Newly surfaced photos bring reputation damage
More damaging photographs of U.S. soliders surfaced last week, hot on the heels of the controversial Marine “SS” flag picture crisis. This time, the photos depicted soldiers in what they apparently thought were comedic poses with dead Afgan insurgents.
How did the public come to see these pictures at all, you ask? A quote, from a USA Today article by Tom Vanden Brook:
The photos, published in the Los Angeles Times, purportedly were taken in 2010 and show a soldier with the hand of a dead insurgent on his shoulder and another with soldiers holding the legs of a corpse.
The Times obtained them from an unnamed soldier who served with the 82nd Airborne Division in a province south of Kabul. Military officials had requested that the newspaper not publish the images, saying they would put troops at risk.
The soldier, the Times reported, gave the photos to the media because of concerns about “a breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops.”
We have long spoken about how the Internet has resulted in widespread public knowledge of situations that, before Internet-centered communications became so easy, would have remained unpublicized. What these soldiers did was horrific, but also completely typical for any location where there has been warfare for an extended period of time. The psychological impact of constant combat and the perpetual threat of instant death break some people, mentally. At the same time, I seriously doubt those soldiers received much training (and refresher training) to the effect that “whatever you do out there could end up posted on YouTube.” Maybe that would have made them think twice – and maybe not.
One thing the Army may want to consider is taking some tips from its brethren in the Navy, who are are making great use of social media to build good will with the public that can be banked for future crisis management.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. , an international crisis management consultancy, and author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]