As the war in Iraq rolls along we are treated to daily images of the action courtesy of all those very brave and courageous journalists.  War journalism has a very long and fine tradition with many of those journalists and photographers decorated highly for their work in keeping the rest of the world informed.

After all, we have a right to information don’t we…?

I think it is a fair thing to say that, despite the reports coming out of the current war zones in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, that information is somewhat filtered. Most of us have seen that film “Good Morning Vietnam” – and laughed at the two guys who monitored the teletype, marking news items as they came in – they controlled what items could be read out over the radio and what items were strictly not for reporting.

Ask any Viet veteran about the war he fought compared to the war we read about at home – it will be a completely different story coming from his mouth.

Uncle Sam is still at it too. I would say that when the guys finally come home from Iraq only then will the people learn what really went on over there.

Recently I had an interesting conversation with an employee of British Forces Broadcasting Services about their work; basically they broadcast a very broad range of entertainment to the British troops and military posts abroad. The British servicemen and women enjoy everything that we at home in the UK enjoy each night on TV.

Not the same for the American troops though. I learned that their broadcasting service AFN ensures that American servicemen and women see only what Uncle Sam deems appropriate for them to see – a very narrow service which recently saw AFN refuse to even carry episodes of The Soprano’s using that old chestnut ’not good for morale’…the American servicemen and women have their entertainment censored just as heavily as are the real details of their day to day active duty are to the wider public.

How pathetic. That these servicemen and women who put their lives on the line every minute of the day have the heavy hand of censorship held over them even when they get an hour to take those lives off the line; ” you will only know what you need to know – we know best”

Good ol’ Uncle Sam

Copyright © 2007-2012 Cultured Views. All rights reserved.