Posted on 05/14/2007 9:40:42 PM PDT by Valin
Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) saw the advent of a practice which revolutionized modern war reporting: the embedding of journalists with frontline combat units in war. This practice gave the media, the American public, and the world unprecedented access to the soldiers on the front lines, as well as to the war itself, through the filing of stories, photographs, and video from the battlefront in real time, by reporters who were right there with the soldiers doing the fighting. "We were offered an irresistible opportunity: free transportation to the front line of the war, dramatic pictures, dramatic sounds, great quotes," said Tom Gjelten of National Public Radio. "Who can pass that up?"...
While I was at the Combined Press Information Center (CPIC) in Baghdad on my recent trip to Iraq, a pair of Spanish journalists -- a newspaper reporter and a photojournalist -- walked in, fresh from their embed with the 1-4 Cavalry of the 1st Infantry Division (the unit with which I embedded only days later). They had spent two weeks amongst the troops there, living and going on missions with them, including house-to-house searches and seizures, and their impressions of these soldiers were extremely clear.
"Absolutely amazing," said David Beriain, the reporter (and the one who spoke English), said of the young Cavalry troops. "In Spain, it is embarrassing -- our soldiers are ashamed to be in the army. These young men -- and they seem so young! -- are so proud of what they do, and do it so well, even though it is dangerous and they could very easily be killed." ......
"I love those guys," Beriain said, looking wistfully out the window of the media cloister in the Green Zone that is CPIC.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
There are still a few great journalists.
But few of them are American.
American journalists for the most part are just waiting to catch a soldier taking a leak behind a tree so they can discredit our troops for not using the latrine.
Not a full time writer/journalist but an undergraduate student
http://www.uga.edu/amazing/emanuel.html
Yes?
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