But leading journalists say Mr. Rumsfeld's acceptance of the guidelines is in name only. Reporters have been allowed aboard three aircraft carriers and, briefly, on one Marine vessel in the Arabian Sea. But, said Sandy Johnson, the Washington bureau chief for The Associated Press: "Pilots won't tell us where they've been, what they dropped, what their target was. Nothing has changed."
Clark Hoyt, the Washington editor for the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, who helped draft the 1992 guidelines, said last week that they "have been accepted but aren't being lived up to." Mr. Hoyt added, "American forces are engaged in combat overseas, and we are basically shut out."
Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, said on Friday that the guidelines had been communicated to commanders in the field as "broad policy guidance," adding, "We leave it to them at the local level to know best how to implement that."
Thus far, news organizations' only response has been increasingly frustrated questioning of the policy in weekly meetings with Victoria Clarke, the chief Pentagon spokeswoman. No unified challenge has been made by top editors, broadcast news presidents or publishers.
Some news executives, in fact, are as worried about public opinion as they are about the government's lid on information. Walter Isaacson, the chairman of CNN, recently issued a memorandum saying that reports about civilian casualties in the bombing campaign must be balanced with mention of the Sept. 11 attacks.
An International Audience
Grows Increasingly Skeptical
Perhaps the clearest sign of rising German and European skepticism toward the United States' declared war on terrorism is the warning to readers that the Frankfurter Rundschau, a leading liberal newspaper, has run every day since the bombing began.
"Substantial amounts of information about current military actions and their consequences is subject to censorship by parties to the conflict," the warning says. "In many cases, an independent confirmation of such information is not possible for this newspaper."
Germany is one of the United States's strongest supporters in the battle against terrorism. But as in other European countries, the initial outpouring of grief and solidarity is giving way to pointed questions about American strategy and dissatisfaction with many of the answers.
If the United States has a public relations problem among its allies, it boils down to this: many Europeans feel they have precious little information they can trust. They rely on conflicting and equally unverifiable claims from Pentagon briefings and Taliban news conferences, and are increasingly unwilling to believe either side.
"We are experiencing the same problem that we had in the gulf war ó no pictures," said Ulrich Deppendorf, Berlin bureau chief for Germany's ARD television network. "We have to rely on what the U.S. government claims, or on what the Taliban via Al Jazeera claims, or on information from the Pakistani news agency."
The United States has paid little attention so far to shoring up its message in Europe. The government initially rebuffed offers of military help, but that view has changed sharply in the last week. The British made the case that European involvement might bolster political support and the United States sought and received pledges of military aid from Italy, Germany and Turkey.
But Europeans, especially Germans, have been baffled by the way Americans have made their requests or explained their objectives.
Chancellor Gerhard Schr–der of Germany pushed Parliament to agree to make 3,900 soldiers available for missions in or around Afghanistan ó potentially the first use of German troops outside Europe since World War II. Germans were then flummoxed when Mr. Rumsfeld said on Tuesday that the United States had never specifically asked for German troops but rather the country's "broad support."
European popular support for the United States's campaign has waned noticeably in the last few weeks, while newspapers have given quite prominent play to pictures of bombing damage and accounts of civilian casualties.
British support for military action has declined to about two-thirds from three- quarters, while French support has dropped to about half, from two-thirds shortly after Sept. 11.
"The public sees continuous bombing of buildings and they see pictures from Al Jazeera of small villages that have been destroyed, and that has made things immensely difficult," said Helmut Lippelt, a Green Party legislator who supports continued military action.
But Mr. Lippelt said the United States had hurt its own cause by being too murky about its plans. "The big danger in all this is the impression that bombs will keep up endlessly and that we will be dealing with a 10-year quagmire," he said. "One has to be clear about what this is about, and be clear that one understands those worries."
European news media get most of their information directly from Washington, and it is Washington that is frustrating them.
"Our greatest pressure is that we have no images," said Auberi Edler, a foreign news editor at France 2. "The only interesting images we get are from Al Jazeera. It's bad for everybody."
European journalists have also become suspicious that the American news media have been co-opted by the government, or at least swept up by patriotism. "The journalists and the media directors suffer, in my opinion, from a `post Vietnam patriotic syndrome,' " wrote Freimut Duve, a German who heads the office on free speech at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna.
Mr. Duve argued that it was a mistake for the United States to declare a war on "terrorism," and that a clear focus on Osama bin Laden would have made the endgame easier to understand.
Hungry for News,
Blanketed in Leaflets
When one nation is bombing another, it is difficult to convince the bombed of the virtue of the bombers. In Afghanistan, this has been America's challenge. Planes have been dropping leaflets as well as explosives.
One flier offers justification: "On September 11th, the United States was the target of terrorist attacks, leaving no choice but to seek justice for these horrible crimes."
Another provides an advisory: "We have no wish to hurt you, the innocent people of Afghanistan. Stay away from military installations, government buildings, terrorist camps, roads, factories or bridges. If you are near these places, then you must move away from them. Seek a safe place, and stay well away from anything that might be a target."
