InterGovWorld's Spotlight series profiles executives, decision-makers and their initiatives across all levels of Canadian government.
Part 1 of Spotlight on Lieutenant Commander Kent Penney, Section Head of Combat Camera at the Department of National Defence (DND)
Lieutenant Commander Kent Penney is head of the Combat Camera team, which shows the public through photography and video the work that the Canadian Forces is doing around the world. It is work that is of special significance now with the current campaign in Afghanistan. In Part 1 of InterGovWorld's Spotlight on Penney, he sits down with senior writer Lisa Williams to discuss how he got his start in the Armed Forces, and how Combat Camera is an important tool not just for the media and public, but for members of the military as well.
Previous page: An overview of Combat Camera
Q) You touched on the fact that Combat Camera provides information via video and photography to the public and the media. With the current campaign in Afghanistan, is this something they can access as a resource to be more aware of what's going on, and would you say this is an accurate depiction of what the experience is within Afghanistan?
A) Combat Camera is a very important tool for the Canadian Forces and for our public affairs organization. We're not the only imagery capability for the Forces, but we're the only imagery team dedicated to produce media quality imagery, both in still and video.
Because we produce media quality imagery, our material tends to be seen by the largest audience, so we tend to have the biggest influence in terms of what people see from the Canadian Forces. With respect to Afghanistan, Combat Camera has always been important to the Canadian Forces.
Photo courtesy of the Department of National Defence.
You have to understand that the team originated in the 1990s because the Forces were very busy at the end of the cold war in all kinds of new missions. The world was changing very quickly, and the Canadian Forces role was also changing. But the media by and large were not covering a lot of the operations of the Canadian Forces in the early 1990s.
The Canadian Forces public affairs community decided that if the media can't get to us to tell the story, we will develop a capability to send them the imagery of what we're doing, so that they can tell the story back home in Canada.
Photo courtesy of the Department of National Defence.
Combat Camera was very small, consisting of a few photographers and public affairs officers, but it quickly established a reputation for using good quality imagery that the media could use to report on what the Canadian Forces were doing.
That's how we became very important very quickly to fill that void, so the public could witness what was happening in places like Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia. With Afghanistan, there isn't a lot of media actually on the ground covering the military's and the government's effort.
Photo courtesy of the Department of National Defence.
Combat Camera remains just as important now as it ever has been, despite the fact that the media are with us in large numbers. This is because with technology the Canadian Forces actually have the capability now of distributing footage to the public directly. Combat Camera still shares all of our imagery with the media, but we now have the ability to post and distribute imagery of our military in Afghanistan, and in other places directly to the public. That's been a significant change for us in terms of helping the public understand what's going on in Afghanistan.
Part 2 of Spotlight on Combat Camera
Access Spotlight Central, an archive of all past InterGovWorld spotlights.
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