The March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq coincided with the first broad implementation of an innovative means of wartime coverage: “embedded press.” Over 600 reporters from a diverse range of American and international news organizations were “embedded” in U.S. military units, i.e., they traveled with the troops in their units, ate with them, and were billeted with them; they saw what the soldiers saw, were under fire when the troops were, and endured the same hardships (combat, heat, sand storms, long days on the move). Perhaps most remarkable and consequential, they brought live coverage of all of these things through...

Numerous scholars begin their discussion of press-military relations from the premise that the two institutions are inherently different in both their nature and goals.² Although some of the more nuanced analyses recognize the contribution of specific historical antecedents to the oft-observed tension between the press and the military, all suggest that these “inherent” differences result in “inevitable” tension and conflict. Steger’s description is typical of this point of view:

The military and the press are two institutions which, to a degree, are inherently opposed to each other. The military values an organized chain of command, loyalty, sacrifice and secrecy. The...

As many scholars have noted, the history of the relationship between the U.S. media and the military has been “rocky” to say the least.² We have already suggested that the different missions, characteristics, and news-related goals of these two institutions may help to explain the potential for conflict. On the other hand, we have also seen that commonalities in the areas of professionalism and a commitment to public service allow for the possibility of cooperation.

A closer examination of the history between the two institutions will show that there are critical junctures in the trajectory of their interactions over time....

Having considered the relationship between the press and the military in the abstract and then examined the history of press-military relations, we now describe our approach for evaluating the embedded press system in relation to other ways of organizing press-military relations.

There are two parts to this chapter. First, we describe the four idealized systems for organizing military-press relations that will be evaluated in this book. In this discussion, we emphasize the access strategies at the core of each system: denial of access, press pools, unilateral journalism, and embedded press. We emphasize access because of the criticality of this goal...

We move now to our evaluation of the embedded press system. This chapter presents a comparative/historical analysis of the embedded press system relative to other access strategies for press-military relations (denial of access, press pools, and unilateral journalism), with consideration given to the modifying presence of such security strategies as credentialing and security review. We consider these strategies both in the actual historical circumstances in which they have been employed and in abstract, generic contexts. Where data are available, we have supplemented this narrative-based analysis with quantitative findings based on the outcomes and measures listed in the previous chapter.

This...

Having presented our core findings in Chapter Five, we now raise several issues concerning the embedded press system that arose during the course of our research, but that were either not directly related to our main objective of evaluating the embedded press and other systems for military-press relations or are outside the scope of our evaluative framework. After briefly illuminating these issues, we conclude with suggestions for further research.

The embedded press system has proven to be broadly popular. The embedded press system is

one of the most remarkable win-win-win propositions. It’s clear that journalists, who want access more than...