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If one limits oneself to checking the number of offices dealing with information within the Department of Defense and how long they've been doing it, relations between the military and the media seem like a well established routine. But a shift in focus from the administrative structures to actors obtains more subtle results. Judging by the careers of the successive heads of the armed forces' information and public relations service, and by interviews carried out with seven officers, being in the Army in that capacity is a doubtful distinction, to which both rank and advancement are denied. In the process, areas of tension appeared that in fact point to triangular relationships, involving not only the military and the media, but politics as well.