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Thursday, June 21, 2007
The Military and the Media
This is a little film David Heathfield made for 18 Doughty Street on how journalists embed themselves with the military and war stories can now be covered by citizen journalists.
"The Indy's Pandora story this morning (see below) has allowed the inner Basher to come to the fore. Alivia Kratke has been asked to "leave the office". She was reduced to tears protesting that she was not the nameless source of the quote in the piece "He makes junior staff sit separately in a dingy bunker with no natural daylight. Lunch breaks are militarily monitored. Morale's miserable."
Who is this 'Basher' of whom Guido speaks ? Perhaps you can shed some light on this, Mr Dale ?
Interesting – some good points raised here. The issue of bias is obviously a big one although many bloggers have emerged in reaction to what they perceive is a biassed media and they have captured some impressive scalps – Dan Rather for one during the last Pesidential election when his story of GWBs National Guard papers were shown up to be forgeries by the blogosphere and, of course, the BBC itself. The trouble with relying on local stringers, especially in Iraq and Gaza is that there is no guarantee that these people will not also have their own agenda but maybe there is room for embedded reporters who are not attached to a particular media outlet and who therefore have a greater freedom to act independently – the supreme example here id Michael Yon http://www.michaelyon-online.com/?BMIDS=17329073-4c7f35f6-101414 who, although he is ex special forces and has an inbuilt sympathy to soldiers nevertheless has not been uncritical of military and political policy. He has recently been embedded with UK troops around Basra and his despatches have been impressive, especially to the soldiers themselves and their families.
"The Indy's Pandora story this morning (see below) has allowed the inner Basher to come to the fore. Alivia Kratke has been asked to "leave the office". She was reduced to tears protesting that she was not the nameless source of the quote in the piece "He makes junior staff sit separately in a dingy bunker with no natural daylight. Lunch breaks are militarily monitored. Morale's miserable."
ReplyDeleteWho is this 'Basher' of whom Guido speaks ? Perhaps you can shed some light on this, Mr Dale ?
Interesting – some good points raised here. The issue of bias is obviously a big one although many bloggers have emerged in reaction to what they perceive is a biassed media and they have captured some impressive scalps – Dan Rather for one during the last Pesidential election when his story of GWBs National Guard papers were shown up to be forgeries by the blogosphere and, of course, the BBC itself.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble with relying on local stringers, especially in Iraq and Gaza is that there is no guarantee that these people will not also have their own agenda but maybe there is room for embedded reporters who are not attached to a particular media outlet and who therefore have a greater freedom to act independently – the supreme example here id Michael Yon http://www.michaelyon-online.com/?BMIDS=17329073-4c7f35f6-101414 who, although he is ex special forces and has an inbuilt sympathy to soldiers nevertheless has not been uncritical of military and political policy. He has recently been embedded with UK troops around Basra and his despatches have been impressive, especially to the soldiers themselves and their families.
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