War Correspondents Quotes

I've read a lot of war writing, even World War I writing, the British war poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves's memoir 'Goodbye to All That,' and a civilian memoir, 'Testament of Youth,' by Vera Brittain.

It is very dangerous to write the truth in war, and the truth is very dangerous to come by.

There was a nuisance in the service known as the army correspondent.

From Matthew Brady and the Civil War through, say, Robert Capa in World War II to people like Malcolm Brown and Tim Page in Vietnam. There was, seems to me, a kind of war-is-hell photography where the photographer is actually filming from life.

I respect journalism. I was always very aware of journalism from a very broad point of view, but I'd say my baptism by fire was doing the Donald Margulies play Time Stands Still. That for me was a real education because I spent a lot of time with some incredible journalists, war reporters particularly - Bob Woodruff, Dexter Filkins - people who were very helpful in painting the picture for me and reading the accounts of people and what they experienced, a lot of PTSD.

Public opinion wins war. I have always considered as quasi-staff officers, correspondents accredited to my headquarters.

General Sherman looked upon journalists as a nuisance and a danger at headquarters and in the field, and acted toward them accordingly, then as throughout his great war career.

I never felt in competition with anybody in war photography. You're lucky to get your ass in and out again. It's as simple as that. It's the easiest photography in the world to shoot somebody who's been shot up. It doesn't take a genius. That's easy. The only thing you need to know is your photography. Get in and if you're lucky get out. And get as close as you can get.

Take a newspaper account of Waterloo or Trafalgar, with all the small advertisements: it seems much more real than reading about it in a history book.

It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours.

Brady's Photographic Corps, heartily welcomed in each of our armies, has been a feature as distinct and omnipresent as the corps of balloon, telegraph, and signal operators. They have threaded the weary stadia of every march; have hung on the skirts of every battle scene; have caught the compassion of the hospital, the romance of the bivouac, the pomp and panoply of the field review.

Being a journalist seemed the ideal way of both having a job and experiencing the world, especially for anyone with a sense of adventure.

If your pictures are not good enough, it’s because you are not close enough.

Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice

The Vietnam war was the first television war. You didn’t have to imagine it any more. You could see it.... Television changed the way war was covered forever.

It's harder and harder for journalists to get out in the field and interview Iraqis. The Web can get these voices out easily and cheaply.

Reporters were all part of the war effort. They went along with it, and not only that, they abetted it.…It is in the things not mentioned that the untruth lies.…They wrote only a part of the war

For my part though silent I have at times felt that I would prefer to be governed by Davis, Beauregard & Bragg, [than] to be thus abused by a set of dirty newspaper scribblers who have the impudence of Satan. They come into camp, poke around among the lazy shirks & pick up their camp Rumors & publish them as facts.... They are a pest and Shall not approach me, and I will treat them as spies, which in truth they are.

It seems a waste, to me, for the sake of getting more colorful news, to send these men, who are not in any way concerned with the war [Spanish Civil War] which is going on and the principles at stake, into such positions of danger. Three men, two Americans and an Englishman, have died, and with apparent pride a formal announcement is made to the effect that we should realize what dangers correspondents go through to give us the news. To be sure, these men, not only go willingly, but often are anxious for the assignment. Personally, I would prefer to have those three men alive and a little less accurate and colorful news, and I am quite sure the majority of the people in the United States feel the same way. If men must die, let it be for their own convictions, not because they are sent out so we may read or see something more startling in our newspapers and newsreels.

Yesterday, the Pentagon warned U.S. reporters that they should get out of Baghdad as soon as possible because the U.S. could attack at any time. Then the Pentagon added, 'Whatever you do, don't tell Geraldo.'

Historically, war journalists have embedded themselves with one side, which means the greatest threat comes from the clearly delineated enemy of that side.

Wars tend to be very public things, they are visible. There are correspondents traveling with the troops and you get daily dispatches.

I've been in wars and in riots and hung out of many helicopters in the early days. And there's a detachment that happens when you look through the camera. You're looking for the shot.

I learned early on that war forms its own culture. The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many years. It is peddled by mythmakers- historians, war correspondents, filmmakers, novelists, and the state- all of whom endow it with qualities it often does possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty.

For me going to war offers me the ability to write about apparently very alien, sometimes hated or despised people, who've been objectified in a way that restores their humanity. Hopefully for my readers, that denies them the ability to objectify them. I think that's the point. If you can do that, that's a good thing.