Kristen Griest is the first female infantry officer

Bit confusing to follow, but regardless this discussion might not have occurred if the Army or Ranger Training Brigade Public Affairs Office did their job - getting ahead of the story. Perhaps PAOs did a good job keeping the media happy, but I think they forgot the audience outside the media.

It's my Constitutionally protected right to give my opinions (notice I didn't say facts).
 
Bit confusing to follow, but regardless this discussion might not have occurred if the Army or Ranger Training Brigade Public Affairs Office did their job - getting ahead of the story. Perhaps PAOs did a good job keeping the media happy, but I think they forgot the audience outside the media.

It's my Constitutionally protected right to give my opinions (notice I didn't say facts).

I'm also a little confused.... what did the public affairs office do wrong? How'd they get ahead of the story?
 
I'm also a little confused.... what did the public affairs office do wrong? How'd they get ahead of the story?

I did not use the word "wrong." Typically, the media has no clue about the military. So with the Ranger school story, my personal opinion is that the PAO 0r whoever is representing the RTB could have provide selected information to explain away the perception how female Ranger students were given more chances than male students. I am not a PAO and I didn't stay at a Holiday Express. My opinion, something along the line of "in the past when all students were male, Ranger School cadre had some discretion to allow selected Rangers students to stay in the course after not meeting the standards to move on to the next phase. It's only fair to give opportunities for these female Ranger students to keep on trying, when they are showing the intesternial fortitude to not quit."
 
I did not use the word "wrong." Typically, the media has no clue about the military. So with the Ranger school story, my personal opinion is that the PAO 0r whoever is representing the RTB could have provide selected information to explain away the perception how female Ranger students were given more chances than male students. I am not a PAO and I didn't stay at a Holiday Express. My opinion, something along the line of "in the past when all students were male, Ranger School cadre had some discretion to allow selected Rangers students to stay in the course after not meeting the standards to move on to the next phase. It's only fair to give opportunities for these female Ranger students to keep on trying, when they are showing the intesternial fortitude to not quit."

Oh ok.

I'll preface this with "I have no idea what happened here" for this story.

In my experience a story forms in one of two ways: 1. you go to a reporter as a PAO and pitch a story (or shoot out a press release or 2. The reporter comes to you with a story to comment on.

When I say "comes to you with a story" I don't mean you know exactly what that story is.

And then you, as the PAO, provide the information you can, deal with both internal and external realities and politics.

Could they have provided an explanation? Sure. Were they asked? Probably not (but even if they did provide something, a reporter can decide to exclude it).

Or maybe internal politics played into it. Perhaps some non-PAO O-6 didn't want his program to look less tough than it is... Or the opposite. Maybe they didn't want to even go there.

Or maybe they didn't provide much assistance, knowing the piece would be negative, so the reporter got the information elsewhere.



They're are any number of variables, but at the end of the day the PAO only has some influence over what's printed.
 
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