In Bed With The Brass

Embedded journalists. This phrase and phenomenon is grotesque. Only the dumbest would fail to see that 'embedded' lends itself to innuendo, scorn and ridicule. Many famous western journalists, embedded with American and British forces, are now biting the dust in Iraq. In the 1991 war, they became international celebrities with their coverage. This time, they stand exposed and sun-baked in the desert sun, their credibility crumbling in the sandy wastelands.

Reporting from the war-front requires courage. But moving under the protection of an awesomely equipped army invading a crippled country doesn't require as much courage as being with the victims of war, the unarmed civilians, who are vulnerable to bombs and missiles. Journalists reporting from within Basra and Baghdad face the same lethal risks as the civilians. It requires raw courage to report from these Ground Zeros of Iraq, where it is most difficult and dangerous. But this is where the main story is, not in an army tent, an abandoned camp or in a column of tanks. Truth lies in villages and towns, free floating and changing, in rebellions and downfalls, reverberating in the hearts of people and the wreckage that surrounds them. Truth is protean and multi-dimensional.

So for any network to claim that they are showing the real, reliable or complete picture of this war is absurd.

The problem with embedded journalism is that it's not independent. And the networks are not honest about admitting this. Embeds have to depend on the military for everything—their movement, access, logistics, accommodation. Security is cited to restrict mobility. This is a valid concern. But security can also be a smokescreen to veil reality. Besides, embeds simply cannot report effectively with soldiers breathing down their necks. They are nose-led to successes, shielded away from failures. If they criticise or expose troop failures, they are denied access next time around. The pressures are as intense as they are subtle. It is unpatriotic to show their dead or dying soldiers. It dampens their morale and boosts the enemy's. It is patriotic to show their successes. It boosts their morale and dampens the enemy's. Embeds' ground realities thus pave way for one-sided, exaggerated and distorted views of the war. It is also unfair. Other than "can't disclose their location", which lends a misplaced mystique, anchors don't explain these innate restrictive ground-rules surrounding embeds. But they repeatedly warn about restrictions on reporters in Baghdad. Embeds report that the Saddam regime's announcements about casualties or resistance "cannot be independently verified", but never voice that disclaimer when they report the US military's claims.

Embedded journalism has contributed tremendously to the worldwide accusation that the American and British media is partisan and patriotic. Embedded journalism is also responsible for the high degree of misreporting. Goof-ups have been too many and well-documented about Shia rebellions that didn't erupt or how Basra fell or didn't quite. Very quickly, embedded journalists lost their credibility because they became tools in the hands of their military, "a force multiplier". They allowed themselves to be used as weapons of mass distraction. Uri Avnery, an Israeli journalist, calls this "presstitution"—"In the Middle Ages, armies carried their prostitutes. In the Iraq war, American and British armies are accompanied by journalists." Embeds have legitimised, even glamourised, mouthpiece journalism. They have no access to the local milieu, civilians or independent verifications. They trot into Baghdad like a horse-with-blinkers, giving us their tunnel vision of the war. Arguably, what issues forth from them is not journalism, but pillow talk.The term "embedded" is unfortunate for many reasons, not least because it connotes and denotes that these journalists are in bed with the establishment. In a democracy, media and the establishment can't be bedfellows. Even, or especially in war, the establishment cannot expect journalists to be allies. The media is a watchdog, not a poodle lapping at the heels of the establishment.

Embedded journalism is unbalanced and propagandist, though not compulsorily inaccurate or false. But it certainly isn't comprehensive, nor the whole picture. All it does is give you a thin wedge of the story. Just because the stars of US and UK TV journalism are embedded and given massive airtime, it should not lead anyone to mistake this thin slice of war to be the most important one. Like Bush and Rumsfeld, western media executives too miscalculated. They didn't realise the main theatre of war this time too would be in Baghdad and other cities, not in the invading columns of tanks and jets. They assumed their task would be to provide live coverage of a smooth straight run into Baghdad and to a rousing public welcome.

Reporters should accompany military offensives to get the other side of the story. But they have to place it in context and not become fettered mouthpieces reporting one segment of the conflict. Equal, if not more, importance should be given to the other segments of war. Ideally, embeds should be short engagements with the reporter filing the story after getting off the military bandwagon. But the logic of 24-hour networks doesn't permit that. Being embedded for long periods makes journalists vulnerable to a kind of Stockholm syndrome. Just as victims become sympathetic to their kidnappers, especially when treated kindly, embeds develop close bonds with their hosts. Their ability to function, indeed to survive, depends on their good relations with the military. This parasitism, this incestuousness and restrictiveness is unnatural and dangerous. It's also detrimental to fearless, independent, professional journalism.