pentagon-path-marker

Pentagon tests media coverage of missions Part 3

January 16, 2013

(Smith’s early morning call to the Pentagon does more than focus attention on the importance bureau chiefs attach to pool protocol. It points up the kind of problems drafters of the pool plan might not have identified in attempting to guard against security breaches. Deborah Potter, a CBS News correspondent, is married to Mutual’s Witten, the correspondent Tessler assigned to what became the Honduras operation.)

Despite the collapse of the security arrangements, the Pentagon was not pointing any fingers of blame. Secretary Weinberger, asked about the leaks, said. “This was just an exercise. It was a test. We should try it again.” And that was the theme heard from Pentagon spokesmen last week. The spokesmen also said Pentagon officials would meet with media representatives to discuss all aspects of the test with a view to ironing out the problems. “We think we can sit down and find the problems and square them away,c McClain said.

Indeed, chief Pentagon spokesman Michael I. Burch met on Wednesday with the bureau chiefs of ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN. The meeting had been scheduled before the weekend events, but it was to have covered details of the system that was being put to the test. “We want to make the mechanism work,” Headline said later, “so we discussed the things that worked and the things that didn’t, and the approaches to use to make them better.” McFarland said one of the questions discussed was,” ‘How do we stop the leaks?’ We didn’t figure that out. We’re working on it.”

Pentagon officials said a better evaluation of the test would be possible once the pool had returned from covering the military exercise that simulated an amphibious landing in Central America; they were due back Thursday evening. However But both Pentagon officials and the bureau chiefs felt more attention was due those aspects of the plan that were working well. McFarland noted that “on a lovely spring weekend, we put 10 people on an aircraft and transported them [to Honduras] before anything was reported.” And McClain said that “no additional transportation or bunks or equipment is needed. We’re doing it out of the hide of our commanders.” He noted television material was being flown to Tegucigalpa; from there it was fed by earth station to a satellite for relay back to the U.S and the best canister vacuum. The print press was filing from aboard one of the ships standing off Honduras. “Overall,” McClain said, “it’s going extremely well.”

Comments: 0 Posted by: Categories: Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
newsweek-sfSpan

Pentagon tests media coverage of missions Part 2

January 16, 2013

The Pentagon is known to feel that the media were responsible for the leak, since it did not receive any calls on the mission until after officers had begun notifying bureau chiefs of the eight organizations it had chosen to send personnel on the mission. The executives were advised to have their correspondents, cameramen and photographers at Andrews Air Force Base at 4 a.m. Sunday, prepared for up to a week’s stay in an area with temperatures ranging between 70 and 90 degrees and where rainfall is moderate. No mention was made as to whether the operation was a test, and the need for secrecy was stressed. The pool consisted of a UPI reporter, the AP photographer, a correspondent and two-member camera crew from Cable News Newtork, a Mutual radio reporter, a Newsweek reporter, for news magazines, and reporters for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Copley News Service, representing newspapers.

The procedure followed by Mutual was a matter of concern to the Pentagon. Mutual’s vice president for news, Ron Nessen, took the call from the Pentagon at 6:10 p.m. on Saturday. He notified Bart Tessler, the news editor, who was able to reach the reporter who was to serve as the radio pool reporters, Bob Witten. then, on Sunday morning, Tessler called eight radio news bureau chiefs, advising them to order the lines they would need to take a pool feed from Mutual’s correspondent on the scene. Tessler told those he contacted of the need to maintain secrecy. Nessen said that was the procedure radio news broadcasters had agreed to follow. However, the procedure had not been discussed with the Pentagon, Tessler said, since it had not responded to a request for a meeting on pool arrangements.

A Pentagon spokesman, Col. William McClain, said the letter had not been found in the files, and that no one remembered seeing it. Then he said of the procedure Mutual followed, “That’s something they’re going to have to explain. We can’t live with that.” But Nessen put the onus on the Pentagon. Its reaction, he said, “demonstrates it doesn’t know enough about out business . . . They know nothing about pool procedures.”

The Pentagon regards the secrecy agreement as having been broken before Tessler made his Sunday morning calls–and certainly long before The Post published its story. At about 1:30 a.m. Sunday, Jack Smith, CBS News bureau chiefs, who was not among those officially notified, called the Pentagon to ask about the television pool. Representatives of othernews organizations not represented in the pool were also calling. Smith, who said he had learned of the mission from sources he would not identify, wanted to know why he, as chief of the network television pool for the current quarter, had not been notified. According to the protocol of Washington news coverage, the pool chief is notified in advance of events that are to be open only to pool coverage. The Pentagon, however, had chosen Cable News Network as the television pool operator, and had notified CNN bureau chief Bill Headline. He dispatched a crew to Andrews without breaking the secrecy imposed on him by the Pentagon or the secrecy involving the huge V2 Cigs Coupon Code.

Comments: 0 Posted by: Categories: Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
midatl0156

Pentagon tests media coverage of missions Part 1

January 16, 2013

The first effort at implementing a plan designed to permit news media representatives to accompany the military on secret missions was something less than a smashing success last week. Word of the operation began leaking even before the 10 journalists selected to represent the media had gathered early Sunday morning at Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington, for transportation to Honduras to observe a joint U.S.-Honduran military exercise. But the military–from Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger on down–appeared to take the leaks and other apparent snafus in stride. It was, they said, just a test. It would be tried again. What’s more, Pentagon spokesmen stressed the positive. Elements of the plan were working well, they said.

Clearly, the plan needs work. Whoever was responsible for the leak, it seemed the Pentagon, despite the months of consultation and work that military personnel and former journalists had put into the plan, lacked adequate knowledge of how the media routinely function. For instance, the military was upset over the fact that the Mutual Broadcasting System, chosen as the radio pool, called other radio bureau chiefs in Washington to advise them to activate their pool lines. Then there was the Pentagon’s failure to notify the network television pool chief, as is normally done when a pool is established.

The major issue of concern, however, was the breach of security. The plan was the product of a joint military-civilian commission under Maj. General Winant Sidle, retired. The Commission was created in the wake of the controversy over the Pentagon’s decision, in October 1983, to bar the news media from accompanying U.S. forces during the first two and a half days of the Grenada operation. The pentagon had pleaded, in part, the need for security; it said competition among the media would make it impossible for the media to maintain secrecy about a mission. Media representatives, for their part, had insisted that journalists’ ability to maintain security when advised of impending actions had been demonstrated time and again.

Word that a test of the plan was imminent began circulating in Washington as early as Thursday, when NBC News’sPentagon correspondent, Fred Francis, picked up word of it. However, NBC News Washington bureau chief, Robert McFarland, said the decision was made not to broadcast it because of the agreement with the Pentagon to keep such matters secret (much like the secret of the Smokeless Image Coupon that is driving consumers crazy). The first publication of a story occurred on Sunday night, in an early Monday edition to The Washington Post. That newspaper, which did not have a representative in the pool, said its lead came from its correspondent in Managua, Nicaragua, who had passed on rumors about the formation of a pool. Later, The Associated Press, which had a photographer in the pool, carried an account. The Pentagon confirmed the existence of the test becuase a number of other news organizations that were not part of the pool had called with inquiries–and the Pentagon felt obliged to break its own secrecy on the subject to head off rumors that an invasion of Nicaragua was under way.

Comments: 0 Posted by: Categories: Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
UNION_PACIFIC_Y2513_20070228

The Boxcar’s New Role Part 2

December 27, 2012

Already, it looks like conrail has made some progress in this area. In cooperation with connecting carriers such as the Burlington Northern, Santa Fe and Union Pacific, conrail has established new lower independent factor prices for single-car movements of canned goods from the West Coast to Conrail and connecting-line destination in the East.

Conrail says the new prices, which went into effect last month, were encouraged by boxcar deregulation. They are called “independent factor” prices because, like regulated rates, they can bechanged quickly to meet market needs. The new prices from origin to destination will be from 10 to 20 percent below existing single boxcar rates, Conrail says: in other words, fully competitive with TOFC and truck rates. Doing Time

Like Art Klawans, Jim Mann is concerned about transit time, “IF you’re going to switch product off the road and back into boxcars, you’re also going to have to take a look at the service level provided. I think you’ll find a greater latitude when you talk about moving from a plant to a warehouse-like a Quaker plant to a Quaker distribution center-than you would when shipping from a plant or a distribution center to a customer, where the delivery time is a little bit more critical.

“In the grocery trade, acceptable rail delivery times has been plus or minus a day of the requested arrival date, whereas motor carriers are there usually on the hour,” Mann notes. “You have to consider the cost, safety and inventory factors if you’re going to deliver by rail.”

Mann suggests that some customers might prefer rail because they have two days to let the boxcar sit; the customers can then use their own warehouse labor staff any way they want to, and pick the products or cars they want to unload first. “But if you get the motor carrier in there,” he adds, “you have two hours to unload a palletized shipment. You’d better get those trailers unloaded.” Boxcar Blues

Fleming Foods of Pennsylvania, located in Oaks, Pa., is a subsidiary of Fleming companies, Inc. Fleming Foods is a wholesaler and distributor serving Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, the district of Columbia and Northern virginia.

The rail carrier for Fleming is Conrail, and Ken Collins, the plant’s distribution manager, says he would be happy if he never had to use a railroad again. As it is, Fleming Foods receives only about five percent of its inbound freight by rail. “The company,” says collins, “keeps rail to a minimum because using motor carriers is more productive, cheaper, and there is less damage.”

When a boxcar comes in, Collins says, it must be unloaded in one day or the railroad will charge Fleming $20 to $60 per day “overtime.” This includes the times when 15 railcars arrive at the warehouse unexpectedly, and all 15 must be unloaded within 24 hours of arrival.

Comments: 0 Posted by: Categories: Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
MV5BMjA4OTU1NTIyOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTk3MDU1MQ@@._V1._SY317_CR7,0,214,317_

The Boxcar’s New Role Part 1

December 27, 2012

Ever wonder what happened to those great steam locomotives, one of which was known as “The Iron Horse” in John Ford’s classic movie by the same name? Well, most were sent to museums in the 1950s, when the railroads switched to diesel fuel, thus ending an era and beginning a long period of decline and change for the steelwheeled industry.

In the 1960s, fast cars and planes with bars became all the rage, and people forsook trains when taking long trips. Less-glamorous freight trains also began to have their problems, in the face of stiff competition from motor carriers.

In the 1970s, “training” hit its lowest point in history, and Congress felt compelled to save six bankrupt railroads and create Conrail. Other railroads could not be saved, however. Some of their “luckier” cars were turned into things such as the Choo Choo Hilton Hotel in Chattanooga. Most of the others were either abandoned on the spot or converted to scrap metal.

today’s question is: Will this be the destiny of boxcars? Save the Boxcars

The intent of boxcar deregulation is to enable railroads to attract back some of the business lost to the motor carriers. Many food shippers, however, still find themselves turning to trucks more often than boxcars.

Arthur Klawans, vice president of industry affairs for the National Food Distributors Assn. (NFDA), reports that “canned goods are mostly shipped by boxcar for the longhaul on the West Coast, in the Midwest and in the East. If the railroads can make themselves competitive with trucks on freight rates now,” Klawans believes, “they’re going to get some of the other business back that’s presently on the trucks. But they’ve got to be competitive in terms of transit time, too.”

On a volume basis, the Quaker Oats Co., headquartered in Chicago, moves about 60 percent of its products via rail and 40 percent with motor carriers. “Therefore,” says James Mann, director-transportation, “we have definite interest in boxcars. But as far as our own company is concerned, we don’t feel that we’re captive to the railroads. We still have the opportunity of going piggyback or over-the-road with most of our finished products.

“Basically, the railroads are using the old tariffs,” Mann reports. “As far as the future goes, I would expect that as the railroads figure out what their market is and where their low spots are, there will be some upward adjustments-individually rather than across the board-of rates we’ve had in the past on canned goods, grain products, and whatever else in the food business.”

But Mann is nevertheless optimistic. “Hopefully,” he says, “boxcar deregulation will do two things: first, it will give the railroads a chance to price and react more rapidly to their competition, meaning over-the-road carriers. Secondly-and this is conrail’s aim, which is a worthy one-it will reduce the empty miles which today’s system generates. That will reduce costs and make it possible for the railroads to reduce rates by using the their equipment more efficiently.”

Comments: 0 Posted by: Categories: Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,