Vet/reporter offers OU students tips on covering the military

                By Jim Phillips             

                An Ohio University alum and military veteran on Tuesday gave a class of OU journalism students some colorful pointers on how to handle stories involving the armed forces.

                Marty Kufus, who earned a 1991 masters in journalism from OU and served six years of active duty in the U.S. Army, warned students in associate professor Sandra Haggerty's specialized reporting class that it's easy for non-veterans to make foolish mistakes in covering the military.

                He argued that many reporters, even from supposedly elite publications, are unwilling "to do even basic research" to learn about military procedures and terminology, and often end up hurting their credibility with "blatantly stupid" factual errors on military topics.

                In a talk salted liberally with plain talking and soldierly obscenity, Kufus stressed that the U.S. military is in many ways a completely different world from that of the U.S. civilian, and one that's difficult to fathom for those who've never been in uniform. 

                "It isn't like civilian life," he insisted. "As long as -soldiers- wear that uniform, they cannot be like us."

                For example, Kufus said, the notion of civil liberties, so dear to those in civil society, has little place in the armed forces.

                When he joined the service, Kufus said, "I effectively gave up some of the freedoms otherwise guaranteed to Americans."

                These included the right to free speech -- "I was often told to shut up, and I did," Kufus recalled. 

                Likewise, had he ever written a letter to a newspaper critical of the military, or revealing sensitive information, "there would  have been hell to pay -- forget about the First Amendment."

                On the question of gays in the military, Kufus argued that non-military citizens can't understand the issue unless they realize that soldiers and sailors are often crammed into very tight quarters with many of their comrades.

                "Privacy doesn't exist on a military base or a ship," he said. "You don't have a choice of who you're living with or under what conditions... Think about that when somebody hits you with the alternative lifestyle advocacy. It's not homophobia."

                Yet another way in which he surrendered civil liberties in the service, Kufus recalled, included submission to random drug testing. "I peed in a little bottle at least once a year, without advance notice," he said.

                Given the gulf that separates military personnel from the rest of the population, Kufus said, reporters should understand that the armed services aren't terribly fond of journalists for the most part.

                This perception isn't mitigated, he added, when reporters cover military stories clumsily and without doing their homework.

                As an example, Kufus cited the Persian Gulf War, in which a torrent of reporters descended on the region in the months before open hostilities began. Military officers referred to this as "the invasion of the food editors," Kufus recalled a reference to the fact that many of the correspondents "obviously had never covered military subjects before," and were only there because their hometown papers could spare them.

                Kufus also offered a dire warning to inexperienced reporters about what he called a growing problem in the United States -- people who falsely claim to be combat veterans, and who have in more than one instance deceived journalists about their military records.

                "This is a phenomenon in this country, and it's building," he said. "The phenomenon of the phony vet, the phony hero... It pisses the hell out of me, and I'm not even a combat veteran."

                Kufus noted that "just because somebody comes along wearing a T-shirt that says 'Army Special Forces' or 'Navy Seals'... doesn't mean they've been there, done that."

                He urged reporters to ask all purported veterans to produce documentation, such as their discharge papers, to back up their claims.

                Currently editor of the Wilson County News in Floresville, Texas, Kufus is also listed as a contributing editor to Soldier of Fortune magazine.

                His military service includes training as an Army Ranger, and service as a Russian linguist with military intelligence in Germany.