NEWS

Journalists, colonel to discuss practice of embedding reporters with military

CHAPEL HILL -- Journalists from USA Today, CBS News and WRAL-TV will be among those discussing the practice of embedding reporters with military units, done for the first time during the war in Iraq, in a free public seminar here Sept. 12-13.

The event at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also will feature U.S. Air Force Col. James DeFrank III, press relations director for the Department of Defense and an architect of the practice, which placed more than 600 journalists from around the world with U.S. military units.

The UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication will sponsor the free public seminar, "The New Age of War Reporting," in Carroll Hall. Participants must register in advance, online at http://www.jomc.unc.edu/executiveeducation/warcoverage/index.html or by calling (919) 966-7024. The agenda, directions and parking information also are on the Web site.

"It’s a wonderful, current topic, and I think there will be a lot of interest on campus and in the community," said Dr. Richard Cole, school dean. "Our alumni are well versed on the subject."

Speakers will include two school alumnae. Nahal Toosi of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a 2000 graduate, wore camouflage attire and protective gear like any other soldier with the 1^st Marine Expeditionary Force, writing some of her stories from tents in the desert.

School alumna Donna Leinwand, a reporter for USA Today, chose not to be embedded with a military unit. Instead, she traveled by helicopter to experience the other side of the war through the eyes of the Iraqi people. She also covered military briefings from the command center in Qatar.

Other seminar speakers who were embedded reporters will be Mark Johnson of the Charlotte Observer’s Raleigh bureau, who was with the 82^nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg; Julia Lewis of WRAL-TV, who also was with members of the 82^nd, in Kuwait; and W. Randall Pinkston, a New York-based CBS News correspondent since 1994, who covered the war from the Middle East and ultimately from Baghdad, where he remained until last month. Pinkston has won three Emmy Awards and an Edward R. Murrow Award.

Other speakers scheduled are:

• Bonnie Angelo, a former correspondent and bureau chief for Time magazine in London, New York City and Washington, D.C.
  
  
• Charles Broadwell, editor and publisher of The Fayetteville Observer, which covers nearby Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base.
  
  
• Leesa Moore Craigie, an Emmy-winning director and producer at WRAL-TV in Raleigh. Craigie coordinated war coverage for the station and its Web site; two reporters contributed live reports.
  
  
• Robin Daughtridge, lead photo editor for the Chicago Tribune, previously photography director for the Chicago Sun-Times.
  
  
• Don Flores, editor and executive vice president of the El Paso Times, which covered war-related activities by soldiers nearby at Fort Bliss.
  
  
• Melanie Sill, executive editor at The News & Observer in Raleigh, whose reporter Jay Price and photographer Chuck Liddy spent weeks in Iraq with the 82^nd Airborne. Sill has worked for nearly 20 years as a reporter, assistant and deputy metro editor and assistant managing editor.
  
  
• Dr. C.A. Tuggle, a professor in the school and lead author of a textbook on broadcast news writing, reporting and producing. Before coming to Carolina, Tuggle worked 16 years in television news and media relations.

Question-and-answer periods will follow each talk and panel discussion. Speakers will analyze the pros and cons of the practice, the quality of media coverage of the war and lessons learned for covering future wars. Also discussed will be how technology affected coverage and influenced military and political decisions, and whether journalism schools can better prepare students to cover large military conflicts.

Embedded reporters and photographers were first trained in the basics of combat readiness and then assigned to support and combat units. They were subject to little or no censorship by the government.

"It is a grand experiment," DeFrank said in a recent interview. "It’s never been done to this scale. During the Normandy invasion of World War II, there were only 30 journalists with U.S. forces, and every one had submitted to complete censorship."

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School of Journalism and Mass Communication contact: Rachel Lillis, (919) 966-7024, lillis@email.unc.edu
News Services contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu