Reporters at War: War, Lies & Videotape (EMMY AWARD-WINNING Documentary) | Real Stories

in war it is said truth is the first casualty and Generals and journalists have certainly been uneasy bedfellows since conflict was first reported these guys are not there to help us these guys are not there to assist us in eliciting the truth they are there to inhibit our reporting at this point all coalition land units are conducting humanitarian assistance there's a useful tension that exists between those who seek information and those who have information and that's really what we see in play here the Pentagon and the first Iraq war acted with an arrogance that is absolutely foreign to the Americans [Music] in this program we look at our patriotism national interest and security affect the way stories are brought back from the front [Music] when a nation goes to war the media and the military often fight each other over access censorship and ultimately the truth I've become very very skeptical about the behavior of governments in walls that because the stakes for them are so high they can very seldom resist the temptation to tell lies usually censorship is to protect the rear ends of our own people that's what it's for I mean censorship is is 9 times out of 10 or 99 times out of 100 ridiculous from my view I think a sophisticated 21st century view of how broadcast media especially is relevant to war is recognize that it is also a conduit for communicating information to adversaries to other governments to other citizens of countries that that have interest in what we're doing whether it's adversarial interests or friendly interests and certainly our own population it is a known residence that is used by Saddam Hussein and his sons the war over control of information is nothing new in World War two an American sensor reportedly said I tell the bastards nothing until the war's over and then I tell them who won so just where does the truth fit when a free and democratic society goes to war [Music] when a decision is made to go to war governments appeal to the patriotism of their citizens to bolster support for conflict but for the media what part does patriotism have to play in reporting away well frankly and it's it's the the brash answer if you please none I regard myself as as a patriotic Englishman patriotic Brit I want to see Britain shine in the world but I want I don't want to see it shine um by bad means I don't want to cover up its failures I want to see those failures properly brought out and punished because that's the kind of country I would like to live in a country which is honest about itself which tries it's best to behave well and when it doesn't it takes a necessary action this is a proof positive that Osama bin Laden was making weapons chemical weapons you look at this stuff you just want to say that son of a [ __ ] something very scary is going on as well which is that some parts of the media these days don't necessarily subscribe to the view that they should be producing an impartial piece of journalism they believe the partial journalism is the way for them they believe that if you like xenophobic journalism the jingoistic journalism flag-waving journalism is the journalism for them for all this criticism flag-waving journalism proved a big success for one broadcaster in the recent Gulf War Fox News led US television cable news ratings for the first time ever with its unashamedly pro-american coverage I'm ambivalent about patriotism I'm a proud American I like my country but I'm gonna consider a little more patriotic than is absolutely necessary and it has been an interesting force in the world history throughout history patriotism and loyalty to the government of the day have often been confused but when the Allies fought Hitler in World War two few who reported this war on the Allied side doubted the Justice of the cause the new minister promises the gentlemen of the press that he intends making the ministry into a real news distributing body that's a bit of good news in itself the Allies and particularly the British maintain rigorous censorship throughout the war but some American officers conspired with reporters to get around official censorship I can't imagine this happening now but the colonel in charge of the 8th Air Force public relations would call each one of us when he found out there was going to be a raid the next day on Germany he would call each one of us and keep some heavy-handed code words saying there's gonna be a mail delivery tomorrow as if anybody listening wouldn't have known what he meant can you imagine that happening today my gosh some of the Pentagon people have a hard time telling you that they've had a bombing right after it's over here are the first pictures of the opening of the second front pictures which security demands Meagher at this day at first British journalists didn't experience the kind of freedom their American colleagues enjoyed but when General Eisenhower became supreme commander of the Allied expeditionary forces in preparation for d-day he commanded all his officers British and American to give reporters the greatest possible latitude in the gathering of news he ordered that reporters should be allowed to talk freely with officers and enlisted men and to see the machinery of war in operation I worked for the army newspaper the Stars and Stripes during World War two and General Dwight Eisenhower is a hero of mine because he made sure we were absolutely free of interference from anybody beneath him generals on down everybody wanted to influence what was in our paper about their unit or units and he gave us absolutely carte blanche to write as we felt the truth was and know we were under no pressure whatsoever and it was it was a wonderful thing it was the best thing that Eisenhower did Patton tried to influence the Stars and Stripes he didn't like bill moldings cartoons because mold and poked fun at him and he tried to get the newspaper banned from Patton's Third Army Eisenhower says please George back off [Music] efficiently it was not a war at all as the United States never actually declared war on North Vietnam as a result the Pentagon had no constitutional right to impose censorship on reporters what's more the first and toughest of the reporters battles the battle for access was resolved very early on by a happy coincidence back in 62 they were trying to keep us off helicopters and whatever then a friend of mine came over Ivan slavich was the commander of the first armed helicopter squadron in Vietnam and company I guess you'd call it and his orders from the Pentagon from the Army was to sell the idea of army aviation the importance of helicopters so he was his job among other things was to be very friendly with reporters and so we got great access we got into every battle there was so that took care of access it began this morning at a place called Benoit we decided to join a demolition team that were going out into the field it was not hard to work in Vietnam at all and it was certainly not hard to work with the US military they were as cooperative as you could imagine to a young television correspond like myself showing up they would take me anywhere in the country they wanted to go they were more than happy to let you stay with units and the relationship between correspondents and units in the field was really very good so the coverage of Vietnam was as they sometimes say in sports very much up close and personal [Music] [Music] [Music] we're honest about it [Music] virtually from the beginning and throughout the American involvement in Vietnam the reporters found themselves bogged down in the middle of another wall the fight between the soldiers on the ground and the top brass in Saigon and Washington I thought it would be a great story I would go and cover this confrontation it turned out I was gonna cover a dual confrontation I was gonna cover the confrontation between the arvin with the American advisers versus the Vietcong and then I was going to cover a confrontation between those Americans in the military who were trying to tell the truth I rather pessimistically and their superiors which was described as a pressed rubber which it was not he was a struggle within the military those in the field versus those in Saigon [Music] stop what's that sound what's gone [Music] in the mid-sixties the reporters in Vietnam were very much divided as the American people were divided there were hawks and there were doves in every Network - there were guys who thought the war was a good idea and were going out and doing what we call gung-ho pieces about what our boys are doing in Vietnam and then you had guys who were very sensitive to the suffering and dubious about the political aims who were anti-war reporters and they it was to the point that they look different they dress different I'm talking about the reporters the they stayed in different hotels they hung out in different bars there were two press quarks one was pro war one was anti-war when the anti-war reporters said or wrote what the politicians and the senior generals didn't want to hear those in power would sometimes turn their venom on the messenger I was very close to being expelled all the time I was pushing the limits of what a journalist for an American daily newspaper could get away with at that time in the early 60s about as far as I could I mean not just in terms of almost being expelled from the country but making my bosses in New York a little uneasy with the degree of pessimism and the degree of anger that I was creating in Washington culminating finally with the President of the United States asking the publisher to pull me out of there and then subsequently his successor Lyndon Johnson are taking taking time from his many many other difficult obligations to be Minister of truth and patriotism and to refer to Neil Sheehan and me my my young colleague as traitors to our country and they really set out to destroy my career there were systematic attacks on my patriotism my person my manhood and it was a real assault to undermine who you were the idea that I would have come from left-wing family they started checking out about my family background but it was really ugly and it was relentless the Pentagon has allowed reporters total access to the front but they still wanted to put their own spin on the quagmire of their involvement in Vietnam if they could so they conducted optimistic press briefings every evening in Saigon nothing new that I can offer here except to state what has already been stated in Washington these briefings were quickly labeled by the cynical press Kohl as the five o'clock Follies mr. Fried's question is how would I characterized the success of the bombings so far I wouldn't take it as far as to characterize it joke the five o'clock follies in in Vietnam dealt in things like body counts it was an an effort to show we were winning that we had the upper hand that the Vietcong was was defeated and in retreat and of course this manifestly was not true the man who lied to you publicly at five o'clock would level with you over dinner at 7:30 it was a kind of game desire dance that you went through my first reaction quite honestly was this is a young bunch of reporters who don't understand war reporting at all they are trying to show off to each other how how tough they can be with the briefing officers that was my first reaction and then as I was there longer as I myself got out and saw this the action and then went to the follies I realized how how absolutely distinct was the Army version of what happened as opposed to what I had seen happen and what art guys were seeing happen all the time so I understood that this was not simply a freshman show-off performance but an actual anger [Music] for all the optimism of the five o'clock follies it was only a matter of time before the triumphant Vietcong marched into Saigon [Music] [Applause] as the humiliated Americans withdrew home in 1975 many in the military cast around to see who else could delay a very large body of American military opinion that was of field grade rank in Vietnam who believed at the end of Vietnam that the American press had lost the war for the United States in Vietnam and while that is not reflected in any of the official histories of any of the Armed Services by the time Panama and Grenada and subsequently Iraq came along many of those fuel grade officers and the and and the military establishment had had decided that it would be a better thing if they locked the press out during combat good evening tonight a naval confrontation between Britain and Argentina looms in the southern Atlantic it was to be the British who would first translate the so-called lessons of Vietnam into practice 1982 the Falklands War god save the queen [Music] [Applause] [Music] I think almost everybody I spoke to in the early stages of the Falklands talked about Vietnam and their prejudice was that the Americans have lost Vietnam because of the media and they weren't going to make the same mistake that and of course a British tradition which is that we were nothing like us open and never had been and we're never going to be as of the Americans can be a bit about letting the media into their operations in the Falklands you were censored at source you were not only censored on what you could say but censored about where you could go when you're on a British ship if you're in a British camp if you're with a British unit you are a prisoner of them you can't move without them you can't transmit any of your materialists they say so in those days they worked on their on the idea that absolute secrecy was the best possible outcome and they were only just beginning to get into the idea there was something called reporting as opposed to propaganda you had the minder who went with you everywhere you first showed your copy to him he would blue pencil whatever it would then went to the next senior officer who penciled it then it would go to the captain who would pencil it then it was transmitted to the mo D who would censored only then was it released we couldn't argue I remember once I sent mera set to signal to London to my editor saying my coffee is being censored and the Sentret taken out the word censored so all he got was my copy as being I mean it was it was that that heavy and you know it wasn't until much later that we learnt and I learnt it from a kind of deep throat signals officer who was aboard one of the ships he said that even as they were passing the Scilly Isles on their way to the South Atlantic and that's where only 30 miles from normal they got a signal from northward and naval headquarters saying and the signal simply said diet D IET diet and that decoded meant starved the press and I counted them all back it became the most famous phrase of the war Brian Hanrahan cunningly managed to beat the sensor to report that no British planes had been shot down so how did it come about this was the first operation of the war is when the first planes took off from them on a bombing raid from Hermes and and they all came back and I wanted to write down all the 12 planes returned safely and they said no you can't do that because you give away the number of planes and we had the usual argument I said they no they said no they don't so in the end I agreed crossed out the phrase and in my hurry just wrote count on top of it because I hadn't actually thought of anything else to put in and then an hour later after rushing off to the helicopter and getting to the telephone and starting the dispatch I started reading hit this blank bit in my my dispatch all nicely written out except for this one phrase with the word count so I made up the phrase not only did the British completely restrict what journalists could and could not say about the conduct of the war they also used their control over the press to spread disinformation there was a succession of planted bits of information which they wanted us to transmit which in fact in post-mortem days did we decided will was not true I suppose the most famous one was when they sent a Vulcan bomber all the way from Britain to the Falklands virus sanction to bomb the airfield there and then we were shown the high-altitude reconnaissance photographs and there they said look there's the runway and look at this win smashed to smithereens of course we went out that night I did and Brian Hanrahan did we were both transmitting on world service that the airfield at Port Stanley had been destroyed by this amazing feat you know 15,000 Marrs of flying and a bomb of course it was nothing of the kind and most of the bombs missed what one quart they entered the runway but there we were telling the world the people of course who were most unimpressed by it with the Argentinians he knew perfectly well they hadn't been bombed the 29 journalists permitted to travel to the walkins were all British and when some American media companies tried to hire their own ship to take their reporters to the conflict zone the British government said they could be blown out of the water those journalists who did get there often found themselves at odds with their military hosts it was sometimes thought after the Falklands that I was the Army's favorite journalist this was a million miles from the truth from awful lot of soldiers and officers I was there most unfavorite journalists because I wanted to go my own way and do my own thing and they wanted me to stay where I was told and I've often seen on battlefields senior soldiers visibly contemptuous of the behavior of journalists because we seem to lack the self-discipline the sacrifice the unselfishness which are absolutely vital if you're going to win wars we display a negative a lust for glory a selfishness which is anathema to most soldiers and after I walked into Port Stanley at the end of the Falklands War the commanding officer to Paris said he would never take me on operation again which he thought my behavior was so reckless he said I don't care if you get killed but you could have got good people killed if they'd had to come and bail you out if the Argentinians had shot you as you deserve from a military and political perspective the totally restricted access and type censorship made the Falklands conflict a nearly ideal model for the military in the next war involving America and the two more following that the Pentagon was to exert even tighter control as they tried to shut reporters out completely the assault on Grenada came just before dawn fierce fighting was reported and a US helicopter gunship was shot down and crashed into the scene when America went to war for the first time after Vietnam in 1983 there was to be no question of allowing journalists the freedom they had enjoyed during the Vietnam years the nearest reporters could get to the action was the neighboring island of Barbados completely locked out of Grenada completely locked out of Panama Gulf War One and even more complete Locker this is war as many generals and politicians want the world to see it cool clinical and not a dead body in sight [Music] [Music] Gulf War 1 1991 over 1600 journalists and support crew was sent to cover the conflict 400 was selected to get close to the action but the military offered them just one way to cover the war they had to join news foods in the desert whose movements were controlled by a hundred and fifty military public affairs officers and when the action finally started the minders ensured the correspondents were kept as far from the battlefield as possible there was not a single reporter permitted along with the troops as they moved forward toward Baghdad finally we were shut out again almost an unconstitutional thing there the whole idea of freedom of speech and press and our constitution is that the government will certainly be open to the people and in this case here is the most important thing that a government can do is commit its young people to combat against a now an enemy nation and we did not have a reporter there they did sign a couple of so-called pool reporters and cameramen and then didn't let them go along anyway it was ridiculous as an editor I got one thing wrong with our coverage of the first Gulf War and that is I argued that it was not realistic to believe that journalists could just be allowed to roam all over the battlefield doing their own thing that there must be a bargain between the authorities and the media to have journalists accredited to specific units and to accept that kind of deal in order to get the sort of information we wanted well I was wrong about that but cause in the events the journalists who were accredited we're not allowed to get anywhere near the fighting the lesson we learned from that one is that you couldn't trust government to keep their side of the bargain and this of course is part of the wider equation I support the principle that governments are do have a right to conceal military information from the public if it's like that across people's lives to publicize it on the other hand I don't think I've ever known a government which has resisted the temptation to go beyond that and use censorship not merely to conceal vital military information but just consult conceal information which happens to be a bit embarrassing politically to them for all the appearance of openness and honesty journalists could not entirely trust the information they were given as a measure of effectiveness of how we're doing in the air campaign I just pull these two things out I've laundered them so you can't really tell what I'm talking about because I don't want the Iraqis to know what I'm talking about but trust me trust me the Allies knew that in the new world of 24 hours a day satellite news the media could be a useful weapon to confuse and misdirect the enemy I was in one of the lead ships by HMS clausten's was the foredeck control ship and behind us was one of the largest aircraft carriers in the world it had 3,000 Marines on board and in head coastal landing equipment and I didn't think we'd be allowed to report it but we were freely allowed to report the fact that with us was this enormous aircraft carrier carrying invasion troops invasion through 3,000 Marines the sudden arrival here of this battle group with such enormous firepower and so close to the coast is something the Iraqis could never have expected it opens up a second front from the sea and ties down many thousands of Iraqi troops that are now desperately need but of course there was no intention ever to learn these troops on the coast of Iraq or Kuwait but it kept an awful lot of Iraqi soldiers on that coast Saddam had to keep them there because he kept hearing through our reports that there was going to be a seaborne invasion their whole objective of the military in 1990 was to keep us away from the war we took a trip cameraman sounded myself up to cuff G up the coast from a duffel on where we were staying and found or two days after the war began that the oil refinery there was on fire it had been shelled by the Iraqis the Saudi troops had all fled and the US Marines they were under heavy fire Bob Simon in Saudi Arabia against our coverage but Saddam Hussein has long promised an unstoppable Inferno of oil today he gave a hint of what it could be like the Iraqi after they filed their oil refineries story Bob Simon and his team went out looking for more action we decided a couple days later to take a look at another part of the border as few Saudis who were there said the nearest Iraqis are five kilometers away so we just walked into this no-man's land to be able to say we here we are reporting from the no-man's land which is something I'm not proud of and that's when an Iraqi Jeep came screaming up to us and the rest was not history but misery for the next 40 days CBS News said today it will try to send a representative to Baghdad to press the search for for missing CBS News men oh who knows after a minute minute maximum that I feel a hand the back of my neck and a barrel of a gun and my stomach and we're being led away to the car but like anything else to the power of denial is enormous and my first thoughts in the car were hey I've got a story to file just back that way we're going to wrong way Baghdad radio said today the four were seized in northern Saudi Arabia because they had entered the area illegally several of the officers had been to the States and so many Iraqis had studied in the States and they were very nice with we started talking about American music and American sports and this and that and then without any notice he started beating the [ __ ] out of us and that's when we realize that this wasn't gonna be no picnic and that we weren't talking our way out of this and this road we were on was getting bumped our hands were handcuffed behind our backs and they were very very tight and it was very painful I complained once early in the trip I said if these please loosen the handcuffs it to tighten the goddamn tighter they kept on saying we're gonna take us to television that they were gonna bring put us on Iraqi television and we thought that would be fun we like that idea cuz we you know it was torturing us more than anything else was was notion that nobody would have heard a thing that you know our families probably thought we were dead forty days after their capture thanks to massive international representations on their behalf Bob Simon and his team were released this is a story that could have ended another way but it's had a happy ending we're going home which is the to the place you go to after war when given as lucky as we've been sometimes it would seem the military tries to use journalists for information albeit with mixed success CNN's bernard shaw had been one of a small group of correspondents who reported the start of the first Gulf War from Saddam's capital Baghdad two days later he had made his exit to neighbouring neutral Jordan where he was met by an unexpected visitor before I could reach for the phone to call my wife to tell her that I was safely in Amman the bureau chief there said Bernie that men over there has been waiting for you for four hours he's a spook he was the United States Army intelligence officer a major wearing civilian clothing he said mr. Shaw I would like to talk to you and I'd like to know some of the things you've seen and heard over the past few days and I said major I don't want to offend you but I have nothing to say to you I said I am NOT a competitor 'no list he said well if Ted Turner told you to talk to me then it might be different I said major even if my boss Ted Turner ordered me to talk to you I still would not talk to you I reported that in a news conference with about a hundred twenty-five reporters and The Associated Press United Press International Reuters all the wire services moves stories about that revelation and I was intensely attacked by a lot of conservative people in the United States among them Charlton Heston remember Heston saying who does Bernie Shaw think he is Switzerland in spite of Bernie Shaw's neutrality the Allies secured a lightning victory in the first Gulf War it was to be the last time that the media could be so tightly controlled this is the newsroom of a new force in 21st century media al-jazeera satellite television for the first time Western news organizations and Arab state controlled television have a rival that challenges their view of world events with uncensored images from an Arab perspective they are also a favorite means for Osama bin Laden to issue statement you have to remember we are a new phenomena media phenomena and Arab world until we came to be that was back in November of 96 manner of media in general was to a large extent subservient to Authority in other words under the control of the censor however on al Jazeera came people all of a sudden were exposed to the other point of view Al Jazeera's other point of view includes the sharing of images regarded as completely unacceptable in Western media unfortunately war is not clean war creates college death innocent people are caught in the crossfire we cannot deny that anybody who dies that I don't think is living on mass or something so I think we would be deceiving our audience if we were to ignore these aspects of the war if and if you were to ignore them I think it's only then that we would be editorializing our content because we would be going along blindly with assertions and statements that are not true well honest or Italian in spite of accusations against it in the west of being partisan al jazeera claims to be equally disliked by both sides the Iraqi regime and the and the coalition forces they could agree on nothing except disliking Al Jazeera's editorial line we have been not only hazard by the Americans and the British our people were intimidated by the Iraqis authorities when they rolled into Baghdad there were death threats arrests being manhandled by the Iraqis somehow reporters were threatened with their limbs being severed tongues cut when planning this war in the age of satellite television and 24-hour news the coalition recognized that a media strategy based on shutting reporters out from the action was bound to fail now interestingly the military now places more emphasis on what they call the total information war than they ever did before it is important to them to win the hearts and minds back home to be seen to be winning the war the war is not won until that statue is toppled how do you see the statues toppled you see it on television therefore television is terribly important to them it's also how generals communicate with the most important constituency which the families of the soldiers of fighting under them through the southern Iraqi desert because obviously this is a very fast-moving force by traditional military standards but it's still a long train if you will a long convoy this was to be the coalition's showpiece new strategy more than 700 reporters sleeping traveling and sharing with units of the military I think with the embedded reporters showed us is when we take a deliberate approach and say we're going to partner you with a with some organization a unit a squadron it's aboard a ship whatever it happens to be and that there are certain rules we want you to live by we're gonna give you extraordinary access you're going to see things some of which you will even be classified that are projected operations and we would ask you to live by these rules and we base the encounter thereafter on trust that's a new dynamic trust is a different form of control it is control nevertheless but it's shared control there's a high degree of control in spite of the control many in the media establishment like the military regarded embedding as a great success the other arm of the coalition's information strategy took the form of daily briefings usually held by general Vincent Brooks in a specially constructed set in a warehouse in Qatar I think we have to all recognize that in the globalized environment that I talked about earlier that there are a number of consumers to every piece of information whether something is posted on the internet something that's in a newspaper or something we broadcast and given that recognition which I certainly had in mind with it with each day that I had that mission we should also consider what important messages need to be conveyed to whatever consumers might be out there it is a known residence that is used by Saddam Hussein and his sons for all its dedication to truth there were those in the media audience at the daily briefings at CENTCOM headquarters in Qatar who questioned the value of the exercise one that they likened to the five o'clock follies of the Vietnam War magazine and I want to ask about the value proposition of these briefings we're no longer being briefed by senior most officers to the extent that we get information it's largely information already released by the Pentagon what's the value to us for what we learn at this million-dollar press center but I've got enough walls already that's wonderful I appreciate that there were always be opinions as to what the value was and I think that some of the feedback I've gotten from a very consistent number of corners do not square with that particular opinion that it was a waste of time I know that my responsibility was to try to articulate what was going on in the operation keep things in context be truthful about exactly what was going on and at the same time recognize the nature of the global environment we were operating in okay when they are not fighting the army or the politicians for access to information for truth television war reporters have yet another hurdle to overcome their own bosses at home you talk about censorship and and editorial control I bet I bet every war correspondent television guy you talk to moans about the fact that real war has never been shown on television and never will be the good taste brigade have got serious and it is very difficult now to report the reality of war this is an argument I had up hill and down dale for many years what you show almost heroic figures in uniform blazing away with their Kalashnikov or whatever they've got and they're being artillery and it's always spectacular especially the naval videos highly spectacular what you don't really see is what happens at the other end you can see big explosions you don't see the maiming of civilians you don't see the killing of civilians you don't even see the the wounding or the killing of soldiers very much you get the impression it's highly spectacular like a grand video game and that war is a cost-free way of settling differences this is terribly dangerous and fundamentally untrue I think that those of us in the line in recent Wars who've worked on the homefront so to speak as editors are much more a we're maybe not necessarily more sensitive but much more aware of the pressure of public opinion the the notions of taste which by the way differ quite dramatically and that debate is important to listen to about what actually is palatable to the audience I think that probably one the glass break taboos in television now is death arguments about moment of death are quite extraordinary I've named two instances myself where we've had phone calls from editors in London who said was that person actually dead when you filled them or were they still alive you say you can't tell and they say no and you say so what does it matter and I said oh it does matter it does matter you see if they were still just you know alive it'd be all right well I certainly give the graphic imagery I certainly do I remember after the 1991 Gulf War I was on the road north to Basra at one point I was with an ITV crew and on the right-hand side of the road were a group of Iraqi soldiers dead and wild dogs had come in across the sand over the desert and were tearing them to pieces for food running off with the thorns um between their teeth you know the fingers dragging through the sand ripping out stomachs to eat verminous dogs and I saw the ITV crew filming this and I said you'll never get that on the air I said now I know it's just for the archives but you see it should be on the air and the reason the authorities and television the reason governments think is oh you companies this is obscene we must respect the dead we don't want to respect the dhobi kill them what we want to do is to stop people seeing these images because if they saw them they would never ever again support war and we want a population that will when we want support was when we left for the Falklands leaving Portsmouth and Southampton I was bored Hermes and there was this forest of Union Jack's there was the brass band playing there were women taking off their bras and throwing them to their boyfriends aboard the ships great wonderful but you know what they weren't prepared for was the consequence and when the body bags came back when the coffins were flown in you know they didn't want to see how these men that they were cheering on died because you know when you die you don't fall over backwards over the gasp you shrapnel blows you apart a mortar can do enormous damage to the human body but that's never allowed to be seen and I think that's that's almost a war crime because it does make sending people to war an acceptable thing to do [Music]

Channel: Real Stories

Views: 127,380

Keywords: armed conflict journalists, battlefield documentaries, battlefield reporters, capturing the truth in war, combat zone journalists, combat zone revelations, conflict area narratives, courageous journalism, dangers faced by journalists, documenting conflict, frontline storytellers, heroic journalism tales, journalism integrity, military censorship, objectivity in reporting, risks of war journalism, war correspondence integrity, war correspondents, war stories

Id: LAJBxJTSNkU

Length: 46min 48sec (2808 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 28 2018