published by Donald I. Fine, Inc.
INTRODUCTION: [INTRO MUSIC], OPENING CREDITS
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:02:28] If you really think your
better off not knowing, you will lose
your history. And you'll leave it to
somebody else to come in and write
something, that they call history,
but is a bunch of lies. This is
about what you the viewer you the
reader get to see.
WARREN ZINN: [00:02:48] You're given this
privilege to document history. You
have 1/500th of a second to capture a
moment in time and then show the rest
of the world. You have that
opportunity to document history, a
regime as it's collapsing, countries
dividing, whatever it is, and show
the rest of the world what happened.
MARK FARAM: [00:03:05] Your job out there is to
report the truth, report what's going
on, and try to get the complete
picture back to the people in the
United States about what is
happening.
ROGER PETERSON: [00:03:16] Reporters, we've gotta be
the eyes and ears of the people.
We've gotta show you what is going on
out there. And if we're unable to do
that, then something is lost. And
we're not, we're not living in the
free society that we should be.
TITLE GRAPHIC: WAR & TRUTH
GEN. DREW DAVIS: [00:04:17] The military budget is
about one third of our national
expenditure. So we have the national
treasure at stake, and a third of the
taxpayers dollars paid to the federal
government go to the military. And
secondly, it's the sons and daughters
of the American people who become our
soldiers, sailors, airmen, and
Marines. So we have the national
treasure in terms dollars and the
national treasure in terms of people
that are at stake, and for those
reasons, I believe the American
public deserves to have the best
reporting it can get about its
military.
JIM MICHAELS: [00:05:01] There was a lot of, hand
ringing during and after, that embeds
were only gonna see a small piece of
the war.
(MORE)
2.
JIM MICHAELS: And, to me, it's naïve to think
anything otherwise, I mean, your,
your, that's what, that's what
privates see, that's what sergeants
see, they see a small slice of the
war, what's out in front of them. It
shouldn't have come as a surprise to
anyone, that the guy out on the front
lines with the third infantry
division, is not gonna be able to
write, the big sweeping picture of
what's going on.
REAR ADM. T.
MCCREARY: [00:05:35] We have a tremendously
independent press. It's what our
democracy is built on that health of
free information to the people, and
that's what we fight and defend. So,
you know, it's important for people
to know that, that independence,
really, is always there and it's a
good bell weather, I think for them
to help make their judgments on
whether they support or don't support
something that goes on. So I think
that's what's important for people to
know, is that they did get a huge
insight into the battlefield, even if
it was various, soda straw views.
GEN. DREW DAVIS: [00:06:17] I personally believe that
one of the most important beats that
journalists can cover is the
military. And for at least a decade,
that beat has gone neglected, is
probably the best word I could use.
JOHN ROMELSER: [00:06:33] I think beginning with the
war in Vietnam there developed an
adversarial relationship between the
media and the military and the U.S.
government. Because as we know the
Vietnam war was reported in living
rooms of people on television with
graphic accounts in newspapers.
STEVE KATZ: [00:06:53] The ARMY in particular
felt that the news media exposures of
battles and deaths in Vietnam led to
a loss of public confidence at home.
So that essentially it was the
protesters against the military and
that the media in the minds of the
ARMY cost them the war.
JIM MICHAELS: [00:07:15] The attitude back then was
very much shaped by officers who had
come up through Vietnam. To put it
bluntly, they saw the media at best
as a nuisance. But at worst as the
enemy.
3.
ROGER PETERSON: [00:07:34] When we were in Vietnam,
if you're with this company and you
here that another company is engaged,
we could break away and get over to
them, if it were physically possible.
I didn't see any of that in Iraq.
You were with a unit, and that was
it, your stuck with them. Something
else is going on down the road, and I
heard several of the correspondents
say this, "we know there's a battle
down here, but we can't see it from
here." I don't know, maybe it was
coincidental, but it seemed like
there were a lot of battles with
units that did not have embedded
correspondents with them. For all
the people who were in the field, all
the camera crews and everything, I
saw very little of what I would call
real combat footage.
BRIAN WHITMAN: [00:09:23] You know it's really
inescapable to spend any sense of
time with U.S. soldiers in the field
and not walk away without seeing how
well trained, how well equipped U.S.
forces are.
JIM MICHAELS: [TRAILER 00:01:48] Sometimes the
truth on the front lines is a much
more real picture of what's going on
than what you get at the Pentagon.
WARREN ZINN: [00:03:40] Before the war, I was
outside talking to a soldier, he
asked me who I was gonna be embedded
with, and I said I was gonna be
embedded with 37 cavalry. And he
kinda stopped for a second and paused
and looked at me and says, "you have
balls of steel." You know and I
looked at him and said, "why?" and he
says, "those guys are crazy." He
said, "if you want it, you're gonna
see it when you're with them." And
we saw it, I mean we, after about two
days of the war, it was non-stop
combat everyday, bullets ricocheting
off the Bradley, the Humvee I was
riding in had a bullet hole that went
right into the trunk halfway through
the Humvee, so it was a pretty
intense unit to be with.
GRAPHIC: WARREN ZINN BIO PAGE
MARK MAZZETTI: [00:09:40] After spending a few days
butting heads with the commander and
the staff, we were able to get
unbelievable and unprecedented access
(MORE)
4.
MARK MAZZETTI: to how the war was run. The day the
war started we were briefed on the
entire war plan. We were briefed
about what the Marines going to do
and how they were going to do it.
GEN. DREW DAVIS: [00:09:56] It truly was an
international coverage of the war.
We had embedded with us Al Jazeera,Al
Hiraht, Abbudabi News, Times of
London, Agency France Presse. And
the world got to see images come back
of British and American warriors
liberating the country.
GRAPHIC: War, the ultimate story
WARREN ZINN: [00:08:45] Everyone sees war in
movies and war on TV, but to actually
be there and to smell it, and to hear
it, and to feel it, it's a tremendous
feeling. I mean, to be sitting there
with bombs falling 1000 meters away
and shaking the ground around you and
to hear bullets pinging off the side
of the Bradley you're in, to smell
the gun powder of the guns as they're
firing off back at the enemy, it's an
amazing experience.
JOE GALLOWAY:
GRAPHIC: Sig Christenson Bio Page
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:16:13] One night after our troops
had taken this bridge, they were
holding the end of the road. And
hundreds of Iraqi's came down in a
counter attack. At about 2:40 in the
morning, all hell broke loose, RPGs
blew up all around us, firing was
everywhere, the people I was
covering, the close air support crew,
they went off and started calling in
air strikes, and you'd see flashes of
explosions in the distance, and that
was from the A-10's and the F-15's
and the F-16's and the British
aircraft that were dropping bombs on
the Iraqi tanks that were coming down
to engage us. We only had about 100
men there, maybe 10 Bradleys and
tanks all together. It was a small
force. In between them and the Air
force, we drove off hundreds of
Iraqi's and killed hundreds of them
too. And I'm on the ground calling
in adds to my story, talking about
what just happened, talking about the
RPG that blew up just down the street
from the tank or that blew up next to
me.
(MORE)
5.
SIG CHRISTENSON: And in real time, people were seeing
on the Web site, this battle taking
place. Who would've imagined that?
MARK FARAM: [00:10:47] I remember one thing, it
must've been, I don't know if it was
a slow war day, or something like
that, but I remember a journalist who
was in the middle, and got involved
with some wounded civilians and
helped them and, his TV crew was
covering him doing that, and you
know, maybe that was kinda neat, but
then with t.v., you see it over and
over and over again. And it's like,
where were the other kids? Obviously
there was a fight going on, what else
was happening there? That's what I
wanted to see. But, and I think
America gets a little sick of seeing
the journalists, thump their own
chest. You should be seemless. You
should be, you should be transmitting
the story of what's going on to
Americans and they should never know
your there doing it.
NORMAN HATCH BIO
NORMAN HATCH: [00:11:57] To show you how dangerous
and how much you don't realize what's
happening around you, the island was
not much larger than Central Park in
New York. In 76 hours, there were
over 6,000 people killed and 2,000
wounded. And, the magnitude of those
killed were Japanese. The whole
fighting force was eliminated, and we
had somewhere between 7 and 11
prisoners.
SIG CHRISTENSON: [TRAILER 00:01:32] These guys are out
there fighting in your name,and we're
out their risking our lives to tell
the stories.
NORMAN HATCH: [TRAILER 00:02:25] Because the only
way people are ever going to know
what was a part of their history is
if they read it and see it.
JOE GALLOWAY: [00:12:54] Well I landed, it had just
gone dark, and outta that darkness
came a voice. And it was the
Sergeant Major of the battalion. And
he says "come with me and I'll take
you to the Colonel, and watch where
you step, there are a lot of bodies
under foot, and they're all ours."
GRAPHIC: Joe Galloway Bio Page
6.
JOE GALLOWAY: [00:13:38] There were two battalions
attacking this one company, our
position, where I was sitting was
right behind that company. So that
everything that was fired at them
that didn't take effect, passed right
through our command post at about two
feet off the ground. So very
rapidly, I fell to my stomach, and
was flattening out, cursing my
buttons and zippers and about then I
felt this thump at my ribs and I
turned my head very carefully and
looked down to see what it was, and
what it was was a size 12 combat boot
on the foot of Sgt. Major Basil L.
Plumbley. And he bent over at the
waist and over this incredible den,
he screamed down at me, "Can't take
no pictures on the ground sonny." And
I thought, he's right. Later on I
learned that Sgt. Majors are always
right. And I also thought, it looks
like we all might die here today, and
if I'm gonna die, I'd just as soon
take mine standing up along side a
man like the Sgt. Major.
VIDEO: Montage of shots of soldiers.
ROGER PETERSON: [0021:31] When I went to Vietnam and
went out on my first operation, I was
just told, "hey, go on down there and
get with this unit and cover this
war." Nobody told me what to do as
far as, how do you survive in this
place? How do you do this? The A.P.
use to have at least a little manual
that they gave to their folks, and
they could read about some things,
about where to be and where not to
be. The rest of us just sorta
learned by trial and error.
GRAPHIC: Roger Peterson Bio Page
ROGER PETERSON: [00:23:31] Most of the time, when
your involved in war coverage, you
are so involved, I mean you have to
be, there's so many things happening
and you're thinking about that,
thinking about that, if you're
sitting there saying, "my god, I
could get shot out here." Your not
gonna function at all. And that's a
total waste of time and everything.
We had some guys who came over and,
not from ABC, but for other networks.
There was one guy that I thought was
very brave, he went out on one
operation, came back in and said,
"this is not for me, I'm going home."
(MORE)
7.
ROGER PETERSON: And that took a heck of a lot guts to
say you were afraid to go out there.
NORMAN HATCH: [00:14:50] We were, for the first
time in history, in our history,
going ashore against a fortified
enemy at the beach head. It wasn't
like going to shore in some place
where you walked up the beach, but we
were up against this fortified enemy,
all dug in, just waiting for us, all
zeroed in on the reef that we had to
stop at, knowing where that was, and
for their big guns and everything
else, and it was important to get
that on film.
Montage- [48:16 - 48:34] Scenes from: Marines at Tarawa
NORMAN HATCH: [00:17:47] Every place I looked, was
something to take a picture of, but
constantly in my minds eye, was that
I had to tell a story with this
picture.
VIDEO: Montage- [17:42 - 19:17] Photos from WWII Scenes from
the Battle of Tarawa and Iwo Jima
GRAPHIC: Quote: Half of the estimated 60 million people
killed in World War II were civilians
JOE GALLOWAY: [00:21:20] It's incredible, it's
incredible the noise, the den of
battle is deafening. You just, you
can't imagine, it's like being in the
middle of the biggest fireworks
demonstration you've ever seen, and
you right in the middle of all the
tubes that are shooting them up.
Montage- [22:16 - 22:29] Scenes from Battle, "The Sounds of
War"
WARREN ZINN: [00:22:50] You learn the sounds, you
learn what a mortar sounds like as it
comes over head. You hear a
whistling noise and you know it's a
mortar. You can discern what's
outgoing and what's incoming and as
the days go on, you learn not to jump
every time you hear a bang, every
time you hear a whistle you don't
jump, cause you know it's outgoing,
or it's someone shooting at you, then
you should be jumping. The sounds of
war are very important and the more
you know them, the better off it is.
8.
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:10:22] The night the war started
they were firing mobile rockets into
Iraq, and everyone was on their tanks
cheering. You couldn't see what the
hell was going on from there. You
just saw the kind of cool side of the
war. You heard the guys in the
background cheering. You're not
thinking about what's happening on
the other side until you see it
later.
JOE GALLOWAY: [00:19:17] All of a sudden I heard
screaming, yelling, and it was the
Colonel, and I had not heard him yell
before, but he was yelling, "Charlie,
get that son of a bitch off of us!"
And he was pointing up, and I looked
up, and there were two F-100 super
sabers just like this, straight at
us. The first one had already
punched the button and two cans of
napalm were loblolling directly
towards us. The other guy was right
behind and just about to release his,
and Charlie Hastings the Air Force
Lieutenant who was the air
controller, grabbed his radio and
screamed at this guy, "Don't hit the
button, pull up, pull up, pull up!"
And at the last possible second the
guy peeled off.
JOE GALLOWAY: [00:24:15] You know, you felt the
incredible heat on the side of your
face and I turned and I looked into
that heat, and I saw two or three
American soldiers dancing in the
fire. They were screaming. Couldn't
hear them over the roar of the fire
itself, but you could see them moving
in that fire, almost like a macabre
dance of some sort. And then the
fire rather quickly died down to just
the burning grass and these guys fell
down into it. And I jumped up and
ran toward, toward the scene, and a
medic named, Tommy Burlyle jumped up
and also ran in that direction.
Burlyle was shot through the head by
a sniper. He was killed instantly. I
went on into the fire, and, and
grabbed a man named Jim Nakiyama and
carried him back to the aid station.
He was terribly, terribly burned, he
had sucked the fire into his lungs,
he was screaming, the docs shot him
full of morphine, but there wasn't
enough morphine in the world to stop
that pain.
(MORE)
9.
JOE GALLOWAY: Eventually, probably two hours later,
we got a helicopter, we got him on
the chopper and got him out. But he
died two days later in an Army
hospital. I never forgot him.
There's some things you cannot
forget.
VIDEO: Montage- [00:26:51] Scenes from Vietnam
GRAPHIC: Almost 60,000 U.S. soldiers died in Vietnam
GRAPHIC: Through the course of the war, the death toll for
both North and South Vietnamese exceeded 2 million people.
VIDEO: Scenes from Vietnam
SLATE: QUOTE 'If your pictures aren't good
enough, you're not close enough,"
Robert Capa.
PROFESSOR JOHN
ROMEISER: [00:21:02] I think the journalists
believe that the closer they can be
to where the action is taking place
in wartime the more real and
authentic their story will be, and it
will also avoid the spin that would
be happening if they were behind the
lines being fed various information
by military press liaison people
telling them how the battle was
unfolding and what was happening in a
given location.
ROGER PETERSON: [00:28:23] One thing that struck me,
when I first got to Vietnam and
working with camera crews, I'd been
working for several years before I
went over there, with crews. And
you'd say, "come on, let's go over
here and get this shot or let's go
over here or why don't we try this
shot" or something with the crew.
And it struck me in Vietnam, I'd say
"come on guys, let's go over here" I
said "wait a minute, I could get
these guys killed, I'm crazy enough
to go over here, but should they?"
And fortunately I worked with
cameramen who were crazier than I
was, and Tony Hiroshiki was one of
the bravest men I'd ever met. I
spent half my time grabbing and
pulling him back. Because he was
getting too dangerous. But as far as
doing the job, you have to think
about it. And concentrate on it, and
not worry about the peripheral stuff.
The peripheral stuff in this case is
that you might get wounded. Yea, you
might get wounded, but you knew that
when you signed on to it.
10.
JOE GALLOWAY: [00:29:04] Combat's a crapshoot.
You'll never be able to explain why
the guy next to you is shot through
the head and died and you weren't.
How do you do something like that and
have a million bullets fired at you
and not one of them connect?
SIG CHRISTENSON: [TRAILER 00:01:32] These guys are out
there fighting in your name,and we're
out their risking our lives to tell
the stories.
ROGER PETERSON: [00:30:45] Reporters, cameramen,
photographers, correspondents
whatever, all these names that we
have for the media, we're there,
we're in the middle of it, we should
be in the middle of it. And, we
shouldn't be surprised when we lose
some, but, but people should realize,
that we're there to try to tell them
what's going on. And that we're
risking our lives to do that.
TERRY LLOYD: [00:31:14] The fear of going to a war
zone was summed up rather nicely. A
colleague was asked, "how do you feel
when you go to a war zone?" He
answered," not half as bad as if
you're not asked to go to a war
zone." I guess that sums up all the
professionals that we've got at ITN.
You really want to be there.
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:31:31] I promise you this was a
volunteer assignment from every news
organization. I wanted to have the
chance to do the kind of work that
Ernie Pyle had done, and I admire him
for doing. And Ernie Pyle got killed
doing it.
JOE GALLOWAY: [00:31:45] I thought, you know we're
gonna be over run, we're all gonna be
killed right here. And, you would
start, hiding your film in your
pockets and taking notes and hiding
your notebook, hoping that maybe they
would get a story and some pictures
off your body after it is recovered.
And I know cases where the camera was
taken off the body of a friend of
mine, Sam Casten, and then they
later, a few days later, killed the
Vietcong and found the camera on him,
took the film out of it, developed
it, and you had this very eerie
series of photographs that Sam took
just before dark on the night he was
killed. You thought about things
like that.
11.
DONNA LEIWAND: [00:32:41] When a soldier dies
they've signed up for this. They've
signed up to go and fight and lay
down their lives. And when
journalists die, it's like, well, you
didn't have to go. They're not
called heroes.
VIDEO: Flowers at Lloyd's funeral.
NEWS ANNOUNCER: Insert ITN news announcer V.O. saying
that he was killed in Iraq.
Terry Lloyd on rooftop in Iraq
SLATE: Terry Lloyd; 1952- 2003
SLATE: Names of journalists killed in Iraq and the dates they
died. No music. JUST THE SOUND OF THE NEWS REPORTS.
PROFESSOR JOHN
ROMEISER: [00:12:30] During WWII for the
Associated Press alone five of their
correspondents were killed. One was
even taken prisoner by the Germans
and later executed. So they are
exposed to significant danger but
even more challenging to the
reporters is getting the truth back
to the readers.
ROGER PETERSON: [00:25:57] The footage is a pale
imitation of what war is like, no
matter how good it is.
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:26:21] It's, it's nasty. There's
nothing glorious about it. It's not
a movie soundtrack. It's, it's the
hard end of the deal. And, I don't
know, it's the hard end of the deal.
MARK FARAM: [00:26:31] Somebody made a comment of
the first time you see a dog carrying
a hand or something, run by you in
the street. You know, it's a
fleeting image in your mind that
sticks with you for the rest of your
life.
WARREN ZINN: [00:34:14] I was talking earlier with
a bunch of photographers that, that
every photographer sorta has a folder
on their desktop in their computer of
pictures they know will never see the
light of day. And it's a shame that
we even have these folders, cause
everyone needs to see them all. You
know, you need to have all the
information at your fingertips, and
it's a shame that photographs of
(MORE)
12.
WARREN ZINN: Iraqi bodies burning on the street
are not gonna get published anywhere
or the Pentagon doesn't wanna see
photos of dead U.S. soldiers. That
needs to be seen. People need to
know what's happening out there.
VIDEO:Montage- 9:25 - 10:37 Starts with photos of Qusay
Hussein, bodies in the streets, video of Iraqi's in the
street, two soldiers walking to a fence, photos of war
protesters
GRAPHIC:"We don't do body counts- Gen. Tommy Franks
Quote: "More than 20,000 Iraqi civilians were killed during
Operation Iraqi Freedom
GRAPHIC: More than 2,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed in
Iraq since March 2003
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:38:10] Personally, I think the
war was probably to sanitized. I
think it would be better if people
knew more about the grim reality of
it. They should see what these
weapons do to people, they should
realize that, this isn't all glory,
this is sometimes really awful stuff.
TRAVIS CROSBY: [00:38:27] It's amazing what the
explosives we use, when you would
roll up on something you'd called in
a 500 pound bomb on and see the
destruction. You never saw a whole
person at any of these impact areas.
You never could get a body count
because it was body pieces and you
know that person never felt it cause
it happened so quick. It's just an
amazing amount of destruction that we
have pretty much underneath our
thumbs that we can release on anyone
at anytime that we want to. That's
sometimes scary what you have the
power to do over there.
WARREN ZINN: [00:39:02] It's kind of upsetting at
times, to think that people have said
that this war was a PG-13 war, and I
didn't see all the newspapers, I
wasn't home, but I know what I was
seeing, wasn't PG-13, it was beyond
R, and I think that it's almost a
disservice to the American people at
times, if they're gonna tell their
congressmen or senators that they
want them to vote yes for war. Then
the American people really need to
see what war is, and they need to see
that, when they say that 150 soldiers
have been killed, what one soldier
looks like when he gets killed.
(MORE)
13.
WARREN ZINN: And then to decide, that yes I wanna
go to war. And this is neither a pro
or anti-war statement, it's just
that, you need to be educated about
war, and I don't think the American
public always gets the true picture
of what war is.
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:39:44] The day we were on a road
clearing mission on Highway 8 in
Baghdad and we were scraping the
bodies of dead Iraqis. You could
smell it. You could see blood. You
people who met terrible, terrible
ends. And it was a real war to see
young soldiers 18 years old from
Austin, Texas, with white gloves on.
And they were pulling the bodies out
of cars, and they were charred and
burned. And there were pieces of
their flesh were sitting on their
white gloves. That was the real war,
and that it the war everybody ought
to see.
MARK SOBHANI: [00:40:47] You know, there was quite
a bit of graphic things that I saw a
lot of which I shot, pretty much
knowing that, it wouldn't run in our
paper, but still things that I had to
document. Once I got back and saw
what ran in the paper, it was pretty
much on course with what I thought
would be in the paper. I don't think
it was, I guess cleaned up or
sanitized too much in that sense.
There were some very graphic images,
I mean, I kinda knew they wouldn't
run 'em, maybe deep down kinda hoped
it would, just because it is
something that, I think people needed
to see.
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:41:25] Some of Mark's photos, are
just very difficult to look at, we
had a special section, where one of
them in particular showed an Iraqi
dead in the front seat of his vehicle
and there's blood splattered on the
windows. That was the real war.
SLATE: In war, truth is the first casualty.
JIM MICHAELS: [00:34:49] In terms of, whether the
war was sanitized, I mean, there's
always ways that everything can
appear graphic and horrible.
Newspapers, their job to some extent,
is to give everything a sense of
order and place or trying to put it
(MORE)
14.
JIM MICHAELS: into context and put it into
perspective for the readers. And,
maybe sometimes the most graphic
parts of it are taken out, in the
process of doing that.
DORIE GRIGGS: [00:35:29] I believe it was very
sanitized. I know from talking to
film editors and people at CNN who
were the editors, how intense the
images, the onslaught, 24 hours,
working extra time seeing the images
that never made it on the air. I
think the United States would have
made some decisions differently, had
the public known just how awful
things were during the main part of
the war, and to some extent, still
are.
PROFESSOR G.KURT
PIEHLER: [00:36:00] There are limits to what
you want to show on a public medium,
particularly a medium young children
will see. Sometimes it could be
argued that the written word is often
more effective than the visual
imagery in conveying the horror of
war.
ROBERT RIVARD: [00:36:14] There is a real debate in
this newsroom that's going on even
now on how much you should sanitize
the picture of war. A community
newspaper our size in a city like San
Antonio, on the one hand we are the
8th or 9th largest city in the
country, on the other hand, we are
very much a family-oriented city.
People of all ages read the paper.
We're not going to censor the images
of war for them, nor are we going to
give them a daily front page of gore.
There are times when we feel very
powerful events occur, and they
require very powerful images,
earthquakes, suicide bombers,
tragedies on a massive scale. You
have to arrest the sensibilities of
the reader to give them, convey a
sense of what happened. Is it
offensive? Sometimes. Is it off
putting? Sometimes. Does it anger
people? Sometimes. That's o.k., a
newspaper should do those things
periodically, perhaps not everyday,
but it's not our job to help
everybody to stay in their comfort
zones. It's our job to communicate
effectively to people what's
happening in their world and the
world beyond them, and sometimes that
requires very strong content.
15.
NORMAN HATCH: [00:37:04] The president was almost
of a mind not to release our film
because of the dead bodies we showed
floating in the water. And as the
tide would come up on the beach, the
bodies would ride up and ride back
out again with the small waves that
were there. We felt that the public
should see it and eventually he
agreed it would be a help to the war
effort. Because war effort was
slackening off a little bit at the
time. And all of a sudden seeing
something like this and knowing where
their supplies were needed, would be
enough to energize and innervate the
people working in the war plant.
WARREN ZINN: [00:37:37] I heard a lot of
discussion before the war about how
the media likes to know too much of
what's going on and, sometimes they
tell us too much of what's going on,
and I think that people need to
realize that, the media is out there,
almost as a fourth branch of
government. You know, they're kind
of incorporated into the checks and
balances system, and they're out
there watching what the government is
doing. And not in a sinister way,
but we're making sure that our
government is doing the right thing
in letting the American public know
what the government is doing. So
that the people can decide if it's
the right thing. We're out there
giving the people the information
they need to stay informed.
GRAPHIC: Attempts to obtain interviews with executives at
ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and FOX were unsuccessful.
DANNY SCHECTER: [00:44:18] I embedded myself in my
apartment and began analyzing the
coverage Americans were watching and
comparing and contrasting it with
what I could get of the coverage
other people were watching. And I
saw a big difference and a big gap.
I found our coverage jingoistic
politically correct and tending to be
uncritical of government claims,
tending to be more like cheerleading
than reporting. And I think the net
effect was to portray this conflict
in its early stages as a cake walk.
We were going to go in. We were
going to liberate Iraq and be home in
time for the fall football season to
start. And it didn't quite work out
that way.
(MORE)
16.
DANNY SCHECTER: And in fact, if you had watched the
coverage you would not have been
prepared for what has happened since
in Iraq.
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:45:04] Was there a difference
between the war as it was and the war
people saw? I'm sure there was. I
would suspect that no one running a
network wanted to run the risk of
driving off their viewers and losing
rating points over a wounded American
in a very difficult moment or a field
of dead soldiers. I don't think they
were about to risk that.
DANNY SCHECTER: [00:45:38] I think that we're going
to see more of this conflict because
American policy hasn't really
changed. And we're not analyzing
that policy really in our media.
That's part of the problem. The
debate is very narrow, even during
the election. Kerry was going to
kill more terrorists than Bush. He
was going to out-Bush Bush in his
arguments. There was no real
alternative policy offered. Except
I'm going to talk to people at an
international meeting. There wasn't
any examination of how we got into
this mess and how we're going to get
out of it. And that's missing also
in the media. What is it, why have
we become such conformists. Why have
we become such toadies. Why are we
groveling? This is really a painful
thing to see. I joined the media to
spotlight the problems of the world.
The media is one of the problems of
the world. And it's unexamined.
It's not being challenged by the
people in the media.
PROFESSOR JOHN
ROMEISER: [00:46:36] In terms of the situation
we're facing right now with so many
forms of media and technology. I
worry at times that the kind of news
we're getting is not the kind of news
that people can look at critically to
form their judgments and make sound
decisions as voters.
PROFESSOR G.KURT
PIEHLER: [00:46:59] Both CNN and FOX news and
the Intranet, have fueled a sort of
quick news to sort of quickly put out
news. But it has diminished the sort
of, the sort of reflective story.
(MORE)
17.
PROFESSOR G.KURT
PIEHLER: What I found striking with a lot of
the embedded reporting is
particularly during the conventional
part of the war, I would watch CNN
and FOX news. It was very
disjointed. You had pieces of it,
but no sense of what does this mean.
The strategic notion of what is going
on during the war that you saw in
WWII, Korea and Vietnam.
DANNY SCHECTER: [00:47:46] For 20 years we've had the
erosion of journalism. We've had
this substitution of showbiz as news
biz, the infiltration of infotainment.
So mili-tainment, military
entertainment, is just another step
in this chain in what is a postjournalism
era. As a consequence,
you have some journalists more
concerned with packaging stories and
graphics and presentation and
branding, than you do about the
actual content of the reporting. If
you wanted to report this conflict
you'd try to find diverse sources for
one, try to analyze whether
government claims are true. If
however if what you are doing is
packaging, you don't do that. You
basically end up presenting a
Pentagon-produced production, which
is what most of the war was.
DANNY SCHECTER: [00:08:19] If the media had been
doing what it should have been doing
as the fourth estate, then I don't
think we would have had the war. The
selling of the war was part of the
fighting of the war. In other words,
in Tommy Frank's war plan, he called
the media the fourth front.
SLATE: THE SELLING OF THE WAR...
TOM BOWMAN: [00:48:45] The embedding process will
go down in history as one of the
great things that has been done for
American journalism. But you have to
remember too, that the Pentagon
people, despite what they're saying,
they didn't do it because they all
slapped their foreheads and said, "oh
that first amendment is a great
thing" or because they wanna help the
media.
(MORE)
18.
TOM BOWMAN: The reason they did it, and we were
all told this by several people, is
that they were so worried about
Saddam Hussein, telling lies and
manufacturing crisis in his own
country, and blaming it on the
Americans or the Brits, that they
wanted as many reporters as possible
with U.S. forces to counter those
lies. That's the basis for the
embedding program despite what a lot
of people are saying.
DANNY SCHECTER: [00:53:51] I was involved in the
civil rights movement. Four kids sat
down at a counter, boom, there was a
revolution. It started, there was a
process. People fought against
apartheid in South Africa, and
apartheid came down. People fought
against the war in Vietnam. History
happens. Change can be made. So
there's an emerging democracy
movement. This is the issue for this
particular period. It's emerging.
People are angry about the media,
they want to do something about it.
They want to get involved. We're
going to see more activism around
media and democracy issues.
GRAPHIC: War, the ultimate story
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:30:20] War, is a really serious
business and you find a lot of
emotion wrapped up in the whole deal,
in the whole package. When you come
home, you're different, and if you're
not, you're really, I don't know, if
you're not different when you come
home, you're not very human. You've
gotta come back different.
CHANTAL ESCOTO: [00:29:30] Even though I was in the
Army, I'd seen more combat as a
reporter than I ever have in active
duty. And, just being in Iraq and
seeing dead Iraqi's and children,
burned by bombs and just talking to
people, the local people and seeing
their faces so happy to see the
Americans. And very dangerous
things, I mean we got ambushed and
you know I think that still has an
effect on me. You know, loud noises
and things like that make me jump a
little bit more. So you know, That's
something I'm having to deal with.
19.
WARREN ZINN: [00:42:00] About December of last
year I was slated to go back to Iraq
in January for a six-week rotation
and then return later in the year for
another six-week rotation. So I
would have spent 12 weeks in Iraq. I
kinda sat down and did some soul
searching, and realized that, I'm 26,
I've been into combat four plus times
now, I've seen my fair share, I've
been fairly successful at it. I've
seen a lot, I've produced a lot, I've
done amazing stories that I've loved
and enjoyed every minute of. And, I
don't wanna push my luck. There's an
expression, ya know, you can meet a
lot of war photographers, you won't
meet many old war photographers. And
it's sad, but it's true.
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:42.39] I hope I know when to say
it's time to stop, because part of
it's your sanity, that you're putting
on the line. How much of that do you
really wanna expose yourself to? It's
like anything else, I hope you know
when to quit.
JAMES CRAWLEY: As a husband, I shouldn't have gone.
I know that, and I regret going
because of the pain and the suffering
I gave my wife. I can never
apologize for that, I've tried to
apologize. You know, as a
journalist, I didn't have any doubt
that that was where I needed to be.
I mean, I mean I love my wife, I love
her more than any other person in the
world. And I love being a reporter.
And that was a story that, you hated
to have to cover a war, but god, you
loved to be able to have a chance to
be there. I mean, that's the kinda,
unfortunately war is about the
ultimate story there is in the world.
And, you know, I'm glad I had a
chance to cover it. Whether I'd do it
again? No.
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:52:23] We're telling a story that
gets in today's newspaper and
tonight's news. But in time that
story turns into history. That is
extraordinarily important in a
democracy. Because if the history is
told right, if it's told straight, if
it's honest, we actually might learn
something. In a lot of other places,
history gets re-written. And the
history is based on lies and the
culture becomes a culture of lies.
20.
REAR ADM. T.
MCCREARY: [NOT CURRENTLY IN THE FILM] War is
the last resort of our, really our
public policy. And what you do, is
these are serious decisions and you
have to go through a tremendous
process to get where you're gonna
decide to use force. And then, once
you commit force, and really put the
nations treasure on the front lines,
our young men and women, you know,
people's sons and daughters, it has
to be for the right reason.
PROFESSOR JOHN
ROMEISER: [00:52:57] It's essential I believe
in any democratic form of government
for there to be a free and active
press, because if the press is
unfettered, and it is allowed to do
it's job properly their going to hold
the institutions of state
accountable.
SLATE: NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION WERE
FOUND.
SLATE: OCTOBER 2005 XX% OF AMERICANS THINK
BUSH HAS MISHANDLED THE WAR.
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:53:15] Have we heard one single
shred of truth yet about what this
war was about? In my opinion I can
tell you I still don't know why we
fought this war. And we don't seem
to have a coherent strategy in
fighting the war. And if we don't
come up with a coherent strategy of
making sure that the government that
gets installed in this country ends
up serving the people of Iraq much
better than the last one did, and
ends up serving the security
interests of that region, then all
the sacrifices we've made, is going
to be for nothing.
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:49:21] Where have we been as a
nation and where are we going? Are
we repeating Vietnam again? And
General Sanchez told me back in
December, and I heard him say again
day before yesterday that this is not
Vietnam. Well when I sit down and
take a hard look at the history of
Vietnam, the escalation of it, it
looks a lot like Vietnam. Why isn't
there a discussion of why it's
Vietnam or why it's not Vietnam. Why
do we have to just go into spin mode?
(MORE)
21.
SIG CHRISTENSON: Because these are people that we are
sacrificing. We are sacrificing
these people, and we don't quite know
why we did it to start with, because
nobody's told the truth. No one has
leveled with us about it. And
nobody's given us a clear
understanding of where we're going.
If you don't tell the whole story,
you're doing a disservice to people.
I want people to know that you're
going to see the whole thing. The
more we have these wars now in
today's society, you're going to see
more. You will see more gore in the
next war. You will see more reality
of it. And it will impact on the
President's policy, and it will
impact on the coalition's ability to
pursue the war. It will require that
the nation grows up with the young
soldiers who are out there in the
field. Because if you are going to
wage war, modern war, you have
absolutely got to be ready to deal
with the consequences of it. And it
takes a certain amount of adulthood
to get there.
ROGER PETERSON: [00:52:04] The members of Congress, I
don't think any of them had sons or
daughters who were serving in Iraq.
If people are going to vote for war,
and if we are going to put this
nation at war, then we should know
something about it.
SIG CHRISTENSON: [00:54:28] The reality isn't there.
The reality isn't there in the fact
that people don't see the bodies.
They don't see the caskets at Dover.
The administration has been very
careful about making sure that nobody
sees those caskets. Nobody sees
those flags. They don't want anybody
to see those flags. They're afraid
that if too many people see those
flags on television it undermines
support for the war. What it really
tells me is that people are afraid of
being honest. People are afraid of
telling the truth. They're afraid of
telling people what's going to be the
price for this. And they're not
being honest enough in explaining
what the point of it is. I am sure
that the lack of reality, the sense
that we've got to clean everything up
so it can be presentable, is going to
be the death of an awful lot of men.
22.
JOE GALLOWAY: [00:50:15] It's important that
America understand not just Vietnam,
but soldiers, the soldiers they send
to fight. Vietnam was a terrible
example. People came to hate the
war, and it's alright to hate war.
But they also came to hate the
warriors, and that's inexcusable. In
the end they fought for each other, I
left that battlefield knowing I had
an obligation to those men who died
saving my life. I had an obligation
to tell their story. And I've spent
39 years trying to live up to that
obligation.
ROGER PETERSON: [00:55:22] We need to be there, we
need to tell people what's going on.
And you can say that, we would affect
policy if we showed people what war
is really like. I hope so.
FADE OUT:
ROGER PETERSON: