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SIDEBAR

Opening the Door

After three weeks of constant hammering, Blackwater invited journalists from some of the nation’s leading news organizations—among them The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CBS, and CNN—to its 7,000-acre headquarters in Moyock, N.C.

The result was astonishing. CBS “60 Minutes” ran a segment on Blackwater so counter to the popular image that antiwar protesters heaped abuse on interviewer Lara Logan for being too soft on CEO Erik Prince. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer gave Prince the opportunity to tell Blackwater’s side of the September 16 story in detail. Charlie Rose on PBS led a lengthy interview that gave Prince all the time he needed to present his facts and his vision for the industry. Each interviewer asked tough questions.

The Washington Post ran an informative and overwhelmingly positive front-page story on October 13 that stretched into a two-page spread, complete with charts, an annotated overhead image of the company’s main facility, and facts that contradicted its own stereotypical reporting on the company. Originally scheduled to appear on a Sunday, the Post’s largest circulation day, the article came out a day earlier, on a Saturday, which generally has the lowest level of readership.

The Wall Street Journal’s coverage was not about an embattled firm on the skids but a forward-looking enterprise poised to “vault…into the major leagues of U.S. military contracting, taking advantage of the movement to privatize all kinds of government security. The company wants to be a one-stop shop for the U.S. government on missions to which it won’t commit American forces.” Blackwater, according to the world’s premier financial newspaper, “is bidding on military work against industry giants such as Lockheed Martin Corp.”

Newsweek interviewed Prince, profiling him in its October 22 issue, smashing the “secretive” and “reclusive” image that the Blackwater chief had received from his dislike of giving interviews. “Dutiful and intense,” the deck began. “Don’t call the Blackwater men ‘mercenaries.’ That’s a ‘slanderous term’ used by Blackwater’s detractors, ‘an inflammatory word they use to malign us,’ says Prince. Mercenaries, he says, are professional soldiers who work for a foreign government. Blackwater’s diplomatic security men are ‘Americans working for the American government.’” That’s the first time a major magazine has taken on the misuse of the word in the current controversy.

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From the November/December 2007 issue of Serviam.