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Freelance photographer Zoriah Miller was disembedded from the Marine Corps this summer after taking photographs of dead US Marines and posting them to his blog. Miller says despite following every rule of embedded journalists, the Marine Corps leadership sought to ban him from being an embed for life.
New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch and filmmaker Errol Morris spent two years investigating the motivations of the soldiers in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison photos for a documentary and book, both called Standard Operating Procedure. Gourevitch explains that the “bad apples” rationale doesn’t hold water.
In last week’s clashes in Beirut, Hezbollah targeted the headquarters of the Al Mustaqbal television station and newspaper. But this wasn’t a simple case of media suppression. Rami Khouri, editor at large at the Daily Star in Lebanon, explains the political significance of the attacks.
As reported in The New York Times last weekend, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and others have turned, again and again, to military analysts – retired members of the armed forces hired by broadcast and cable networks – for their supposed expertise on the war. Only, it turns out, the analysts were often coached by the Pentagon in what the Times said were “hundreds of private briefings.” Among those named was Maj. Robert Bevelacqua, a former Green Beret and Fox News contributor through 2005. Bevelacqua discusses his own role in the march to war.
AP photographer Bilal Hussein has been held by U.S. authorities for two years on allegations that he had ties to Iraqi insurgents. This week, an Iraqi committee ordered Hussein to be freed, though U.S. authorities still haven't announced their plans for him. In the meantime, Bob asks you:
To whom and what should a reporter be loyal? Their news organization? The story? The audience? Their country?
:::TELL US WHAT YOU THINK:::
Embedded correspondents have mostly fled the barracks in Iraq, leaving the burden of documenting the war to the brave few un-embedded. But whereas Western reporters could once travel freely, they now often rely on Iraqi "fixers" to bring the reporting to them. This is the story of three of those fixers, pulled into journalism by a trick of fate.
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.
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.
