THE CNN reporter gave a victory cry for his adventures in an active warzone. The headlines said it all. He had travelled with the Israeli air fleet to watch and ‘cover’ firsthand the bombing of a Yemeni port. The Houthis were apparently using the facility to import stuff to target the Zionist state. The report carried images of dense smoke billowing from the target just blasted. Bravo! But what then happened to the amazing reporting heroics when it came to describing the smoke billowing in Israel, possibly from an airbase? Where did the avid reporter hide his zeal when he returned to his hosts? Was there a single image of even a barren desolate ground, leave alone a military facility, dented by one or more of the missiles Iran had fired at his hosts? Not the journalist’s fault if he didn’t because, given Israel’s extensive censorship, he couldn’t.

That’s the weak link (or an asset depending on one’s point of view) about embedded journalism. It’s how we have weaponised the media practically in every combat zone, whether it’s an election being advertised in Kashmir or a massacre being ‘normalised’ in occupied Palestine. That’s how we feed one-sided stories, like the ones that led to the invasion of Iraq over false accusations vented by a complicit media.

But the perils of embedded journalism are old and were on display in the Vietnam war even as they peaked in the assault on Iraq and the pillage of Afghanistan. I had friends in the Western media in Dubai who were headed to Peshawar in the 1980s, to “do........

© Dawn