Keeping the Media at Bay

Image of Alexander's Sarcophagus(Author's collection)

    What to do with a precocious child who meddles in adult's business?  Today, I'm not sure but I know in my childhood, an immediate and severe beating would ensue coupled with some sort of long term misery was the prescription.  In fourth century BC Macedonia, he was made a king.  At least that's what happened to Alexander, son of Phillip II.  Although this precocious child went on to conquer the known world he was still meddlesome in his youth and erratic in his behaviour.  Of all the topics Aristotle taught Alexander, it seems that he learned one lesson very well; how to control his image with the public.
    We know from contemporary biographers that he was creative in his reports back to Macedonia but this is all second-hand speculation as not one of those biographies is extant today.  We are forced to rely Arrian and Plutarch and Rufus - all of which were writing hundreds of years after the fact but cited these originals as their sources.  Could it be that today's generals could take another, more subtle, lesson from Alexander's playbook?
    By all accounts though Alexander was a master of perception management and it would seem that this has extended through the years.  Despite many indicators that Alexander was impetuous and emotional, his reputation today is that of a great leader who managed his meagre resources superbly.
    This was achieved by limiting the exposure outlets that were available to the public and controlling them completely - Callisthenes (an embedded biographer) didn't make it home alive.  Centuries later, the worst that chroniclers could do was to highlight the ire of Alexander's troops over his tendency to "go native" but not one of these writers has acknowledged the need for Alexander to ingratiate himself to the recently defeated and still restive native populations that surrounded him and his small band of Macedonian soldiers.  Additionally, our writer's have never been placed in perspective themselves; they were spinning a moral tale for a specific audience in their own times.  This story became cautionary over time towards their own leaders - An intrepid westerner is seduced by the vices of the East which eventually kill him.  In other words: don't be like Alexander, cling tightly to your Roman values while serving the Republic in far-flung corners of the realm (their audience was Rome).  It would seem that the media has been a tool of the ruling elite for quite some time.

Alexander against Darius III at Issus. A 1st century BC floor mosaic from Pompeii, Italy. (author's collection copyright 2013) 

    It is readily apparent to me that today's media - in their self-driven 24/7 need to produce information for and grab ratings from an lethargic and saturated audience - has dug deeper into our military's conduct than they need to.  Our general's today should take a lesson from Alexander and keep them at bay - feeding them the relevant stories for public consumption instead of allowing these embedded reporters to dig up the worst and most irrelevant rumours to report as facts to an already naive public who doesn't understand what war fighting is all about.