Sailors and Marines to possibly get cash for their stories?

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Originally Posted by Dylan H

I believe there's a big difference in the way information is handled by the US and UK militaries. Over here there is a much stricter line prohibiting people discussing or informing the media about what would appear to be minor issues.

I suspect this is at least partly due to the experience in the UK of being targetted by the IRA. One of my friends who had a military father told me that an IRA sniper team was caught in Germany with a map of their base and rather chillingly the name, rank and role of every officer living on a particular street plus the number of children living there etc.

This attitude to secrecy has always been the case, and the army has been quite proactive in prosecuting anyone who steps outside the line which is why British military memoirs have been quite a rare occurrence (Bravo Two Zero excepted, and there was a big legal fight over that one too).

That they have suddenly decided to abandon that restraint over this one issue is highly suspect to me.

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It depends what the issue is. It was acceptable until recently for UK service personnel to write about UK service topics of a non-sensitive nature. Now, a new paranoia has set in, partly because the top brass are concerned about people doing this in work time, but also because they are desperate to create 'brands' out of the armed forces, and don't want anything from internal sources to be published without it representing the official PR line.

Dylan,

Information is in general, passed only to those with appropriate access and on a "need to know" basis. Obviously many things are not discussed at all, or made public information.

As suggested above by BDunnell, the major concern for the military branch is that individual statements made are not taken as representing the official view of the government or that branch of the armed service.

At the point the information becomes public and/or is declassified, it is not uncommon to have it spread through the media. I've seen on public TV here in the US interviews with British and other special forces about the Gulf War, and missions that were at the time no doubt highly classified and secretive. Those things which remain highly classified after the action are guarded and protected by security requirements, and in most cases the public will never know the reality of it for many, many years.

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Originally Posted by airshifter

As suggested above by BDunnell, the major concern for the military branch is that individual statements made are not taken as representing the official view of the government or that branch of the armed service.

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The trouble is in the UK that this had never to my knowledge caused a problem, yet people who think they know about PR have told the MoD that it is. It is, as I think I suggested before, ironic that it thought that selling these stories to the tabloids was acceptable in the light of this.