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Propaganda or News? Embedded Journalists Say They Provided Both

Embedded correspondents aided U.S. propaganda efforts during the recent Iraq war, but also provided information that could not have been obtained as efficiently by “lone-wolf” reporting, according to journalists who covered the war.

A panel of four journalists -- John Burnett of National Public Radio, Ken Kalthoff of NBC station KXAS-Dallas/Fort Worth, Paul McEnroe of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Katherine Skiba of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -- shared their experiences in Iraq. In doing so, they illuminated issues faced by both embedded and unilateral reporters.

Burnett said he saw both sides as an embedded reporter with the 1st Marine Division, and while “out-bedded” for a week after the war. As an embedded reporter, Burnett said he never heard a “no-comment,” but added, “the military will tell you things that serve the military.” After leaving his embedded position, Burnett traveled to Al-Taniya where he found that 31 “men, women and children” had been “blown to bits.” He saw bomb craters and talked to hospital chiefs there. A U.S. Central Command spokesman told him the strikes on Al-Taniya had been precision-guided.

Burnett said he found a “disconnect” between the official line and what he saw.

Kalthoff followed four battalions of Marines who comprised Task Force Tarawa, and said enthusiastically, “We had a degree of access that I never would have expected.” But asked later by an audience member whether embedded reporters served as a propaganda arm of the Defense Department, he said, “yes, there’s no doubt about it.” He said embedded reporters told the American military’s side of the story.

Kalthoff said people ought to take the embedded reports “with a grain of salt.”

McEnroe, who worked as a unilateral reporter, joked that he was “embedded under a load of potatoes” – a reference to the way that he was smuggled into Kurdistan over the Turkish border. One night at 1, about an hour away from Baghdad, he was in a foxhole with a special-forces sergeant who was calling in air strikes. In what he called surprising frankness, the sergeant turned to McEnroe and asked, according to McEnroe “you know the reason why there’s embedding?” McEnroe waited for the response. “The United States wants to counter all the coverage that Al-Jazeera gets to the West now,” the sergeant told McEnroe.

Skiba was an embedded reporter with the 101st Airborne, the first unit to encounter an Iraqi missile attack. Soon five of the eight embedded reporters quit the unit, she said. She and her fellow embedded reporters received praise from Command Sgt. Maj. Don Gregg who said, according to Skiba, “thanks for being here, you’ve got balls.”

Skiba listed three motivations for embedding reporters: shining a light on the troops, keeping loved ones appraised, and letting American taxpayers know how much bang they were getting for their buck. She compared watching war to watching “sausage being made,” referring to instances of friendly fire and helicopter crashes.

Burnett called the system of embedding reporters a “vast improvement,” over the system of pool reporting used in the first Persian Gulf War.

McEnroe, who also worked as a unilateral reporter in the first Persian Gulf War, said that he would do his combat reporting no other way, claiming that his freedom of movement granted him a “mosaic” view unavailable to embedded reporters.