Covering Iraq is much more dangerous than was Vietnam
One of the most vivid memories George Esper has from his years as an Associated Press correspondent during the Vietnam War was of a flight he took on a U.S. military transport plane loaded with the bodies of dead American soldiers.
Esper had been in the demilitarized zone covering a battle. Afterward he asked the pilot of the plane if he could hitch a ride back to Saigon. The pilot agreed, and Esper was directed to the aircraft’s freight section.
There, Esper found he and the plane’s loadmaster were the only living people in the belly of the transport.
"I was just stunned," Esper said in an interview last year. "I looked around, and I saw these scores of body bags, and I am sitting in the middle of them in a bucket seat."
Esper’s anecdote demonstrates one of the biggest differences between the combat coverage of the Vietnam War and the conflict in Iraq. Reporters in Vietnam had much greater access to the stark realities of the war and encountered fewer obstacles from the military to cover them.
It might be unfair to compare the coverage of the Iraq conflict with what many believe to be the most accessible and visible war in U.S. history. But there is no denying the American public got a more vivid picture of what was happening in Vietnam than from the level of news coverage in Iraq.
"The best way to report a story is to be there," Esper said. "And you were able to do that in Vietnam, for the most part." Esper said the "huge advantage" reporters in Vietnam had over those in Iraq was access to what was actually going on. Esper believes the military of today wants to limit press access partly because of the way the Vietnam War was reported.
Interviews conducted over the past year and a half with three AP reporters who covered the Vietnam War and seven newspaper journalists who reported from Iraq indicate journalists in Iraq faced greater physical dangers and worked with a military less willing to facilitate coverage of the conflict.
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Esper had been in the demilitarized zone covering a battle. Afterward he asked the pilot of the plane if he could hitch a ride back to Saigon. The pilot agreed, and Esper was directed to the aircraft’s freight section.
There, Esper found he and the plane’s loadmaster were the only living people in the belly of the transport.
"I was just stunned," Esper said in an interview last year. "I looked around, and I saw these scores of body bags, and I am sitting in the middle of them in a bucket seat."
Esper’s anecdote demonstrates one of the biggest differences between the combat coverage of the Vietnam War and the conflict in Iraq. Reporters in Vietnam had much greater access to the stark realities of the war and encountered fewer obstacles from the military to cover them.
It might be unfair to compare the coverage of the Iraq conflict with what many believe to be the most accessible and visible war in U.S. history. But there is no denying the American public got a more vivid picture of what was happening in Vietnam than from the level of news coverage in Iraq.
"The best way to report a story is to be there," Esper said. "And you were able to do that in Vietnam, for the most part." Esper said the "huge advantage" reporters in Vietnam had over those in Iraq was access to what was actually going on. Esper believes the military of today wants to limit press access partly because of the way the Vietnam War was reported.
Interviews conducted over the past year and a half with three AP reporters who covered the Vietnam War and seven newspaper journalists who reported from Iraq indicate journalists in Iraq faced greater physical dangers and worked with a military less willing to facilitate coverage of the conflict.