And for John Clarke, I am very much trying to get in contact with you - I’m a masters student of TV Journalism who is interested in being part of the Reuters TV team, but I can’t locate an E-mail address. Could one be sent to my address?

Thanks in advance,

Bill Code

I have a question to you: Is there any possibility for local (Iraqi) journalists to embedd with the US-forces? Can other journalists with Arabic background (Palestineans) embedd?

If the answer is yes: What would be an example of an Arabic journalist to embedd with the US-forces?

Thanks your response. We should close off this discussion now as we’ve veered too far off the original subject - embedding - and other topics (such as our use of local journalists)will no doubt be part of future blogs and discussions.

John Clarke

Your questions are real ones that journalists have to deal with all the time.

Regarding D-Day, I think my Dec 12 posting answered this sufficiently:

“journalists covering wars find it very easy to distinguish what might be construed as tactical information another force might make use of (locations, troop numbers etc and refrain from publishing that) from coverage of the battle zone and the human and political implications of that warfare.”

Regarding democracy, I don’t think I’d be crossing any lines of journalistic impartiality to suggest that regardless of individidual politics, the vast majority of journalists (myself included)support democracy, if only out of self-interest - it’s democracy that allows us (and me) to do our job independently and impartially. A more important question perhaps is how you define democracy - there are any number of countries around the world with the external trappings of democracy (such as holding elections), which of course aren’t democratic at all - democracy involves not just elections and political parties, but civil society, an independent judiciary, checks and balances on power, and freedom of speech (in which a free press is implicit). In it’s broadest sense then, journalism is therefore not independent of both (democracy and despotism). It would be a fallacy to think however that you could take the free speech piece out of the democratic equation…without free speech, a free press, the ability of ordinary people to gain information, to question, to criticise and report on government action (including military action), I’d question whether you’d really have a democracy at all.

John Clarke
News Editor, Reuters Television

kind regards
David Long

As a news editor, you’ll not be surprised that I would argue against the suggestion that the news media should be prevented from covering wars simply because one of the participants might not want the public to know what is going on.
Ever since the media has existed, there have been calls to restrict legitimate reporting of war, and the results have rarely been a source of pride in hindsight. In the US, The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed in 1798 because of the possibility of a war with France(that never happened) but they were blatantly used politically to close down newspapers the ruling politicians and judges didn’t like. Abraham Lincoln closed down newspapers he didn’t like, and there were restrictions on freedom of speech in World War One, World War Two, and especially through the Cold War with the McCarthy red scare. The pattern has generally been that American society has regretted these excesses, with the Supreme Court belatedly restoring constitutional values.

The most important recent case was the Court refusing a Nixon administration attempt to suppress the Pentagon Papers in 1974, which detailed the truth behind the Vietnam War. I would find it hard to believe that reporting of Vietnam for example somehow contributed to the US loss in that conflict - indeed, it could be argued that US lives may have been saved by the reporting of the truth, which in part led to the end of the war. I would similarly find it hard to believe that our reporting of the Iraq War has contributed to US military problems there -
journalists covering wars find it very easy to distinguish what might be construed as tactical information another force might make use of (locations, troop numbers etc and refrain from publishing that) from coverage of the battle zone and the human and political implications of that warfare.

There will always be a temptation to try to restrict public information in wartime, and I can understand that sentiment, but the counter argument is very simple - it is exactly when young men and women are going off to fight and die in war, that the public has the most right to know about, and debate the merits of, that government action.

If you are interested, there is a book called “Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from The Sedition Act of 1798 to The War on Terrorism” by Geoffrey Stone, which details the history of this issue.

John Clarke
News Editor, Reuters Television

As soon as we have acts of war in our own countries we claim they are terrorism and something much different from what is happening on the other soil of the War. I do not condone any acts be we might think that the labels that we create only continue to allow people to ignore that other people are experiencing the same fears of WAR as we are.

Other peoples lives are also being destroyed.

Please continue to inform us on both sides as best as possible.

There are methods, details and actions necessary during times of war the public cannot handle and does not need to know of. As horrific and unfortunate as it may be, the public simply cannot fathom the brutality it takes to put down one’s enemy.

I largely blame the inability of the Bush administration to properly conduct this war, along with the prevailing national sentiment against the war and our imminent loss on the media’s unprecedented access to our troops.

Putting everything out there for everyone to see has never been a good idea, and in this case it’s destroying our way of life.