War and Truth (2007) (review)

Those who study the intersection of war and visual culture may be familiar with Leonardo da Vinci’s essay, “The Way to Represent a Battle.” In this reflective, artful prose, da Vinci methodically cataloged all the things an artist of his time should have included in any painting that purported to depict warfare as it really was. “Represent first the smoke of the artillery, mingled in the air with the dust tossed up by the movement of horses and combatants,” da Vinci wrote. “Let the air be full of arrows in every direction, some shooting upwards, some falling, some flying level. The balls from the guns must have a train of smoke following their course… And if you make anyone fallen you must make the mark where he has slipped on the dust turned into blood-stained mire… Make a horse dragging the dead body of his master… Make the conquered and beaten pale, with brows raised and knit… Show someone using one hand as a shield for his terrified eyes with the palm turned towards the enemy… Others in the death agony grinding their teeth, rolling their eyes, with their fists clenched against their bodies, and the legs distorted… You may see some maimed warrior fallen on the ground, covering himself with his shield, and the enemy bending down over him and trying to give him the death-stroke. There might also be seen a number of men fallen in a heap on top of a dead horse… You will see the squadrons of the reserves standing full of hope and watchful with eyebrows raised… And see to it that you paint no level spot of ground that is not trampled with blood.” With the awareness of a master artist who understood both his challenges and objectives, da Vinci explained how painters could capture and convey the myriad actions, events, and emotions associated with the hell that Renaissance-era warfare was.

After watching Debbie Etchison and Michael Samstag’s War and Truth, a documentary film that explores the recent history of American war reporting, one gets the sinking feeling that contemporary war correspondents—charged with the almost quixotic task of representing warfare objectively to readers and viewers back home—are not equipped with, but are in imperative need of, the kind of precise and effective guideline that da Vinci brought to his profession. The film centers on interviews with dozens of press journalists, photographers, and other media figures who reveal that mainstream media war correspondents, for the most part, possess a collective sense of purpose (to “document history,” “report the truth” “show the rest of the world what happened,” and “be the eyes and ears of the people”), but, due to government censorship, the “soda straw view” nature of “embedded reporting,” conservative newspaper editorial boards, and the declining journalistic standards of the “militainment” found on FoxNews and CNN, lack the resources, freedoms, outlets, and methods needed to fulfill their joint task successfully. Although short on solutions, War and Truth spotlights the most troubling obstacles modern day journalists face in covering America’s wars. In doing so, the film serves as a valuable, if supplementary, discussion-starter for any college course that investigates the history, politics, or methods of war reporting.

The first half of War and Truth provides a brief look back at the accomplishments of war reporters during World War II and the Vietnam War (unsurprisingly, the Korean War and the Persian Gulf War, America’s forgotten wars, are never mentioned). This section begins by paying lip service to some of America’s famous war correspondents—Ernie Pyle, Robert Capa, Ernest Hemingway, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Kronkite—then quickly settles into the personal stories of Norman Hatch (U.S. Marine Corps Photographer, WWII), Joe Galloway (UPI Reporter, Vietnam), and Roger Peterson (Former ABC Correspondent, Vietnam). Hatch recounts his harrowing experiences documenting the American assault on Japanese forces at Tarawa in 1943. Over photographs and film clips of the carnage at Tarawa, most of which were never seen by the American...