In the course of a 6,800-word “State of the Force” speech, the Secretary of Defense made nine references to “media” (all negative), along with three to “press” and two to “news” (also all negative). Iran got seven total mentions (concentrated into two paragraphs and one callback), while the names “Russia”, “North Korea”, and “China” went entirely unspoken.
■ There’s a principle in journalism that says a reporter should never “bury the lead” (or, in the news parlance perhaps leftover from when type was composed from lead castings, “bury the lede“). If a fact or element of context is important, it should lead the storytelling and come first.
■ About 4,400 words into the speech, it’s noted that “Every major military installation in America is going to generate its own power”, and that “every installation on American soil” will be hardened “against cyber intrusion, sabotage, and drones”. Those announcements are big and timely, if true, with consequences for the communities surrounding those bases -- especially considering that risks and defensive perimeters for those domains can’t just start at the fence line surrounding a base. Domestic military installations are, by necessity, integrated with the rest of the surrounding community.
■ Either the lead got buried about 65% of the way down the text, or the real lead wasn’t about serious responses to real and growing challenges to national security. It’s one thing to provoke fights with domestic media. It’s quite a different one to soberly and forthrightly illuminate the challenges posed by real adversaries in the world we actually inhabit.