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JOB AND LIFE AT STAKE WITH EMBEDDED
JOURNALISM
By Sara Clark
Embedded journalists not only risk their lives, but also the status of their country when they report on the war.
The embedded journalist, that is, a journalist who travels with the troops, is an outlet to the world from the secluded battle zone. He reports on everything from casualties to his current distance from his designation.
Brig. Gen. John Clark said that before the journalists are sent over, they are put through a one week training course to learn survival techniques and defense mechanisms.
“They need to know how to handle themselves,” Clark said. “Because the troops certainly are not going out of their way to protect them.”
Already, one journalist has been fired from his position with the National Broadcast Company (NBC) when he agreed to a 15 minute interview with Iraqi
television.During the interview, Peter Arnett, a reporter for National Geographic, NBC, and MSNBC, said the United State’s plan to quickly attack Iraq has failed due to unexpected Iraqi resistance.
In the segment that was aired in the U.S., Arnett was quoted as saying, “America is reappraising the battlefield, delaying the war. Now they are trying to write another plan.”
A spokesman for the White House reacted to Arnett’s judgment by saying he acted in “a position of complete ignorance.”
Geraldo Rivera also was thought to have aided the Iraqi’s when he filed a report that showed him sketching in the sand, the position of himself and the 101st Airborne division.
However, Rivera denies these reports and said that his former employer has made the claims in an attempt to get even with him.
Bradley Freeman, a professor of communications at Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY, conducted a discussion on the two publicized journalists.
“Rivera tries to make it look like he’s in a place of danger,” Freeman said. “He’ll stand in the middle of troops and tell them to make it look like they’re firing their guns, but then when the camera stops he’ll talk to them normally.”
Rachel Fantauzzi, a student at Marist College, said journalists as experienced as those in Iraq should be more aware of their responsibilities as an embedded journalist.
“We see one journalist in America asking his embedded colleague in Iraq where he is located,” Fantauzzi said. “In one instance a reporter actually told him that he knew he couldn’t release that type of information. But they keep asking anyways.”
NBC justified Arnett’s determination and said it was wrong for him to grant an interview with state-controlled Iraqi TV, particularly in a time of war and it was wrong for him to discuss his personal observations and opinions.
This is not the first occasion of an American embedded journalist who has exploited an aspect of the United States.
Arnett was the center of confrontation by the first Bush administration after the 1991 Golf War, when the White House said that Arnett had become a conveyor of propaganda.
And in 1998, Arnett was fired from his Cable News Network (CNN) reporting position for accusing the 1970 American forces of using sarin gas on a Laotian village to kill U.S. defectors.
“Now the Iraqis have thrown the CNN crew out of Baghdad, and I’m still here,” Arnett said in an interview with TV Guide.