Free Republic

A panel of journalists who have recently spent time covering the war in Ukraine discusses the situation on the ground there and in the surrounding region, and policy considerations for the United States and NATO allies. Speakers .....

TAPACHULA, Mexico – The migrant caravan headed here to the US is starting to weaken as some tired, hungry, and sick travelers are deciding to return home. But roughly 5,000 people are pressing on. Some are asking questions about who is in the caravan, so CBN News asked our contributing correspondent Chuck Holton to check it out. He caught up with the caravan in the Mexican city of Tapachula. "I want to try and clarify some of what you've been hearing in the news media about this caravan moving north into the United States. First of all, the people in...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lly2AfFW8kw

No one reporting on the Global War on Terror has done a more effective or honest job than Michael Yon. For one thing he knows the military, having served in U.S. Army Special Forces. With his camera and his pen, he enabled readers to see aspects of war corporate media could or would not divulge. On Saturday, April 10, Yon posted a message on his magazine-style website. “[A] message came from military that this embed has ended.” He headed off to pack his bags.

Like soldiers, journalists know they risk their lives when they venture into war zones. And, like most soldiers, they feel the worst won't happen to them. But sometimes it does -- and it happened to Calgary Herald reporter Michelle Lang and four soldiers who were killed by a massive roadside bomb in Afghanistan, as the old year was dying and a new year about to begin. I did not know Michelle Lang -- but in a way, all of us in the news business knew her. We feel we have lost one of our own, just as soldiers feel they've...

It is said that generals always fight the last war. But when David Petraeus came to town it was senators – on both sides of the aisle – who battled over the Iraq war of 2004-2006. That war has little in common with the war we are fighting today. I may well have spent more time embedded with combat units in Iraq than any other journalist alive. I have seen this war – and our part in it – at its brutal worst. And I say the transformation over the last 14 months is little short of miraculous. The change...

The Other Fallujah Reporter Posted By Michael J. Totten On December 16, 2007 @ 2:17 pm “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” — Thomas JeffersonI just returned home from a trip to Fallujah, where I was the only reporter embedded with the United States military. There was, however, an unembedded reporter in the city at the same time. Normally it would be useful to compare what I saw and heard while traveling and working with the Marines with what a colleague saw and heard while working solo....

Operation Iraqi Freedom saw the advent of a practice that revolutionized modern war reporting: the embedding of journalists with frontline combat units in war..."We were offered an irresistible opportunity: free transportation to the front line of the war, dramatic pictures, dramatic sounds, great quotes," said Tom Gjelten of National Public Radio. "Who can pass that up?" ... The most spectacular recent case of a journalist with an antiwar mindset being completely overwhelmed into a change of heart by American soldiers, according to the public affairs officer, was a Greek public television reporter who had been embedded with an infantry unit...

It's okay for the AP to claim four mosques were torched that weren't (the Washington Post claimed “at least five”), or that six Sunnis were horribly burned alive who weren't, or for the Los Angeles Times to report that an airstrikethat never occurred killed dozens of women and children. But when a citizen embed (albeit one attached to a magazine) wants in, he gets sent to the lemon stand.

My blogging has been lighter than usual the past few weeks due to family time, Fox News duties, holiday chaos, holiday illness--and, yes, planning for a trip to Iraq. As you know, ex-CNN newsman Eason Jordan extended an invitation to me three weeks ago to go to Iraq to investigate the Associated Press/"Jamil Hussein" story. He offered to pay for a trip. As you'll recall, I asked if he would offer to cover travel and security costs for Curt from Flopping Aces--who broke open the story of AP's dubious sources on Thanksgiving weekend and continues to lead the blogospheric search...

Last summer, the media featured two stories about our forces in Iraq. The first was the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the world’s most rabid terrorist, who was cornered and killed by special-operations troops working with the Air Force and the Army. For years, journalists had taunted military briefers about their inability to find and finish off Zarqawi. As long as he was on the loose, the terror master was portrayed as a dark, defiant giant. After we got him, the moment of triumph was brief. Within 48 hours, pundits-for-hire assured Americans that Zarqawi really didn’t matter that much and...

EDITORS NOTE: AP writer Ryan Lenz is embedded with the 3rd Brigade of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division in Iraq and will be filing periodic reports on life in that unit. --- SUNDAY, Dec. 11, 5:15 p.m. local. BEIJI, Iraq. Going outside the wire. It's a slang expression for leaving the security of a military base in Iraq to travel on highways pocked with holes from roadside explosions. Silence runs deep during that moment soldiers cross the barrier lined with concertina wire and guard posts. At first their silence struck me as boredom, which sometimes it surely is if...

I don't know if this is allowed on FR (sorry if I'm violating something here), but there was a compelling new book/author being featured this morning on FOX and Friends by free-lance New York-based journalist Steven Vincent entitled, "In the Red Zone." Vincent, a swarthy and dangerous-looking guy embedded himself among the people of Bagdhad, not in the safety of the Green Zone, but out in the town. Talking to hundreds of Iraqis over months in late '03 and early '04, the premise of his book as he explained it today is that current journalists aren't reporting the war in...

From: [Chattanooga Times Free Press military reporter] Pitts, Lee Sent: Wednesday, December 8, 2004 4:44 PM To: [Chattanooga Times Free Press staffers] Subject: RE: Way to go I just had one of my best days as a journalist today. As luck would have it, our journey North was delayed just long enough see I could attend a visit today here by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. I was told yesterday that only soldiers could ask questions so I brought two of them along with me as my escorts. Before hand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of...

"Wellington once observed that "nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won." Nothing about it is nice; but better them than us."   -- T.C. WretchardAs many of Freepers know, there's a very significant battle going on in Fallujah right now. Want a one-stop shop that will help you keep track of media reports so you know what's going on as things develop, and link you to some of the smartest background analysis around so you understand the why and how, as well as the what? OK, you got it. One power-packed briefing, in depth...

Often, on waking, my first thoughts roam to the desert, like a waking dream. Not the Mojave Desert of my Antelope Valley home, but the Iraqi desert where our local National Guard troops traverse the sand and pitted roads in convoys that sometimes fall under attack from the thugs who once served Saddam Hussein. Nothing exists out there as an attraction. As winter months end, the temperatures will climb from the daytime 90s past the 100-degree mark, then past 110, 120, 130, and finally past 140 degrees. Troops live in shelters ranging from palaces of the former dictator to canvas...

NEW YORK Dennis O'Brien, a military reporter with The Virginian-Pilot and a former Iraq war embed who died over the weekend, apparently committed suicide, according to sources in and outside the paper -- sparking speculation that his war experience might have contributed to his death. The Virginian-Pilot reported Sunday that O'Brien, 35, had died Saturday, without revealing a cause. [snip]...Several sources, however, said the reporter had taken his life, and suggested his time in Iraq may have played a role. "I think it was a contributing factor," said one colleague, who requested anonymity. "He saw some awful things while he...

The light in which the U.S. media portrayed the war in Iraq varied consistently with the location of the reporter throughout the war, speech professor Jim Kuypers said yesterday. Kuypers' emphasis was on the discrepancy between reports from reporters embedded in combat in Baghdad and reporters covering the war from within the United States. He cited differences in reports of Iraqi resistance, civilian reception of allied troops, conditions of combat and international support for the war. Troops embedded in Iraq had tendencies to report more optimistic conditions than reporters in the U.S., Kuypers said. Their reports cited the weakness of...

<p>Much of the discourse on Iraq continues to be dominated by myths - provable falsehoods that happen to confirm the prejudices of the antiwar crowd and/or those disposed to think our mission is failing now.</p> <p>The mythos now culminates in the notion that a patriotic Iraqi "resistance" is slowly gaining ground against a hated occupation. But the distortions go back much farther.</p>

 101900Z FEB 03 FM SECDEF WASHINGTON DC//OASD-PA// TO SECDEF WASHINGTON DC//CHAIRS// AIG 8777 HQ USEUCOM VAIHINGEN GE//PA// USCINCEUR VAIHINGEN GE//ECPA// JOINT STAFF WASHINGTON DC//PA// SECSTATE WASHINGTON DC//PA// CJCS WASHINGTON DC//PA// NSC WASHINGTON DC WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM INFO SECDEF WASHINGTON DC//OASD-PA/DPO//  UNCLAS  SUBJECT: PUBLIC AFFAIRS GUIDANCE (PAG) ON EMBEDDING MEDIA DURING POSSIBLE FUTURE OPERATIONS/DEPLOYMENTS IN THE U.S. CENTRAL COMMANDS (CENTCOM) AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY (AOR).  REFERENCES: REF. A. SECDEF MSG, DTG 172200Z JAN 03, SUBJ: PUBLIC AFFAIRS GUIDANCE (PAG) FOR MOVEMENT OF FORCES INTO THE CENTCOM AOR FOR POSSIBLE FUTURE OPERATIONS.  1. PURPOSE. THIS MESSAGE PROVIDES GUIDANCE, POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ON EMBEDDING NEWS MEDIA DURING POSSIBLE FUTURE OPERATIONS/DEPLOYMENTS IN THE CENTCOM AOR. IT CAN BE ADAPTED FOR USE IN OTHER UNIFIED COMMAND AORS...