Embedded Journalism in War:a Necessary Evil?

US media’s performance in Iraq war has been notorious. Some critics have blamed Pentagon’s media-embedding program and considered it as one of those nasty tactics of war spin. How bad exactly was the embedding in terms of its influence on journalistic coverage of Iraq war? Is it such a heinous devil that we should completely get rid of it in the future war communication?

Michael Pfau et all compared embedded and non-embedded print coverage of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq to seek differences in overall tone toward the military, trust in military personnel, framing, and authoritativeness. The study revealed that newspaper coverage by embedded reporters was significantly more positive toward the military than those unilateral reporters and conveyed greater trust toward military personnel. In addition, reports of combat operations from embedded reporters depicted more episodic frames and were judged to be more authoritative than those of non-embedded reporters.

The findings confirmed concerns expressed on quality and objectivity of embedded journalism. Yet I am not convinced that the embedding policy is so evil that in the war communication it should be repelled and abandoned.

An objective overview of story requires narratives of different sides. Despite all its flaws, embedding does provide journalists with access, which otherwise will be hard to get, to tell the military side of firsthand vivid story while press’ safety are attempted to be ensured. What media organizations need to do is to maintain sufficient number of unilateral reporters to tell stories from the other side. “On the whole, embedding was a model for cooperation between the media and the military,” said CNN’s Jordan. As he noted, more than half of CNN’s forty-five reporters in the region were not embedded. “When you put all the reporting together, you can present a well- balanced picture,” Jordan said. For journalists to be embedded in the military units, incredibly difficult as it can be, they should be better trained and prepared to stay mentally independent and critical even they will be ‘living, eating, moving in combat with the unit that he journalists are attached to’. After all, this is what this profession is all about.

For more information about Michael Pfau et all's journal,please go to http://hij.sagepub.com/content/11/2/139.full.pdf+html