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5 Years of Covering Iraq

On the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War, the death toll for U.S. soldiers approaches 4,000 and the cost moves past a half-trillion dollars. Press coverage, however, is at an all-time low.

::: :: : OTM'S IRAQ WAR TIMELINE : :: :::

OTM takes a look at the crucial role of media in the evolution of this war. Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher and author of So Wrong for So Long, takes us back to the early days of combat.

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The Embed Experiment

More than a quarter million American soldiers were deployed at the start of the Iraq War, but they weren't alone. Nearly 800 reporters, prepped for the battlefield and assigned to military units, embedded with the military. NPR's John Burnett was one of them.

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Stagecrafting the War

From Colin Powell’s U.N. address in 2003 to the faked rescue of Private Jessica Lynch to the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Firdos Square, the past five years of war have seen many attempts at stagecraft. Bob looks back at a few of those moments and weighs in on the symbiosis of government deception and media credulousness.

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Finding A Voice

From Al Jazeera to soldier bloggers to home-grown Iraqi journalists, powerful voices emerged from the rubble of the Iraq War and captured the attention of the world.

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highlights from past showsHighlights from Past Shows

(Ronald L. Haeberle)

40 Years Later: Hersh on My Lai

March 14, 2008

On March 16, 1968 U.S. soldiers entered the South Vietnamese village of My Lai and killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in what became the most notorious atrocity of the war. Forty years later, New Yorker correspondent Seymour Hersh walks us through the on-the-ground reporting behind his Pulitzer Prize winning scoop.

Click here for the complete unedited interview with Seymour Hersh (approximate run time 35 minutes)


Clinton
(Getty Images)

This Magic Momentum

March 07, 2008

Hillary Clinton's victories this week barely dented Barack Obama’s delegate lead, but they did wonders for her momentum. That is if you believe in all that momentum stuff. Slate's Tim Noah says momentum is less a political reality than a narrative device for reporters.


On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.