| Typically,
DOD public affairs professionals are not included in operations planning
or are an afterthought. Most public affairs offices are not notified
of a crisis until alerted by the media nor until the military is in a reactionary
stage, creating a premise that public affairs officers are merely reactive
tools. Although the military was practicing crisis management planning
long before businesses found it useful, public affairs offices have rarely
been involved in the planning. (Littlejohn, 1983). Experts agree
crisis communication planning is important if an organization is to successfully
handle a crisis (Fink, 1986). Because there are many opportunities
for crisis, military public affairs officers should be included in operations
planning. Furthermore, a public affairs plan should be implemented
and adhered to by the command leadership. For the purposes of this
study, public affairs officers are defined as the military leadership within
a public affairs office. We contend that military public affairs
officers would be best utilized if they were involved in all aspects of
planning an operation. As it stands, many public affairs officers
are still not involved in any plans and are viewed as a reactive tool.
A useful example is the experience of a U.S. Marine Corps public affairs
office deployed to provide support of an operation.
Case
Study: Marine Corps in Turkey
A Marine
Corps public affairs team was deployed to the Republic of Turkey to provide
coverage and support for the Second Marine Expeditionary Forces’ (II MEF)
operations during a Maritime Pre-positioning Force offload exercise.
The role of the Marine PAO’s and combat correspondents was to: a) Provide
internal coverage of important events for several print medias to include
their base paper, Marines Magazine, Stars and Stripes, and Leatherneck
Magazine; b) to escort all Turkish and foreign media who want to interview
or photograph Marine units; c) to update the Marine Corps homepage with
photos and stories of the operation; d) work in close coordination with
and provide support to the Commander of Land Forces for the Southern European
Theatre -Allied Press Information Center (APIC); e) generate video imagery
from the exercise and interview troops and commanders; and f) provide daily
brief to the II MEF Commander to include translated articles done by host
nation media publics on the exercise.  |
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Introduction
Case Study 2
Literature
Review
Method
Discussion
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