Thaddeus Grugq’s latest newsletter opines on the role of the smartphone in how warfare is reported on by the media, calling it a revolution in military media relations. Things have certainly changed since battlefield reporters began reporting on wars: events are posted in near-real-time, with streaming color video transmitted via social media networks, shrinking the distance from the war zone to the reporter and viewed around the world. “The information environment is truly beyond the control of the military,” he writes.

This is perhaps the ultimate in media disintermediation. There are no gatekeepers, everyone with a smartphone and a You Tube channel is now a “citizen journalist” with a ready-made audience.

It isn’t just for the reporters: there are benefits for smartphone-toting warfighters as well. There have been plenty of articles that have documented how soldiers have exploited smartphones over the past several years, including this one that documents what is going on in Israel. It enables the troops to better communicate with their families, something that I am personally familiar with my Israeli son-in-law, who has been deployed several times since the war began. When he was deployed in Gaza, his regular phone didn’t work, so it was always stressful. But when he was deployed in Israel, he was in touch with us, which seemed surreal. Even foxholes now have Wifi.

And of course smartphones and citizen journalists aren’t restricted to the war zone either, such as coverage of the riots during the Ferguson summer of 2014 and this spring’s college encampments. Some of that reporting was better than the mainstream media, to be sure. That link explores the concept of citizen journalists that I wrote during that summer.

But we have crossed a Rubicon of sorts with the Israeli government literally shuttering Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem studios this week. My daughter, who has been living there for many years, and I disagree on this action (she is in favor of the shutdown, I think the network should be allowed to continue to broadcast). Imagine if Biden were to shutter Newsmax. Or if police raided a newspaper in Kansas. (Wait, that did happen last year.)  For many years, I watched the early morning news coverage from Al Jazeera English’s programming. It was mostly fair. I haven’t seen much since the war began last October, and I am not sure how I would react to hearing misinformation being broadcast now.

The record of independent journalism in the Israel-Hamas war is a difficult one, because no one can really do research. But imagine if nearly 100 journalists were killed by the US in one of our recently wars — that is the current tally of who has been killed in Gaza and the West Bank, according to the CPJ. None of these people were engaged in any military capacity, at least according to their documentation. And Israel has also blocked any journalists from entering Gaza, making matters more difficult.

Let’s look at the coverage of the college protests. We saw the furniture barricades at Hamilton Hall on Columbia’s campus: is that a peaceful protest? Did the police act responsibly? With all the live streams, including some from the police bodycams, it is hard to say. Now imagine having very limited access to what is going on (which some colleges are trying to do). For all the real-time streaming, the fog of war becomes very thick indeed.

I wrote after the Ferguson riots, that if we are going to be a shining example of a working democracy, we need a strong and independent press that can document police abuses. Otherwise, we are no better than the countries we criticize for trumped up charges and wrongly arresting people. The same is true for wartime journalism.