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Dear Mr. Robbins, I’ve never written to a movie star before—least of all to one who cares as much as you. That I have contempt in my heart for you disturbs me more than you will at first appreciate. Make no mistake about my feelings. Your feeble political satire about the war in Iraq, Embedded, which you’ve also directed at the Public, has been dressed up as a revolutionary statement. Enough is enough. I usually strain to be polite, but there will be no apologies from me this time. I’m no political animal, but I know smugness when I see...

<p>A Florida company has announced plans to develop a service that would allow consumers to pay for merchandise using microchips implanted under their skin.</p> <p>Applied Digital Solutions CEO Scott Silverman said he believes the company's VeriChip -- a subdermal microchip that uses radio frequency signals to broadcast an identification number to a scanner -- could someday replace credit cards. Under Silverman's plan, rather than swiping a bank card to make purchases, micro-chipped customers would scan themselves using special readers.</p>

Opinion: ColumnsLast modified Friday, January 2, 2004 9:51 PM PST Editor's Corner: Worry takes a respiteBy: MARK WALKER - Staff Writer My sister has a new 24/7 companion these days. It's called worry, and it's a companion a lot of Camp Pendleton spouses will again soon have. For my sister, worry took a welcome respite on Christmas thanks to a reporter from the Tacoma News Tribune in Washington state. My nephew, Staff Sgt. Sean Dack, is in Iraq with the Stryker Brigade, the U.S. Army's new fast-attack fighting force, also known as the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. The brigade...

NEW YORK -- Tim Robbins' new play Embedded, centering on U.S. soldiers and reporters in Iraq -- has opened in Hollywood and runs through Dec. 21 at the Actor's Gang Theater. Robbins interviewed embedded journalist Evan Wright of Rolling Stone as part of his research, along with Anthony Swofford, the Gulf War I veteran who wrote the popular book Jarhead. Cofounder of the Actors Gang in 1981, Robbins is both writer and director of "Embedded," which depicts soldiers getting ready to leave for war in an oil-rich land called "Gomorrah" to fight against the "butcher of Babylon."

<p>CARDIFF, England, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- A study conducted for the BBC of reporters embedded in military units during the Iraq war has produced a mixed verdict.</p> <p>Cardiff University analysts, in a study announced Thursday, concluded such reporters were generally able to preserve their objectivity, but the practice raised serious concerns in several areas.</p>

SEPTEMBER 18, 2003 Praise and Pans for John Burns Book Excerpt Generates Tons of Mail NEW YORK -- This past Monday, E&P Online published an oral history with John Burns, the New York Times correspondent, from the new book Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq (The Lyons Press). Among other things, Burns charged that some reporters in Baghdad curried favor with Saddam Hussein's regime by neglecting to fully expose its many brutalities. Our excerpt inspired wide coverage of Burns' charges in other media this week, and more e-mails to E&P Online than any article in memory, with many hailing...

John Burns, the great New York Times reporter, offers us a brutally blunt assessment of how badly Western correspondents covered Saddam Hussein's regime. His report, excerpted by The Wall Street Journal and Editor & Publisher, is spreading rapidly on the Internet and is bound to have an impact on the public's already low respect for most journalists. The compulsively candid Burns, until recently the New York Times bureau chief in Iraq, wrote his comments for the new book "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq" (The Lyons Press), a collection of first-person accounts by journalists in Iraq. Burns, who has...

<p>The following is an excerpt from John F. Burns's contribution to the book "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq," published this week by The Lyons Press. Mr. Burns is a correspondent for the New York Times.</p> <p>From the point of view of my being in Baghdad, I had more authority than anybody else. Without contest, I was the most closely watched and unfavored of all the correspondents there because of what I wrote about terror whilst Saddam Hussein was still in power.</p>

Veteran New York Times correspondent John Burns claims foreign journalists covering the Iraq war while Saddam Hussein was still in power did not present a true picture of the regime's tyranny because they believed they needed to curry favor with officials in order to gain and maintain access. JohnBurns's comments were excerpted by Editor and Publisher magazine from the newly published Lyons Press book, "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq, an Oral History," by Bill Katovksy and Timothy Carlson. The Times reporter said he put Iraq in a category of totalitarian states all its own, with the possible exception...

War called 'justified' New York Times foreign correspondent John Burns is on record in interviews and in his own stories about dangers in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. In a new oral history, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner went on to say: "This war could have been justified any time on the basis of human rights. Alone. This was a grotesque charnel house." Interviewed May 1 in Baghdad for "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq," Burns added, "There were probably fewer people [who] died in the six weeks since this war began than would have died if Saddam Hussein's killing...

BERLIN (AFP) - US troops which fired on Baghdad's main hotel occupied by journalists, killing two, had called in fighter planes to bomb the building, a German journalist who witnessed the event said on Tuesday. "The tank commander called for support from the air. But he did not know the building was a hotel," said Ulrich Tilgner, on ZDF public television. It was a US journalist, "embedded" with the troops, who alerted them to the fact the Palestine Hotel was used as a base by the international media in Baghdad and the strike was called off, Tilgner said. The...

BAGHDAD, Apr 18, 2003 (Knight Ridder Newspapers - Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service via COMTEX) -- At times, I felt like Bonnie with 1,000 Clydes. Traipsing some 500 miles all over Iraq with the First Battalion, Fourth Marines, and stepping, deliberately or accidentally, into one gunfight after another, I might well have been. The Marine unit I was with was on or very near the front lines for three weeks during the U.S.-led charge to Baghdad. It set off from a tent city in northern Kuwait in mid-March and settled at a cigarette factory in east Baghdad on Wednesday. The road...

Embedded Journal: 'I Went Over to the Dark Side' (Editor's note: This column catches us up on Jules Crittenden's last several days, after he was re-united with his laptop computer and again able to file these reports for Poynter.org.) Tomorrow, I may get to bathe for the first time in over three weeks, not counting several wipe downs. It would be nice, but doesn’t matter much at this point. You’d be surprised how you get used to it, and when I was finally reunited with my gear yesterday, I was able to throw away my week-old underwear and socks, and...

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid couldn't believe the tenacity of the lawmen pursuing them. No matter what they did, Johnny Law was right behind them. They just kept coming. They had never seen such persistence. If you haven't seen the movie, shame on you - now go rent it. It seems our press are asking the same questions. They just can't seem to comprehend the character of the men and women of our armed forces. Last week, Martin Savidge of CNN, embedded with the 1st Marine battalion, was talking with 4 young Marines near his foxhole this morning live...

Hello everyone, Well, here is the latest from your local imbedded media (me). I moved up forward to do casevac and get my helicopter aircraft commander check rides. We were first just north of the Euphrates river. This whole thing is nuts, when you are part of an invading military you do what you want, within reason. We parked our helicopters on a rest stop off ramp on of one of the main highways into Baghdad. By Thursday we were flying into Baghdad to do casevac operations. Most of the people we are pulling out are either enemy or civilians....

The complaints of pro-American bias against the embedded reporters in Iraq, that came not two days into the war, were stunning in their predictability. After all, these are the same people who would be complaining about a lack of access, if the reporters weren’t allowed to accompany the troops. Once again, it’s the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t crowd up to their old tricks again. What’s really bothering these pessimists is that the embedded reporters aren’t telling them the story they want to hear. That is, they’re not confirming all their worst prejudices and suspicions about the U.S. military. The critics want another...

By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, April 4, 2003; 10:48 AM Michael Kelly, the Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large and Washington Post columnist who abandoned the safety of editorial offices to cover the war in Iraq, has been killed in a Humvee accident while traveling with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Peter Arnett is back on the air from Baghdad. Latest news: · World Prepares to Feed Iraqis Hit by War Reuters - 3 minutes ago · Schroeder Softens Anti-War Tone, Sees U.S. Victory Reuters - 4 minutes ago · U.S. Mortuary Receives More Iraq War Dead AP - 5 minutes ago Special Coverage Within days of being fired by the U.S. network NBC, Arnett found an unlikely new audience Thursday: the Dutch-speaking — and hopefully English-comprehending — citizens of northern Belgium. "Thanks Peter Arnett, we are proud to have you on our team," said VTM news anchor...

<p>Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., poked fun at military analysts and embedded reporters in a Wednesday night speech. At a fundraising event for the Juvenile Diabetes Relief Fund, McCain said he liked the military analysts who are appearing on network and cable news shows talking about the war on Iraq, but wondered where they all come from.</p>

April 3, 2003 Release Number: 03-04-43 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE USE OF THURAYA PHONES DISCONTINUED CAMP DOHA, Kuwait -- Recent intelligence reporting indicates Thuraya satellite phone services may have been compromised. For this reason, Thuraya phones use has been discontinued on the battlefields in Iraq. The phones now represent a security risk to units and personnel on the battlefield. This impacts the more than 500 Thuraya phones that were being used by U.S. Forces in the CENTCOM area as well as the media traveling with units in Iraq. Military units have been directed to assist journalists, to the greatest extent possible,...