by SABRINA M. PARKER

Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, safety in Iraq has declined, along with U.S. support for the war and, perhaps as a consequence, the number of journalists embedded with military units.

An international group of more than 600 journalists were living and traveling with British and U.S. military air, ground and naval units when the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began in March 2003.

USA TODAY photo by JACK GRUBER
Northern, Kuwait–3/19/03 — Jack Gruber of USA TODAY riding along with US Army’s Alpha Company, 11th Engineer Battalion moving north in the Northern Kuwait Desert.

It was an enthusiastic beginning for the Department of Defense’s new media embed program designed to give journalists long-term, uncensored, up-close access to the forces, because, according to the policy, “our people in the field need to tell our story.”

This week, only 28 journalists from around the world were embedded in Iraq to tell the story. The decline has been steady since fall 2003 when 100 journalists were embedded. The number fell to 48 in 2005 and dipped as low as nine in September 2006.

Many journalists who have been embedded say that the access is unprecedented, and the protection is necessary now more than ever before because Baghdad has become nearly impassable, even for credentialed journalists.

“It’s not as easy as it used to be,” said USA TODAY Photographer Jack Gruber, who was among the first journalists embedded in Iraq.

“At the start of the war, I could stick my thumb out in the middle of Baghdad and jump on a Bradley or tank or something, and they would take you somewhere. And now that is definitely not the case,” Gruber said.

Embedded journalists cannot change units, even for a day, without filling out a new application and waiting for a new set of credentials. While the system involves more red tape for journalists, applications are still flowing in. Between Jan.1 and Nov. 1 of this year, 1,248 applications were submitted and only 12 were denied, according to a media embed coordinator for the Multi National Force-Iraq. That number includes repeat embeds and those wishing to change units.

USA TODAY photo by JACK GRUBER
Western Iraq, IRAQ–3/27/03 — US Army’s 369 Task Force embedded photojournalist USA Today photographer Jack Gruber riding in a humvee to Bravo Company 3-7 in the Iraqi Desert.

Embedded Washington Post Reporter David Finkel has traveled to Iraq several times since the war began. At the beginning of the war, he did not embed, which allowed him to cover the war on his own. This year he has spent months embedded and says he fears for his life on a regular basis.

“Especially over the summer, there were nightly rocket attacks and mortar attacks,” said Finkel, now home in the Washington suburbs. “It’s incredibly dangerous. I don’t mean that boastfully. It’s incredibly dangerous, and I don’t like it.” He said he continues to cover the war because he has never come across a story like it. Finkel is planning a return-trip to Iraq in early 2008.

Charlotte Observer Reporter Peter Smolowitz was a general assignment reporter who started covering the military after Sept. 11. He was embedded with the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan in 2002 and covered central command headquarters in Iraq for Knight Ridder news service in 2003.

“I’m not that brave, and I was pretty nervous about doing this,” Smolowitz said. After going on missions and experiencing battles, Smolowitz said he does not think he will return to Iraq.

“There was a big part of me that would have loved to continue to do it,” he said. “But once my kids were born, that wasn’t the life that I could be leading. Besides the danger involved, I wouldn’t want any job where I was gone for months at a time, having my kids growing up without me.”

More than the U.S. mission in Iraq has changed

Many news organizations are simply not spending the money to send journalists to Iraq. Although embeds spend very little money once they join a unit — the basics such as food, lodging and travel are covered by the military — there is still the cost of a flight to Kuwait, protective gear and the expensive equipment required to communicate and transmit articles and visuals.

Gruber said interest in the war declined sharply a few months into the invasion.

Photo by TOMAS MUNITA, 2005.
Documentary filmmaker and American University Professor Bill Gentile (center) while filming “DATELINE AFGHANISTAN: Reporting the Forgotten War.”

“It’s just a money thing. In reality that’s what it all comes down to. At the start of the war, everybody wanted to be there. I left four or five months into the war, there was no one there,” Gruber said. “There were a lot of people still trying to run around … at that time you could get around Iraq on your own. But after that it just never came back to the point where people wanted to embed.”

Many were skeptical of the embed arrangement when it was announced two weeks before the war started in 2003. They were surprised by how easy it was to get close to the action and the freedom they had to file their stories.

“I just couldn’t believe it. It was more accommodating than anything I’ve ever done since,” Gruber said as he packed bags for his fifth embed experience in Iraq. He recalled riding along during a battle on the first night of the war when a captain in the vehicle asked him if he could still make deadline. It was between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m., and all he needed was a signal to transmit his images. The captain responded by opening the hatch in the middle of battle so Gruber could get a signal.

“The next thing you know I’m transmitting pictures and they made deadline in the paper for the first night of the war,” Gruber said. “They [went] beyond helping. It was a great relationship.”

The relationship has become less accommodating and the access more controlled in Gruber’s experience. He said embedding is not a program, but a “living breathing thing” that changes depending on who you are and where you are in Iraq. He said rules change so often that it is hard to determine which rules are official.

In a Pew Research Center survey of journalists working in Iraq this year, most said that while embedding limits their perspective, it offers access to information they could not get otherwise.

Two highly regarded features of embedding are security and transportation once inside Iraq. (Embedded reporters still pay their own airfare to Kuwait or Baghdad.) Journalists covering the war said most of Baghdad is too dangerous to travel in and when they do go, they use armed guards and chase vehicles.

When they are not embedded, journalists also have to secure vehicles, outfit them with armor, hire drivers and translators, and pay for lodging, all of which can cost thousands of dollars.

Early days of embedding

Media covering the Persian Gulf War in 1991 had difficulty gaining access to battles, mainly because of transportation, safety and lodging issues. During the Gulf War, the U.S. military developed a pool system to provide access. The pools that operated out of Forward Operating Bases are seen as an early model of the embed program.

Journalist and filmmaker Bill Gentile, who covered the Persian Gulf War, the 1991 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, was a designated photographer for one of the early pools. The military asked U.S. television crews, wire services, newsmagazines and major newspapers to select representatives who would travel with a unit and bring back stories and images for all to share. Gentile was elected by his peers as the designated still photographer for newsmagazines.

“I spent four months in the desert with the 101st Airborne Division prior to the invasion of Iraq and Kuwait,” Gentile said. “When I went out there and made pictures for Newsweek magazine, all of the images that I generated, these became public property in the sense that all of the newsmagazines had access to this material.”

Aside from the main objective of providing the media easy access to troops, the embed program is different from the pool. Embedded journalists do not have to share their materials. But the consequence of journalists growing too close to the unit protecting them is real.

Marching on in the face of criticism

“The longer you’re out with these guys, the more difficult it becomes to write harder stories about them,” Gentile said.

“I don’t think that the Pentagon intentionally set out to compromise journalists’ reporting by setting up the embed program. I think that the embed program was set up to allow journalists to have real access to the troops,” Gentile added.

Many critics of the coverage agree that the story of the Iraqi civilians is not being told. The security issues and nature of the war itself are limiting the U.S. media’s access to civilians.

“At the beginning, if you were American, you were somewhat welcome, but that’s not the case at this point,” Finkel said. “I wish, in terms of reporting, that I could move about more freely than I can, but I also understand that to do so is risking kidnapping or death.”

Embedded journalists have been criticized over the years for filing reports that some see as too soft or too negative. But a 2004 study by the Defense Science Board, a federal advisory committee, said the embed program has won broad support in the government and the media. According to the study, “Reporting from embedded media during the spring of 2003 reduced the potential for Iraqi disinformation (e.g., on civilian casualties) that could have undermined political support in the U.S. and other countries.”

A common criticism of war coverage is that journalists do not tell the good stories and write too many negative articles. According to the Pew Research Center survey, most journalists in Iraq disagree that the reporting has been too negative. Seventy percent of 111 journalists working in Iraq said the media’s war coverage gives an accurate picture of the situation in Iraq and 15 percent say worse the situation is worse than the coverage conveys.

The embed process is used to organize media in other big-story scenarios, such as Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami that devastated Indonesia and surrounding areas in 2005. Even if the Pentagon hated the embed program, which it does not, Gentile said the government does not have much of a choice.

“The Pentagon has to figure out some way that they can give people access to these military actions,” Gentile said. “The Reagan administration tried to shut people out of Grenada, for example, and it ignited a firestorm of criticism as a result of it. I don’t think that we can go back on this. You’ve got to have some system.”