"They may not get as much attention as their media counterparts, but dozens of Pentagon public affairs officers are 'embedded' right alongside the reporters in Iraq," PR Week reports. "The Pentagon also maintains the Coalition Press Information Center (CPIC) in Kuwait, a base of operations for public affairs officers not traveling with troops.
A 24-hour operation designed to keep up with news cycles in every time zone, ... one of the CPIC's most vital roles is to discourage 'rogue' journalists from venturing into dangerous areas by providing the information they might otherwise attempt to get on their own." The Wall Street Journal praised the Defense Department's PR Strategy. "The embedded reporters will continue to be a brilliant strategy by the Pentagon -- one that should echo in the rules of corporate communications," the Journal's Clark S. Judge writes. "As the Pentagon has demonstrated so aptly, the essential strategy for becoming the standard of truth when no one believes you is to open your operations to the kind of risk that no one would take if he were planning to lie. Spin is out of the question. Good or bad, the story is there for the reporter to see."