Wartime Reporting

Jo Groebel, director of the German Digital Institute, has written and edited numerous books about new media and the Internet. "Aggression and War: Their Biological and Social Bases," which he co-edited with Robert A. Hinde, dissects human aggression and war.

DW-RADIO: Why has embedding journalists become a popular way to report on war?

Jo Groebel: The term "embedded journalist" made the headlines during the Iraq war when the United States entered the country. Lots of journalists were more or less siding with the soldiers entering the country. The idea there was, rather than having reporting with this certain distance to what's actually going on, that journalists would have a first-hand image and first-hand impression of what's going on. Criticism has, of course, been addressing the fact that someone so close to a certain war party may lose his or her neutrality and objectivity.

In your opinion, is it possible for an embedded journalist to be critical or does he have to satisfy the government upon which he relies for his information?

Well, I think it's probably more psychological than immediately some kind of oppression. Certainly, there is a danger if I'm siding with certain soldiers and there are attacks, there may be what in a completely different context one called the Stockholm Syndrome. Even if you are critical of those who are there, the pure fact that there is a certain closeness and common threat coming from the other side may interfere with objectivity. And there's another side to it that one would probably only pick those journalists who are sympathetic with those they are accompanying.

Do you think it is possible for a journalist, whether he's imbedded or not, to do objective reporting in a war situation?

In war itself, it's nearly impossible to come up with a final truth. I suppose this is far beyond a question of whether there's embedded journalism or not. One could even claim that journalism and fact reporting itself is something which is a very tricky thing to relate immediately to any kind of proof.

There have been some reports that pictures broadcast from the last two Persian Gulf wars were faked. How badly manipulated are reports by embedded journalists?

I would say this is a more fundamental challenge than particularly with embedded journalists. War automatically means also war about public opinion. All armies do have battalions of people who are only dealing with the interpretation or manipulation of facts. Embedded journalism clearly has the aim to create sympathy among those who are accompanying the army and the soldiers. I suppose it's kind of more of a variation of what already always has been the somewhat tricky approach to truth and objective journalism in a war situation.

Another US war that got huge media coverage was the Vietnam War in the 1970s. Can the media output of the Vietnam War be compared in any way to the current war in Iraq?

I suppose what's definitely pretty similar is that you see a shift in change in public opinion, most certainly within the United States. With or without imbedded journalism, you can't really control all of those images coming from the war. So with the increasing number of images of victims nearly daily and (images of) all the dead soldiers, particularly American soldiers and also Iraqis, it becomes increasingly obvious that this is probably a war which cannot be won. This is certainly a similarity with Vietnam. Starting out, loyalty with government. Then, a real shift due to images, again, with or without embedded journalism, regarding the real face of the war. And I suppose public opinion now has certainly changed due to media reporting.