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TV's Use of "Embeds" In War Slammed By War Correspondent

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Television reporters embedded with the U.S. forces that invaded Iraq "didn't actually report the news but provided "color commentary instead, a Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent says.

Even though some 650 journalists were embedded with U.S. troops, "we actually learned less because there was less reporting and because these people, in essence, saw their role as providing color commentary, says Christopher Hedges, formerly a war correspondent for The New York Times.

"They said, ˜Okay, we see that tank going over there. Oh, look, there's a puff of smoke,' is how Hedges described their role. They "did precisely the same thing that (sports) commentators do when they broadcast a football game.

Hedges said that he is not against using embeds but "when you rely exclusively on embeds for your vision of the war, you see, as we have in Iraq, the occupation exclusively through the lens of the occupier, and this gives a very distorted vision of the conflict.

The war correspondent's remarks appear in the just issued "News Media In Crisis, (Doukathsan) from the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. The work is the ver batim transcript of a conference held there last March on the changing profession of journalism.

Hedges went on to say that he does not allow himself to cover wars as an embed because "if you cannot report from among the vast majority of the powerless in a war zone (civilians) you end up unwittingly becoming a tool, however critical you may try and be of the occupation.

This happens, Hedges went on to say, "Because you humanize the occupiers and because you don't have any contact with those being occupied, you invariably stereotype or dehumanize those who are bearing the brunt of the violence.

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Sherwood Ross worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and contributed a regular "Workplace" column for Reuters. He has contributed to national magazines and hosted a talk show on WOL, Washington, D.C. In the Sixties he was active as public (more...)
 
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