Leyendo una amplia selección de textos del Financial Times y del New York Times sobre «Citizen Journalism» o periodismo ciudadano como calentamiento para el debate por tuiter organizado para mañana, 26 de junio de 2013, por la Asociación de la Prensa de Madrid (APM), me reencuentro con un artículo de Stephen Farrell de febrero de 2012 sobre los corresponsales de guerra que leí y descargué en su día.

Por su calidad, lo recojo como antesala de una entrada que irá creciendo con infinidad de textos igualmente destacados sobre el mismo asunto que he ido seleccionando y utilizando en clases y seminarios durante años.

Conflict Reporting in the Post-Embed Era

By STEPHEN FARRELL (February 27, 2012, 4:26 pm) The New York Times

I shall proceed to describe, to the best of my power, what occurred under my own eyes, and to state the facts which I have heard from men whose veracity is unimpeachable, reserving to myself the exercise of the right of private judgment in making public and in suppressing the details of what occurred on this memorable day.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — These are the words of William Howard Russell, writing in The Times of London newspaper in October 1854 about The Charge of the Light Brigade, the doomed assault by a few hundred British mounted cavalrymen against Russian artillery at Balaclava during the Crimean War.

Although a century and a half before the term ‘embedded’ was coined, it was one of the most famous pieces of embedded military journalism in history.

More than 150 years later the reporting of warfare has changed utterly. Correspondents no longer get hilltop seats alongside generals as the lines of battle form, break and re-form in the valleys below them – the “painter’s eye” view as Russell described it – and reports are now transmitted within seconds, or even live, not by horseback, train and steamer… Read more