Alright Alan mate let me know what you think of this man, also put that stats thing below if you wanted to use them or something as thought it would be quite useful



People will not accept war on tv. They will accept war in the movies. They will accept it in newspapers. Nobody will accept war on tv its too close.
(Marshall Mcluhan,1973)

War is an increasingly pertinent topic of these current troubled times with conflicts occuring globally and regularly between warring factions and political camps that share different ideological beliefs. Consequently the medias coverage of these events is under more scrutiny as a result an example of this would be the current Iraqi conflict. In which the United States military has taken 500 journalists with its military units to cover the conflict in Iraq, embedding the journalists with its troops going to the front line. This “embedding” does not mean unrestricted access and reporting, though the controls are not as stringent as they were in the first gulf war. Listed below are the Pentagon's protocol for their 'embedded' journalists which includes:
no information on ongoing engagements being released unless authorised by an on-scene commander, and information about previous engagements and results will be released only if described in general terms
reports giving specific information on 'friendly force' troop movements and deployment being prohibited
information regarding future operations being strictly prohibited and no information identifying postponed or cancelled operations will be allowed to be released
journalists 'inadvertently exposed' to 'sensitive' information will be briefed on what to avoid covering in their reports; journalists allowed to see sensitive information that would normally be restricted will be denied access to that information unless they agree to a security review of their coverage
journalists (including photographers and camera crew) are assigned to a specific unit and must stay with that unit unless permitted to leave (that is, they cannot rush off to another area where there may be more 'action')
no private transport
no personal firearms
These stringent controls upon the filtering of journalism and their televisual coverage in iraq is the factor that television channels have stopped showing actual footage of the real conflict in the ongoing war in iraq, which has lead to people dong their own reporting and posting their own footage through the medium of the internet. YouTube currently has over 300,000 videos with Iraq as the keyword, many of which have been viewed more than 100,000 times.
Video-sharing Web sites are home to some of the most striking images from the war. Video showing the hanging of Saddam Hussein found a worldwide audience thanks to such sites and a witness with a camera phone. The cockpit video of a U.S. pilot's accidental attack on British troops, originally released by a British newspaper, almost instantly streamed around the globe.
The Internet itself hasn't played favorites between the two factions. Video of insurgent snipers firing on American soldiers is widely available online. Suicide bombers also have taken to posting video statements before carrying out attacks. Soldiers beating down doors, storming into dark rooms. A medic bandaging a naked, bleeding boy on the street. Clips like these are all widely viewable on the internet.
The lack of actual film footage of conflict in the iraq war on television is even more suprising when you consider how war movies have been a constantly popular Hollywood production. Even hugely unpopular wars, such as Vietnam, have produced hugely acclaimed films such as The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Coming Home, Platoon, Born On The Fourth Of July, all of them were Oscar winners.
The lack of actual footage of conflict for the iraq war has prompted directors over in america to produce films depicting the everyday occurencies of soldiers who are figthing over in Iraq. One of the more notable is Brian De Palma's who's film “Redacted” is based on the gang rape, murder and burning of 14-year-old Iraqi girl, “Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi”, by US soldiers in March 2006. The soldiers also killed her parents and younger sister in the film. Redacted means edited to make suitable for publication, De Palma's point in giving the film such a name is that the authorities have not allowed us to see what we have done to the people of Iraq. Access has been limited, images have been censored, and the few that have been seen have often contradicted the official version of events.The film itself was fictionalised for legal reasons. Though barely as instead of being 14, the raped girl who it is based on was actually 15. Early on in Redacted, one of the squad is blown up by an improvised explosive device and another is kidnapped and beheaded by fundamentalists.