War Coverage Quotes

The job of the reporters in Vietnam was to report the news, whether or not the news was good for America. To the ambassadors and generals, on the other hand, it was crucial that the news be good, and they regarded any other interpretation as defeatist and irresponsible.

I have never been embedded with the American army or, you know, with the big war machine.

When I deployed to Iraq with my fellow soldiers, putting our lives on the line for our country, no one in the media questioned our patriotism because of our religion.

Throughout the lead-up to the war, CNN worked hard to air all sides of the story. We had a regular segment called Voices of Dissent in which we spent time covering antiwar protests and interviewing those who were opposed to the war with Iraq.

What's always got me is the fact that when people talked on the telly about Iraq, before Afghanistan kicked off, you'd get only these public-school-type army officers talking about what was going on out there. I kept thinking, 'Why don't we get the true voice of the squaddie? Why don't we hear from the lads on the battlefield?'

I think 2001 was the year Al Jazeera started to play an international role, in a way. Because in 2001, we were the only TV station located inside Kabul, and every image out of the war in Afghanistan, the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, came through Al Jazeera screen.

Every war I have ever covered – Kosovo, Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Liberia – withstood all diplomatic efforts to end it until Western military action finally forced a resolution.

Fox News's coverage of 9/11 and the war in Iraq improved its ratings, demonstrated its influence, and intensified the controversy over its practices.

The Iraq war is a huge subject and there have been many films about it. But it was when the private contractors started taking over and taking responsibilities from the regular army, which hides the war. You have these private armies of mercenaries acting with immunity for their actions, the worst of which was the Blackwater case where they killed 17 Iraqi civilians and the guys who did it just went home. We [screenwriter Paul Laverty and Loach] felt this deserved a story.

Some day I'd like to cover a war in a country as ugly as war itself.

Continuous coverage of the war in the Persian Gulf will resume in a moment.

I had fallen in love with photography and was making a living doing photographic features for publications such as 'Picture Post,' 'Paris Match' and 'Life' magazine. But in 1939, I saw a huge headline, which I think was in the 'Sunday Express.' It said, 'Danzig - Danger Point of Europe.' I packed up my Leica, got on a train, and went.

The Iraq war fueled distrust of the press from both sides.

But for the media to name their coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq the same as what the Pentagon calls it — everyday seeing 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' — you have to ask: 'If this were state controlled media, how would it be any different?'

One big, glaring difference I can think of between Iraq and Vietnam is the news coverage. During the Vietnam War era, you had TV coverage of the war saturating the airwaves every night, and that coverage wasn't put through a military filter at all.

I just immediately connect everything to the wars I have been covering overseas, and that's not the case back home. I wrongly assumed all Americans at home were as consumed with our troops in Afghanistan as I was abroad.

I cannot tell you how proud watching that [Iraqi] war coverage makes me. I know a lot of people are saying that they think that it's, that you know what we're doing is imperialistic. I watch the way we handle ourselves over there and I've never felt more patriotic in my life.

There's a lot of peer pressure to not do positive stories out of Iraq... I think there's a sense that the administration got a pass during the hot days of war and now that the war is over it's time to even out the deck somewhat.

Of all times in time of war the press should be free.

The media is not at all homogeneous in the way it tells us about war.

If you live in Israel and you see the way life is there and then you go abroad and see the way Israel is reported on, the way that Israel gets reported on night after night is simply pictures of bombings or military actions.

The US military still blames the media for stories and images that turned the American public against the war in Vietnam.

The American people are not as casualty-sensitive as the weenies in the American press are.

If we were in a similar circumstance in the future I would want to make sure that our reporting was at least as diverse as it was during this most recent war.

Each morning we sat reading our copy of the New York Times, the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times and ruminated on their prophecies of doom and quagmire. Then we looked up to see, on television, correspondents actually embedded with our troops, reporting quick advances, one- sided firefights, melting opposition and, finally, welcoming crowds.