The First Casualty: The War Correspondent As Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo

Rating:
Summary: The Best Book on the History of Military-Media Relations
Review: As a military officer who works routinely with the media, this book is my number-one choice for anybody who wants to understand how the relationship between media and the military became what it is today. This book simply tells a great story. Whether your interest is in media, the military or history, I think you'll have a hard time putting it down. And while I don't subscribe to Mr. Knighley's conclusion that the military scored a final victory in managing the media during Kosovo in 1999, the relationship is much more complex than most people realize and will continue to develop during the conflicts that are being played out today and in the future. The bottom line is that if you're interested enough in this subject to have gotten to the end of this review, you ought to buy the book. You won't regret it.

Rating:
Summary: Buy this book
Review: If you are into the world of journalism in even the smallest capacity, this book is for you. If you are interested in how journalists cover major world events like wars, this book should already be on your bookshelf.

Knightley keeps a thorough record of how the wartime correspondent got its first start and doesn't let up through all of the major English and American wars including the Gulf War. Knightley himself is an accomplished journalist in his own right, but that doesn't stop him from taking a critical look at the industry - how it has succeeded but more interestingly where it has failed and continues to fail.

As a high school journalism teacher, this book will become required reading to understand how this type of reporting came about. It will help the students and you take a more critical look at how journalists are covering the war.

Rating:
Summary: Buy this book
Review: If you are into the world of journalism in even the smallest capacity, this book is for you. If you are interested in how journalists cover major world events like wars, this book should already be on your bookshelf.

Knightley keeps a thorough record of how the wartime correspondent got its first start and doesn't let up through all of the major English and American wars including the Gulf War. Knightley himself is an accomplished journalist in his own right, but that doesn't stop him from taking a critical look at the industry - how it has succeeded but more interestingly where it has failed and continues to fail.

As a high school journalism teacher, this book will become required reading to understand how this type of reporting came about. It will help the students and you take a more critical look at how journalists are covering the war.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting subject, marred by left-wing sentiments
Review: The First Casualty by Phillip Knightly looks at the history of War Correspondents, and analyzes their attempts to accurately report what actually happens on the front line. It covers a broad period of time, from the mid 1800's to the 1970's, in which the author analyzes just about every major war in the time span.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is that it shows the inability of the majority of the correspondents to report accurately on the wars that have taken place throughout history. For various reasons, which are all explained in the book, most of what the average person read about a particular war during the time that it was going on, turned out to be some sort of propaganda or just completely false.

Phillip Knightly examines the role that technology has played in changing the role of the war correspondent. He looks at some of the most famous correspondents and explains what they did to get to the top. He also shows what the real priorities were for some of the correspondents and their editors.

This book also gives a very interesting perspective on many of the most famous wars, and has a lot of inside information that isn't available in your average textbook. This book will make anybody think twice about what they read in the paper, and I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in finding out the real uncensored truth about history.

Rating:
Summary: Review of the First Casualty, by Nathan Reid
Review: The First Casualty by Phillip Knightly looks at the history of War Correspondents, and analyzes their attempts to accurately report what actually happens on the front line. It covers a broad period of time, from the mid 1800's to the 1970's, in which the author analyzes just about every major war in the time span.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is that it shows the inability of the majority of the correspondents to report accurately on the wars that have taken place throughout history. For various reasons, which are all explained in the book, most of what the average person read about a particular war during the time that it was going on, turned out to be some sort of propaganda or just completely false.

Phillip Knightly examines the role that technology has played in changing the role of the war correspondent. He looks at some of the most famous correspondents and explains what they did to get to the top. He also shows what the real priorities were for some of the correspondents and their editors.

This book also gives a very interesting perspective on many of the most famous wars, and has a lot of inside information that isn't available in your average textbook. This book will make anybody think twice about what they read in the paper, and I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in finding out the real uncensored truth about history.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting subject, marred by left-wing sentiments
Review: The first time that I read this book was over twenty years ago. At the time, I thought it was a fascinating account. Yet when I look at it with older and wiser eyes, I realize that while covering an important topic across an impressive canvas, Knightley's book --at least when it covers the last twenty or so years-- is infected with moral equivalency and a more than faint anti-American slant.

How can I state this with certitude? Well, there is the fact that the latest edition is introduced by John Pilger, self-described "world famous" journalist. I have been reading --for laughs-- his articles for years now. They have one consistent thread to them: that whatever America does is evil and any war fought for any reason is evil. I think that I can state this analysis as fact given Pilger's recent argument that America under George W. Bush's administration is the modern day equivalent of the Third Reich. I'm not making this up. Pilger wrote it. And somehow, no matter where American soldiers go into action, Pilger will always be there to argue that we're there to steal natural resources and oppress people.

Knightley takes a similar tone in "The First Casualty." My personal favorite --if memory serves-- is a claim that US Marines are taught to sexually assault enemy civilian women. Another is the argument that Vietnam was a "racist war" (many Americans may have held racist sentiments, but I have no doubt that a lot of Vietnamese weren't too keen on white and black Americans). Still another is the apparent omission of any description of atrocities by the Vietcong and North Vietnames (like the slaughter of civilian "collaborators" at Hue during the Tet Offensive) Another claim shown to be false in a recent book is that US planes strafed German refugees after the firebombing of Dresden in 1945. Knightley also fails to mention just how important Dresden was as a military industrial target as well as being a major rail hub. Attacking the city with incendiaries was horrible, but it did serve a military purpose. It was not just "terror bombing."

The bottom line is that while this book has undoubtedly a great deal of useful information in it, I don't think that it can be trusted. I also reject the underlying theme of the book: All wars are hideous and awful and there is no justification for ever engaging in one of them. Knightley and his pal Pilger seem to have lost sight of something that Earnest Hemingway once observed, "War is a terrible thing, but there are things worse than war, and they all come with defeat."

I write all of this as a veteran (although I would not say of anything like real combat). I am not oblivious to the fact that Americans have sometimes committed horrific acts in war and some of these have gone unpunished. Yet anyone like Knightley who remains fixated on America's sins while paying scant attention to the often far greater crimes of its enemies is not playing fair with his or her readers.

So my recommendation is to skip this one, unless you share the sentiments of the author. The first casualty in war may be the truth, but sometimes, it is also the first casualty in journalism.