Cody S.
Research in the Community Excerpts
Fall 2009 Trimester

Military Ethics - An Examination of Media Recruiting

A seemingly unimportant commercial, an amusing videogame, an unexpected phone call. Throughout the years, the military has tried countless new tactics and methods of recruiting young people. Yet in recent years many of the ethical choices of the military media recruitment campaigns have come into question by the American people. Although the media are a very effective way to recruit young people, the Army's methods for media recruiting are ethically problematic and should be reexamined.

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Although recruiters have many challenges, they need to accurately illustrate military service to their target audience. The Army's target audience is thirteen to twenty-four year old males (Lovell). This is problematic because although young people are legally adults at eighteen, and therefore allowed to make individual decisions without parental consent, their brains do not stop maturing until their mid to late twenties (Comley).... When recruiters make pitches, it is most often to young people because they are most impressionable. Almost 600,000 teens between the ages of seventeen and eighteen are enlisted out of the 1,000,000 active and reserve soldiers (Allen). This shows how recruiters spend the majority of their time and money on younger audiences, and in turn, are yielding great numbers of recruits because they are impressionable.

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Another enrollment technique that the army and recruiter's offices use is through Army funded videogames. As of now the army is sponsoring five videogames: America's Army 1, 2, and 3, Rise of a Soldier, and Full Spectrum Warrior (Etherington). These videogames have millions of teens playing every day, with over 100,000 new kids signing up every week (Etherington). The majority of these videogames are free, and anyone with a personal computer can access them. Major Chris Chambers, the Director of America's Army, justifies the videogames by stating that, "We treat it openly and honestly; we don't sugar coat it" ("Videogame Used"). Yet, many feel as though these methods involve trickery because it is not giving an accurate portrayal of warfare. "The videogames offer a sanitized view of warfare," states Missy Comely-Beattie, a writer for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. They are not showing the thousands of soldiers battling post traumatic stress disorder, or how a soldier genuinely copes with death. As another military reporter from the Charlotte Observer states, "Videogames are supposed to be fun. There's no denying that. But war is not. 'America's Army' is only helping confuse the issue for young men and women." ... Videogames are very persuasive and a good recruitment tool for a key audience of thirteen to twenty-four year olds, but should be discontinued because they involve deceit and are misleading.

In the past few years the army has continued to increase commercials in the media as a way to more effectively recruit young people. In recent years the campaign has had two focuses: to persuade the parents of potential recruits that they should let their children consider the Army as a career path, and to show the "testosterone filled rigors of boot camp" (Dao). These commercials do not accurately portray a soldier's life. ...Commercials made by the Army are often misleading and give the public an incorrect picture of the war and the life of a soldier, thus making it a dishonest recruiting instrument.

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Although the methods of media recruiting may be effective for a time, the amount of negative opinions voiced by the press and the people outweigh the gains in enrollment. Recent surveys conducted by The New York Times and CBS have shown that "One in five trusts the government or the military to do the right thing" (Smith). These methods of persuasion and trickery— through videogames, commercials, and cold calls- end up giving the Army bad press. Therefore people have a negative view of the military in general which impedes the effectiveness of other acceptable recruitment techniques.