Embedded Reporters

Media–military relations in America have been fraught since the Revolutionary War. The symbiotic relationship that defines the press–government relationship generally applies to the battlefield, with journalists needing access to stories of combat for commercial and professional reasons, and policymakers and military officials needing favorable coverage to marshal public opinion in support of war and counter enemy misinformation. The post–9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and, especially, Iraq introduced a new model of media management from the Pentagon known as embedding, in which reporters were assigned to specific units on the condition that they adhered to a code of conduct that outlined the parameters of what could and could not be included in stories. As the wars in those countries turned into occupations and counterinsurgencies, embedding evolved into ...