"Don't tell them anything. When it's over, tell them who won."

—Admiral Ernest King, on his preferred public relations plan for the US Navy entering World War II

At the turn of the last century, the United States Navy began to wrestle with a technological change that threatened a cherished cultural tradition: the absolute independence of a commander at sea. For more than 125 years, one thing had remained sacrosanct and generally unchanged: Once the coastline dropped below the horizon, commanders were essentially independent operators working only within the loosest guidelines from headquarters. Even the invention and wide deployment of ocean-crossing telegraphic wires in the late 19th century only partially impacted this practice. Once at sea, a naval commander was a law, and a force, unto himself. And that was just the way commanders liked it.

The wireless radio changed that reality, and in some ways, the US Navy is still wrestling with that fact. Ernest King's quote above offers a look at how more than a few WWII admirals thought about communications with "the rear" and the public. That's understandable: Having been free to interpret their orders based on whatever situation they found themselves in when they arrived in some far-flung corner of the world, the radio suddenly placed them on a leash. The resentment was real—even moreso when ships were equipped with long-range radios, and the US Navy came to control the airwaves in the first two decades of the 20th century.

The Navy's radio controversy of yesteryear can help explain how the current administration botched their communications plan with regard to the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier battlegroup that was supposedly headed towards North Korea last week. To put it bluntly, the US Navy is the most information-hoarding of the four military services. Unless they are absolutely required to do so, they will say nothing. When it's unavoidable or they are pressed, they are the most likely to give the bare minimum of information, and then hope people just move on and leave them alone. And that extends to their relations with higher authorities as well.

That cultural inclination matters, because it appears that all of this current brouhaha started with a press release. Note the vagueness of the language. Only two sentences actually say anything at all:

USS CARL VINSON, At Sea (NNS) -- Adm. Harry Harris, commander, US Pacific Command, has directed the Carl Vinson Strike Group to sail north and report on station in the Western Pacific Ocean after departing Singapore April 8…. Carl Vinson Strike Group…will operate in the Western Pacific rather than executing previously planned port visits to Australia.

The release reveals the "who" and the "what," but not "when, where, and why." ("The Western Pacific" is so deliberately vague that they might as well have said that Admiral Harris directed the strike group to report station "somewhere in the sea.") It is obsessively minimalist, and that's where things took off.

The original press release was technically accurate, as far as it went. It just did not mention the fact that the Carl Vinson was still going to operate with the Australians in the Indian Ocean and then "sail north." It was also accurate in that the planned port-call in Perth, Australia, was canceled. It was only subsequent comments from members of the administration that gave an impression of a deliberate and immediate plan. From there, the media reporting and uninformed ruminating took off, as it did within the assembled punditry. But the bottom line is that amongst the media—left, right, and center—hardly anyone went back to that original press release and said, "Wait a minute. There are a lot of details missing here."

Getty Images

Maybe things have changed, but last I looked it was the traditional media who is supposed to live up to the idea that, "If my mother tells me that I was born at X time on Y date, I will want two corroborating witnesses, documentation, and possibly video to prove it." And in that, the media let all of us down for 10 days. Kudos to The New York Times for accidentally noticing a photo on a US Navy website of the Carl Vinson in the Sunda Straits—that is, nowhere near North Korea—on Tuesday.

What is funnier, or perhaps more depressing, is the way that the fake news-rumor-mill-conspiracy vortex launched from the original start on April 9. The original press release appeared just after noon, and by the evening it dominated the news. The combination of the administration's comments and a lack of inquiry from the media elevated it to an impending crisis. At one point, it escalated from news that one battle group was ordered to "sail north" to a narrative claiming that three entire carrier battle groups were set to converge in the Sea of Japan within days or weeks.

The story went global in less than a day. In the UK, Rupert Murdoch's Sun wrote it up this way. The financial website ZeroHedge (using the nom de plume of "Tyler Durden" but probably written by either Daniel Ivandjiiski or Tim Backshall) took their normal "Doom Is Coming" approach and doubled down on the fake news. And then, of course, came the Russians writing in both Pravda and Sputnik News. That last part is really interesting, since the Russian government almost certainly knew exactly where the USS Carl Vinson actually was, even if the White House did not.

The problem persists, even Stateside. The Salt Lake Tribune claimed this as recently as 48 hours ago:

China and Russia have dispatched intelligence-gathering vessels from their navies to chase the USS Carl Vinson nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which is heading toward waters near the Korean Peninsula, multiple sources of the Japanese government revealed to The Yomiuri Shimbun.

It's obviously complete BS, given that at that point, the Carl Vinson was just leaving the Indian Ocean. But it's not the fault of the Pulizter Prize-winning Salt Lake Tribune that published this tripe—after all, they were just repeating what a Japanese newspaper was saying.

That's the scary part. It's one thing to blame a heartland voter for not being critical enough, or digging deeper when confronted with sensational news in his Facebook feed. It's quite another when, rather than dig into discrepancies in the initial reports, professional reporters just react to the rumor du jour—without, for instance, calling the 3rd Fleet Public Affairs office and asking them where the carrier actually is.

Robert Bateman is a fellow at New America, a veteran of a few decades in uniform, and a regular contributor to Esquire.com. As always he may be reached at R_Bateman_LTC@hotmail.com.

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