War Correspondents, the Military, and Propaganda: Some Critical Reflections

Abstract

In this study, I discuss how war correspondents have fared in coverage of the interventions into Iraq of two Bush administrations, pointing out how some war correspondents have been instruments of state and military propaganda, while others have been honorable critics of official propaganda and outright lies. In a concluding section, I discuss how emergent digital technologies and media expand the possibilities of critical war coverage and destabilize the position of war correspondents within traditional journalism. At stake is assessing the role of war correspondents in the contemporary moment and analyzing their performance during recent U.S.-Iraq wars in an era of new media and forms of journalism.