Embedded Journalism
BBC journalists reflect on the nature of war reporting
BBC World Affairs Producer Stuart Hughes recently gave a talk on war reporting to a summer school at the London School of Economics. He has uploaded his slides and videos onto YouTube. Inevitably there are a few slides which won’t mean much without the benefit of Hughes’s words overlaid but he has included several interviews […]
Afghanistan: the brittle compact between military and media
Vaughan Smith argues that news management by the military is a risky business. Smith founded the Frontline Club in London in 2003 and during the 1990s he ran Frontline Television News. He filmed the only uncontrolled footage of the Gulf War in 1991 after bluffing his way into an active-duty unit while disguised as a […]
Embedded in Afghanistan: “All you can do is give a snapshot”
Embedded journalism in Afghanistan is on the agenda at the Frontline Club this evening. Several journalists are on the panel including Caroline Wyatt, (BBC), Tim Marshall, (Sky News) and the Club’s founder Vaughan Smith. While they’ll be discussing Afghanistan and embedding tonight, The Independent‘s Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent, Kim Sengupta, will be heading back to […]
Embedded with the Taliban
Discussions around embedded journalism in Afghanistan tend to focus on journalists joining up with NATO or U.S. forces but what about the view we get from an embed with the Taliban? In the video below, Norwegian journalist Paul Refsdal risks his life to film Taliban operations with a commander in Eastern Afghanistan. There’s some intriguing […]
Military bloggers turn on Michael Yon after comments about McChrystal
A while ago now I wrote about Michael Yon and the end of his embed with the British Army in Afghanistan. Well it seems the lightning has struck again – only this time much harder. Another Yon embed came to what he regarded as a premature end earlier in the month, but this time rather […]
Embedded journalism in Afghanistan
Yesterday, I travelled up to Coventry for a conversation about embedded journalism in Afghanistan. It was hosted by Coventry University and the BBC’s College of Journalism. I’m not sure I ever really understood the question that was supposed to frame this debate: "Afghanistan: Are we embedding the truth?" (Answers on a postcard etc…) But as […]
MoD apologises to Michael Yon for “misunderstanding”
Yesterday, I suggested there might be an unlikely rapprochement between Michael Yon and the British Ministry of Defence after the row over the end of the journalist’s embed with the British Army in Afghanistan. And that’s clearly what Nick Gurr, the MoD’s Director of Media and Communications, is trying to achieve with this post. Written […]
More on Michael Yon and British Media Operations
Apologies to those of you who are already in October but I’ve been on holiday and want to wrap a few things up from the back end of September. This is one of those things. So if you read about this last week there’s not much new here. But if you haven’t, hopefully it offers […]
Michael Yon to end Afghanistan embeds and go it alone
Independent war reporter Michael Yon has not so much burnt his military embed bridges as completely obliterated them. He claims that the Ministry of Defence has been trying to have him removed from the area of Regional Command (South) and from Thursday he will be reporting unilaterally from Helmand province. Yon was annoyed that his […]
Michael Yon: Ministry of Defence gave me “zero warning”
In an email I received overnight, Michael Yon claims the Ministry of Defence "cut off" his embed with the British Army in Afghanistan with "zero warning and no chance for me to prepare." As I highlighted yesterday, Yon had been embedded with 2 Rifles for the last five weeks. The MoD denied that Yon’s embed […]
The mystery of Michael Yon’s “cancelled” embed
So what’s going on with Michael Yon’s embed with the British Army in Afghanistan? Michael Yon is an independent journalist who has been spending some time with 2 Rifles in Helmand filing dispatches for his website. After writing a post entitled ‘Bad Medicine‘ – a description of a British operation in Sangin, (neatly summarised at […]
The front line in Afghanistan
The BBC’s Ian Pannell and cameraman Fred Scott are on the front line in Helmand. The British troops they film are taking part in Operation Panther’s Claw, which has cost the lives of seven British soldiers in the last week. I picked this up via Dr Ken Payne on the Kings of War blog, […]