a source of lesson learned

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37847841/ns/us_news-military/

Today the news covered the story of the top U.S. Military commander in Afghanistan. If you read the story that will be published in Friday's release of Rolling Stones, the general and his aides were quoted of their opinions about the Obama administration.

The key take away from this article as public affairs officers, we need to ensure that those lessons we learned from the school are applied.

1. Did we brief our commander that all comments regardless of when they are said, as long as media are around, will always be on the record for attribution.
2. Did we do our background research on the media personnel that will be conducting the interview or if deployed embedded with the unit.
3. Did we teach the Soldiers in our unit how to talk with the media. Did we develop media smart cards and provide them to our Soldiers?

All leaders and Soldiers in our units have a story to tell, we must ensure that we help faciliate that story to the media.