I watched Civil War yesterday and even though I generally knew what their job is I was surprised that they were actually in the very middle of the fighting, tagging right behind the soldiers and taking pictures. Why does either side of the conflict just lets them be, especially the side that might be ‘in the wrong’, knowing that they would report on their atrocities?
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I’m not sure how reflective Civil War’s depiction of how embedded press actually operates in the battlefield . I took their closeness in the battle scenes as pretty satirical, especially the final scenes. I felt the whole film’s messaging was poking fun at our over fixation on the media? I dont imagine infantry ever physically encouraging media personnel into the frontline as they did in the film…
Not being exactly at the front of the action is still dangerous as hell though, as mentioned, real war journalists die regularly.
They don’t. Read [Requiem](https://www.setantabooks.com/en-us/products/requiem-by-the-photographers-who-died-in-vietnam-and-indochina-setanta-books) if you want to be crushed by sadness. The juxtaposition of a beautiful country and people captured for its wonder by the same people documenting the fighting in Indochina. :/ And people who had survived so much already. Robert Capa, Larry Burrows. 🙁 It’s dangerous as hell.
They often do get killed. I used to work at Thomson Reuters and the building had a mini museum dedicated to journalism and books featuring the names of every journalist killed on duty since the company was started.
https://www.warmemorialsonline.org.uk/memorial/261790/
As of April 20, 2024, CPJ’s preliminary investigations showed at least 97 journalists and media workers were among the dead in the Israel Gasa war.
https://cpj.org/2024/04/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/amp/
I recently read Marie Colvin’s biography. She lost an eye reporting war, then a decade or so later died in Syria.
They do get killed. Robert Capa died on the job. Tim Hetherington died on the job. So many more have died without having taken a single shot.
This guy just got murdered this week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Bentley
He’s a pro-Putin “journalist” who got merked by Russian troops who thought he was a spy though.
Generation Kill on HBO follows a journalist as he joins a military recon unit during the start if the Iraqi war. The soldiers took steps to protect the journalist during fighting but despite their efforts he almost got killed a couple of times.
The series was based on a book by a journalist who was embedded with a unit in Iraq so I assume it is reasonably accurate.
They get killed all the time. Especially in a certain current day conflict where a certain military force deliberately snipes them
1. By not going near high value targets/the actual front line or attack missions to capture objectives
2. They do get killed. It happens frequently.
Fighting is not always the same. Some areas with intense battle are suicide to go into, while others are technically also front line and contested, but nobody is currently making big moves. Those are safer to report from and generally where war reporters will be.
It’s also bad PR to shoot journalists. They’re civilians and usually belong to an oganizations that will then write about it. But it’s not good protection, sometimes the opposite is true. Nobody can tell tales if there is nobody left to tell the tale.
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