This presentation contains graphic elements and scenes some viewers may find disturbing.
Refers to news reporters been attached to military units involved in armed conflicts. First used in the media coverage of…?
First used in the media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
According to NYT Reporters who succeeded in obtaining embed status in Iraq were then required to sign contracts with the military promising not to report information that could compromise unit position,
future missions, classified weapons, and information they might find…. Army public affairs officials said this was to protect operational security, but it also allowed them to terminate a reporter’s embed without appeal.
Why Embedded Journalism is used?
Embedded journalism allows the writer to receive first-hand observations of conflicts that most typically do not see. It allows them to have a deeper connection to those in the military and therefore creating, though one-sided,
accurate reports of the lives of the men and women overseas. This provides the public with stories they can sympathize with and connect with. But what is the cost???
According to (BERKELEY NEWS MEDIA RELEASE)at the BEGINING of the war in March 2003, 775 reporters and photographers were traveling as embedded journalists.
As of early May, of the same year, (so…less then for 3 month)
15 journalists had died
According to The Seattle Times, the death rate among journalists was 1.3 %
NBC News
Middle East Correspondent
Richard Engel, wrote the BOOK
A Fist in the Hornet's Nest, published in 2004, about his experience covering the Iraq War from Baghdad.
His newest BOOK, War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq, published in June 2008, picks up where his last book left off.
He speaks and reads Arabic fluently and is also fluent in Italian and Spanish.
…known for having covered the Iraq War, the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war.[3]
He BELIEVED the war would HARDEN him. And, in a way, it did.
According to Engel, he went through four stages during
the embedding process: Stage 1:
I’m invincible. I’m ready. I’m excited. I’m living
on adrenaline.
Then, as the war begins, …Stage 2: You know what,
this is dangerous, I could get hurt over here.
And that starts to sink in. Then the war continues and
friends start to get kidnapped or killed and you see bodies
on the streets. Stage 3: I’ve been over here so long,…I’m probably ….
going to get hurt. And then at a certain
stage, you hit rock bottom and you feel, I’ve used up my
time. Stage 4: ….
I’m going to die in this conflict. And
that’s a dark place to go into.
Embedded journalism is not worth the DANGERS to both the credibility of the story and the safety of the journalist. Accurate and fair reporting can be done away from the frontline and these stories are not worth THE RISK they pose. Embedded journalism has been criticized as a BIASED form of reporting and earned itself a BAD NAME in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What should be done?
Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher of communication theory and a public intellectual, said those wise words:
“The old journalism ..used to try to give an objective picture of a situation by giving the pro and the con... Objective journalism meant giving BOTH SIDES AT ONCE. Strangely, everyone assumed there were two sides to every case. It never occurred to anyone that there might be forty sides or a thousand sides. No, just two sides, pro and con...And…Suddenly this form of journalism disappeared, and the new journalism popped in. The new journalism doesn’t give you any side: It just immerses you in the feeling of the whole situation. …It plunges us into the feeling of being at the convention or being at the fire, being somewhere. and that’s began with that famous phrase, “Something funny happened on the way to the forum.”
A happening is not a point of view. A happening is all sides at once with everybody involved in it. Mardi Gras is a happening. We cannot have objective journalism about a Mardi Gras: we just have to immerse….SO The new journalism quite frankly regards itself as a form of fiction,(PAUSE) with NO OBJECTIVITY AT ALL. (46 sec)
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, Joseph John Rosenthal …was an American photographer who received the Pulitzer Prize for his iconic World War II photograph
Saigon execution: Murder of a Vietcong by Saigon Police Chief, 1968. The photographer, Eddie Adams also noted for portraits of celebrities and politicians and for coverage of 13 wars. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969.
1972 Napalm Girl Photo, Photographer Nick Ut
On June 8, 1972, Nick Ut captured what would become a Pulitzer Prize winning photo illustrating children fleeing from a Napalm bombing during the Vietnam War. In the center of the frame running towards the camera was a naked 9-year-old girl, Phan Thị Kim Phúc, also known as 'Napalm Girl.' In 1973, AP Photographer Nick Ut won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for "The Terror of War"
Photographer David Turnley. Gulf War. 1991
In conclusion I would like to say….
America’s desire to spread democracy, and
Glorify the American soldier, the media and military have teamed up to create
a Dramatization of War, transforming reports on combat from facts presentation to a show. They are
Manufacturing entertainment by showing
Unnecessary violence rather than offering information. Embedded reporting sometimes produces useful media, but often they not getting the full story and manipulating facts .(33 sec)