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burg, Pa., followed from start to fi n- ish the deployment of a Pennsylvania National Guard brigade based at Fort Indiantown Gap. Detrow spent a month in Iraq bouncing from one unit to another, getting to know the soldiers and telling their stories to listeners back home. “We got a lot of positive response,


both from people with ties to the soldiers and people who heard about it through our station,” Detrow says. “I came away with a lot of respect for what these guys were doing over there and the day-to-day mis- sions they had to carry out.”


Embedding offers access Reporters such as Detrow, Gor- don, and Tyson frequently embed


Combat correspondents made an impact during the Vietnam War. Peter Arnett (left) won a Pulitzer Prize — and created con- troversy — with his reporting; (above) Walter Cronkite’s cover- age reportedly influenced President Lyndon B. Johnson.


A Brief History of Combat Journalism


Combat reportage in the U.S. dates back to the Revolutionary War, when local papers published news of battles between colonists and the British military. Few papers had reporters at the scene, however, so the news usually was secondhand and frequently inaccurate. Historians suggest the first embedded journalist was James Bradford, a Louisiana newspaper editor and publisher who covered the War of 1812 by enlisting with Gen. Andrew Jackson. By the Civil War, reporters were more than willing to follow soldiers onto


the battlefield. An estimated 500 journalists covered the four-year conflict, with many of the major newspapers devoting tremendous resources to the story. The New York Herald, for example, had a total of 63 writers report- ing from the field. World War II proved the value of embedded journalists, with the likes of Scripps-Howard columnist Ernie Pyle (right) and Time Magazine cor- respondent Bill Walton reporting from the front lines. Though their reports sometimes were censored by the military, they managed to convey both the horror of war and the courage of the men and women fighting it. The jour- nalistic value of embedding, as well as of unrestricted independent report- ing, continued with coverage of the Vietnam War.


PHOTO: RIGHT, ABOVE RIGHT, AND TOP, GETTY IMAGES; ABOVE LEFT, AP O C TO B E R 2 0 1 0 MI L I T A R Y O F F I C E R 5 9


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