Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.