What are you first?

“When the nation goes to war, the press goes with it, the blather on CNN or Fox or MSNBC is part of a long and sad tradition,” Christ Hedges, reporter for The New York Times once said. The role of journalists, whether they are freelancing, embedded or sent with an entire news crew, during war has long been a debated issue. To provide accurate and objective news should still remain a priority for reporters, but the atmosphere and restrictions of war make this goal much harder to achieve.

The media coverage of the war in Iraq has led to many questions about the proper role of a journalist’s during role time of war. Shortly after the attacks on Sept 11 the federal government passed the Patriot Act, making searches on newsrooms and document confiscation from reporters legal. War allows for the government to pass more restrictive laws and engage in news censorship under the reasoning of “homeland security.” Critics of the media’s coverage of the war claim reporters are providing patriotic sentiments and acting as “cheerleaders” for the government.

When discussing the journalists’ role in war it is important to remember how we got here. How news is disseminated during war has improved over the years. During the Spanish English War and World War I journalists relied on military and government officials for news. Only portions of the news was provided by government officials, and they often left out death rates and minimized damages in an effort to gain media backing and support the war effort.

During WWII the government selectively allowed journalists to be embedded with soldiers but all reports had to go through the newly created Office of Censorship. The office reviewed all communications coming into and leaving the United States. One of the most popular and influential journalists during the Second World War was Ernie Pyle. A journalist from Indiana, Pyle convinced the government to embed him with soldiers in London. Pyle wrote a weekly column focusing not just on the war, but on the lives of the GIs. Pyle wrote about the hardships the soldiers faced like the lack of variety in the food and how they entertained themselves. He wrote about what he saw, felt and touched in a feature-like style that captivated the reader. Through his detailed writing his audience was able to understand what war is really like for soldiers. And it often didn’t match the “heroic image” the government was trying to paint. For 50 years correspondents wrote about war as heroic, and a glorious pursuit to unite the country, but the war in Vietnam changed all that. Because war was never officially declared against the country, the government could not restrict journalists and the reports they produced. Citizens were shocked and angered when they read the stories being produce by correspondents in Vietnam.

War correspondents in the Middle have more freedom and ability to move around during a war, but they’re still limited in what can and cannot be reported. War correspondents face hardships in their ability to report that other reporters don’t have to deal with. War reporters can’t generalize, it is impossible to know what is going on a mile away and it is always difficult to know what really happened.

War correspondences have the responsibility of accurately portraying what is going on over seas to our soldiers. Reporters should provide critical analysis reports of the action, and provide readers with balanced news. I think many Americans still do not know exactly what is going on in Iraq and other Middle East countries, and part of that is because of the lack of reporting. The American public needs access to independent sources of information, and reporters need to become more objective and analytical in their reporting.

There is a fine line between providing an accurate picture of what is going on overseas and giving away strategic military secrets. I have had many discussions about the coverage of the Iraq war and one of the most intriguing questions I have been asked is: What are you first: an American or a journalist?