Embedded reporting: asset or liability?

By Daniel West

Children wait with their mothers for food to be distributed by soldiers of El Salvador's Battalion Cuscatlan near the Anwar district of al Kut.

In today’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the neutrality of the Western press is rarely respected by insurgent forces, rendering independent reporting very difficult, dangerous and prohibitively expensive. However, it is still necessary for media outlets to cover the war. One widely used solution is the practice implemented by the U.S. military called embedded reporting. Reporters and photographers live and work with troops in the war zones, covering operations directly, as they happen. While this mitigates the dangers of war reporting somewhat, it has drawn significant fire from critics who argue that it is impossible for reporters living and working in such close quarters to maintain a neutral and unbiased perspective or to give any kind of larger perspective in their reports.

It is difficult to argue with the access and opportunities presented by the embed process to facilitate widespread coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Significant pitfalls exist for the unwary journalist, however. The two most significant drawbacks are the close living quarters and the narrow perspective of the embedded journalist. They can only report on a small portion of the situation in which they find themselves, and the close living quarters and difficult situations pose a very real hazard to objective reporting.

“Living in such close quarters — and the intensity of being shoulder-to-shoulder during combat — forges a rare level of kinship and loyalty among men. As a journalist, you are not exempt from this bond, which makes remaining entirely objective difficult,” wrote Finbarr O’Reilly, a Reuters photographer, in The New York Times’ Lens photography blog while embedded with U.S. Marines in Afghanistan.

Others don’t feel it is possible to take a truly neutral perspective while embedded. “We were embedded. We were embedded with military units. I’m very much against embedding because that’s not our job — to be embedded. Our job is to report on them with no obligations, none whatsoever,” said Seymour Hersh, an investigative journalist who has written exposés on the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib scandal, in an address at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva, as quoted in The New York Times’ At War blog. “And I know that puts me in a minority with a lot of people, but when you are embedded with a military unit, the inevitable instinct is to not report everything you see, because you get to know them, they are protecting you, etc.,” he continued.

Ashley Gilbertson, who worked as a photographer in Iraq, first unilaterally as a freelancer, then for The New York Times, described a similar situation with a real-world example from his experience embedded with the Army. In Samarra, he encountered a situation where things got out of control after the discovery of some incriminating booklets.

“Before a semicircle of American soldiers, Money Mike [the platoon’s interpreter] grabbed the suspect, threw him against a wall and shouted him to the ground until the man cowered below him like a scared dog. Mike took a baton he had looted and beat the man hitting his arms and stabbing his ribs and stomach. He then drew a bayonet from his belt and started threatening the man with renewed fury. Lt. Tabankin finally stopped him with the words, ‘I hate to say this Mike, but put the knife away ... I mean, I have to be frank: There’s a reporter here.’ I looked the lieutenant in the eyes and lied, ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t photograph it.’”

In that case, Gilbertson had actually not taken the picture. When he realized it later, he described his feelings this way: “I had grown too close to the platoon and had unintentionally protected them. I was incredibly upset. I most certainly would have filed the image to the paper. ... That failure to photograph Mike with the bayonet was the first and last time I allowed camaraderie in war to obstruct my work as a photojournalist — on an embed or anywhere.”

Marc Santora has covered Iraq from both the embedded perspective and the unilateral perspective. Of the unilateral perspective, he writes: “As the name suggests, we were most definitely on our own. That was the point. While embedding provided one view of the war as it was waged — from the command on down — being outside the confines of the military allowed us to tell the story from the perspective of the Iraqi civilians.”

On the other hand, he states: “I have been back to Iraq many times since those early, chaotic days ... I have also embedded with the military on many occasions, and it is obvious that the ability to travel side by side with the young men and women fighting the war is essential. We needed to be with them not only to tell their stories but also because as Iraq descended into anarchy, traveling in certain parts of the country was only possible if embedded."

A reporter on the ground only sees a small slice of the war. However, with some ingenuity, courage and perseverance, reporters can get through to the meat of the story, and in some cases get all sides — even from an embed. Take the example of New York Times reporter Sam Dagher, who covered a story in Mosul, initially from a military embed. He first used his embed to cover the military perspective of the story, but in order to cover it fully, he needed the political facet as well. To gain that, he wrote, he had to use some contacts and take some risks. He finally was able to reach both Sunni Arab and Kurdish factions in the city, in order to fully cover the story.

That type of effort may provide the template for those reporters covering stories that are best served by covering all perspectives.

Again, those who have actually spent time embedded argue that, even though the perspective may be somewhat limited, it is quite valuable. Each small slice of the picture represented by an embedded reporter is part of the whole, and when they are pieced together, they have the potential to provide a fairly accurate representation of events in Iraq and Afghanistan. The contributions made by independent and unilateral journalists are also key ingredients for any news outlet that seeks to fully cover the wars.

Another criticism of embedded journalism lies in the amount of control the military has over an embedded journalist. Popular perception likens the military’s role to that of a censor.

Looking back to his early embeds, New York Times' Steven Lee Myers said, “Embedding then, as now, imposed restrictions on reporters. We were not allowed to report exact location and size of units, their planned operations or the names of those killed. ... In the end, I never encountered an effort to restrict anything I wrote, though an officer complained that I described how two American tanks had been destroyed. I felt I never compromised my obligation to be fair and honest. And some of what I wrote as a result was hardly flattering to the American war effort.”

Sebastian Junger, in his book, “War,” written after a series of embeds in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, relates an instance of misunderstanding: “Once at a dinner party back home I was asked, with a kind of knowing wink, how much the military had ‘censored’ my reporting. I answered that I’d never been censored at all and that once I’d asked a public affairs officer to help me fact-check an article and he’d answered, ‘Sure, but you can’t actually show it to me — that would be illegal.’”

The media and the military are brought together on an embed and are often uneasy companions with wildly different goals. However, both sides gain from the arrangement — the media through strong content and the military through some measure of control. The military would often like more control, as when objective media members present a story, “warts and all,” but in the end, the arrangement is mutually beneficial. The military understands that, and the media ground rules state very specifically what may not be covered in the interest of security.

Besides, as Myers states in his blog, “If the military tries too hard to control the message, as my colleague Tim Arango and I have experienced on recent embeds, that’s just one more obstacle to overcome in the reporting, one more thing to report.”

Embedded reporters must tread a thin line, striving constantly to maintain their objectivity and to provide balanced and full coverage of their stories. The ethical and professional considerations are many, and the potential for abuse is very real. However, with the extreme hazards and costs inherent in independent journalism in an area where journalists are not recognized as neutral, it is the best option available.

In the end, journalists are responsible for their own work. They must be able to recognize when their objectivity may become compromised and take steps to prevent that. They must recognize when the perspective they are offered is not deep enough. If journalists do not have the integrity and the professional pride to do so, they will not provide neutral, balanced coverage anywhere — much less in a combat zone. The embed process provides a valuable opportunity for direct access to the troops on the ground during the longest war in American history. This cannot be ignored. The tool is not a perfect one, but it is the best one available right now.

Daniel West is a 2010 J-School photo graduate and U.S. Army veteran. Click here to view a slideshow of his photos.