Why Are CNN, ABC, and NBC Reporters Embedding With the Israeli Military?

Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq and a professor at the Columbia Journalism School, noted in an interview that “the original purpose of embedding was to control journalists.” She and Christenson both referenced Phillip Knightley’s classic 1975 book The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker From the Crimea to Vietnam, which describes how the government invented embedded journalism in response to critical coverage of the Vietnam War. In a chapter added in 2004, Knightley wrote that as civilian casualties in Afghanistan passed 5,000, “the Pentagon sought a media strategy that would turn attention back to the military’s role in the war, especially the part played by ordinary American service men and women. This would require getting war correspondents ‘on side.’”

H/T: Council Estate Media

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