THE United States is to spend at least $40 million to train journalists from all arms of the service every year. An instructor at the Defense Information School Mr Stefo Lehmann disclosed this during a facility tour of the premises last week.
Indicating that the school currently has 409 staff made up of 213 military, 101 civilians and 90 contractors, he pointed out that broadcast equipment worth $28 million are currently in use in the school which has so far trained soldiers from 77 countries from all over the world.
According to him, there are 32 separate courses in nine separate career fields, 3,200 students annually and courses run from five to 124 training days, all developed to meet service requirements.
Attributing the success factors of the school which started in 1998 to its relevance, responsiveness, value and excellence, the instructor said its mission is to “train service members and DOD civilians to function as professional communicators who are capable of providing public affairs in peacetime or combat anywhere in the world.”
The school exposes students to courses basic public affairs specialist course, basic public affairs course, editors course and intermediate photojournalism courses.
Others include visual information management, coast guard public course, digital multimedia course and basic multimedia reproduction course.
A distribution of the course attendants shows that junior officers are 65 per cent, intermediates 20 per cent, civilians 4 per cent with just one percent for international students.
Explaining the low number of foreign students, the provost attributes it to language and cost challenges.