren't anymore issues, were there?)

I can't remember any in T2k that I've seen, but I can remember one in a game of Supernatural that I sat in on. Two of the PCs were a camera-person and reporter, so they had fun pointing the camera at the police PC whenever he was about to do something action-y.

In the canon 2000, who is going to see any video? It's going to be print or nothing , I should think.

This particular ftf was set about a year into the fighting.

We actually had a T2K setting where the devastation wasn't so total as in the main games, and the Sino-Soviet war that kick started T2K had started in 2000 with a slow build-up that had limited nuclear exchanges in 2005... and while the exchanges really screwed things up, there was still some civilian infrastructure left so that there was some communication going back and forth. Thus Embedded Reporters were still something that the soldiers had to deal with (which would you rather have to deal with, wiping with leaves or having a bloody camera shoved in your face after combat and get ask questions about how it makes you feel when you kill people whose only crime is that they're socialists?... yeah, i'd rather have to wipe with leaves too).

You don't want to wipe with leaves -- you can get amoebic dysentery that way.

Yes... but then you wouldn't have some left-wing reporter bugging the bejuses out out you :D

Tsk,tsk, tsk gentlemen!

You are missing the point! Just think of introducing your (least) favorite left-wing journalist to an ole Army tradition...fragging!

You can even help raise funds for the unit by offering the privilege to the highest bidder!

Sick I know...but so are must CNN reporters!

I love you man. In a totally platonic way of course.... :D

Think they'd let us to something like that to some of the people on MSNBC?

Hey, I like MSNBC, with the exception of Ed Schultz. Something about that guy irritates me, and I can't place it.

Lee,

I use this in my game, which is set in Vancouver, BC. The local government is based on a university campus, which has restored limited TV broadcasts, including a nightly news programme. The players therefore have a (volunteer) CBC news team following them around in a van as they do their thing. They are not strictly embedded and at this point are familiar enough to fade into the woodwork most of the time but they're there if you look.

Many of my NPCs are based on real-life people, so the main female reporter is a composite based on two real (local) reporters/media types I know personally. I hope I've managed to avoid the usual cliched whipping-boy stereotypes about the media. The lead reporter is smokin' hot (it's part of the job), is professional and personable, and keeps her politics and opinions to herself. I imagine fantasies involving this NPC do not involve extrajudicial killing. :p

Certainly the media could be a pain in the ass but the PCs have made an effort to befriend and cultivate the lead reporter, and in return she respects their feelings (not to mention OPSEC) and doesn't get in their faces just to be annoying. More importantly, the team has gained a valuable channel for disseminating information to a wider community, and this has helped reconstruction efforts considerably. Of course, the community leadership is backing the players (so far) and thus exert influence on editorial decisions, but people do understand there still is a war on and so the mood is more of cooperation than provocation. As long as the PCs don't do anything wrong, they'll be portrayed as white knights. If they don't, things could change.

Tony

I think i'll let this pass.... commenting on how so many on what is suppose to be a 'news' channel whom like to compare me and my ideals to nazis & fascists, really just doesn't rub me the right way.

We had something similar to this in our V1 timeline... the public broadcasting network set up in various state universities were used for the Emergency Broadcasting System to keep locals up-to-date on what was going on around the world and country. But even through this the average American citizen didn't know of a milgov/civgov split... both sides did everything they could to keep the average citizen (and average grunt for that matter) in the dark on the upper echelons fighting with each other. And because of this you'd see milgov and civgov reps showing up and having to work together at times when it came to dealing with "New America" (in our campaign it had always been a group called 'The Union for a Progressive New America' without the overt racist crap, but with the different levels of citizenship like the classic New America).

Of course this caused "New America" to try and take over the university broadcasts the best they could!

It would be the right-wing journalists I'd be fragging.

In T2K, frag 'em all unless they're willing to tote a rifle.

That last one, I was thinking of the other night when I watched We Were Soldiers. The Sergeant Major drops an M16 and a pile of magazines in front of the reporter. The Reporter said, "I'm not a soldier." The Sergeant Major said, "Son, we're all soldiers tonight." The Reporter got his share of NVA and VC that night and the following morning.

OR provide some really kick ass non-combatant duties (medic/interpreter)... we had a character in one of our campaigns who did that. played a left-leaning (and very left-leaning at that) journalist who got stuck with our group. when asked what skills he had since he wouldn't touch a gun... he answered he knew how to cook, that he spoke six languages (German, Polish, Russian, French, Czech, Yiddish) that he had done a lot of work with EMTs and was assigned to work with the medic... and when it came time to meet new people, he was there to act as interpreter if no one else could do it. .

Paul,

Not an unreasonable expectation behind the "lines" in Poland, where everwhere is like the A-Shau valley! In other areas, it's not that simple. In a real declared war, do combat photographers carry weapons?

Tony

Marine Combat Correspondents carried during WW2, Korea and Vietnam.

In the Army (and I would guess the rest of the military), there is an MOS of Correspondent, and they carry weapons and cameras. A civilian reporter would not -- I don't know, it might even be a violation of one of the Geneva or Hague accords.

Yup. because their civilians and can be tried as illegal combatants/espionage agents.

The reporter is Joe Galloway and Hal Moore always considered him to be one of the very few reporters with a favorable view of the service man. Loved his columns!

Excellent book. Obviously due to constraints on the length of films the film couldn't pack all the detail in but I wasn't disappointed by it, I thought the film did the book justice.

I recommend that anyone with an interest in the Vietnam War who hasn't read We Were Soldiers Once, And Young should do so. Paul's mention of the film has me wanting to dig out my copy of the book and re-read it.

Some former coworkers were notably uncivil about telling Geraldo Rivera to find somewhere else to be when he and his retinue rolled up to their safehouse near Gardez. I believe there were suggestions to heads stuffed into empty sandbags and express flights to Guantanamo Bay.

Not as good as the guys during Katrina who had a running pool on who could hook up with Katie Couric when she showed up on scene, though that story suffered from no one succeeding, as far as I ever heard . . .

Targ, have you read 'We are soldiers still', about Hal Moore, Joe Galloway, Basil Plumley and others returning to the battlefield a couple of years ago and meeting, among others, the NVA commander. Fantastic read, very humbling and moving. Amazing how well so many of them got on with their estwhile enemies.

Nate,

In some situations, then, you could say that a given reporter PC in a war zone (like, Poland) should be a military correspondent due to conscription.

On the home front, I would imagine that a reporter (and crew) could be armed for self-defence under the law or with suitable police/military permission, not to mention having armed security.

Tony

Wouldn't the CBC based at the Emergency Government Headquarters Communication Bunker at Nanoose Bay, British Columbia. All the Emergency Government Headquarters Communication Bunkers had a CBC Emergency Broadcasting Studio and were to staffed by the CBC when activated.

CA,

My game is based in the Lower Mainland, not de eyelun, mon! There is quite a long commute from the 'Mo to Vancouver, eh? The CBC's Lower Mainland "volunteers" are based out of UBC (designated as a pre-war "disaster recovery node", by the way) because they settled there after the bombs fell.

The Nanoose Bay facility is not specifically mentioned in Legion McRae's adventures "The River" or "Red Maple", but there could be some kind of surviving facility there housing the CBC. It seems a little far from the emergency Provincial capital at Duncan, and may have been destroyed/damaged by nuclear/non-nuclear strikes, etc.. If there is a surviving facility at Nanoose Bay, it could be in the process of coming on-line as civilian government is re-established. That is, they might not be able to provide more than minor technical support for anyone on southern Vancouver Island but may be able to broadcast local and national news, still a crucial step in restoring order and normalcy.

Along the lines of what has been said earlier, the local news team has had considerable success talking to the civilians who tend to see soldiers as being the cause for the destruction and chaos. Further, bad guys like the Hells Angels and New America could take an interest in taking out a "soft target" like the government's pet news team to disrupt nascent government efforts.

Tony

It's always intresting to watch combat veterans return to the former battlefields, and happen to met veterans from the other side. There is surprisingly little hatred...they had both survived the worst that could be thrown at a person, and lived to tell the tale.

Very true. :) once the war had reached a point that the civilian reporters were no longer seen as Non-Combatants, it'd be like 'Monk' in the T:2013 story in the Stage 1 Rules they gave out... given a gun and taught how to use it.