Top War Correspondent's Embed Ends

The US Report

No one reporting on the Global War on Terror has done a more effective or honest job than Michael Yon. For one thing he knows the military, having served in U.S. Army Special Forces. With his camera and his pen, he enabled readers to see aspects of war corporate media could or would not divulge.

On Saturday, April 10, Yon posted a message on his magazine-style website. “[A] message came from military that this embed has ended.” He headed off to pack his bags for the trip home from Afghanistan.[...]

Yon said he was told the reason for ending the embed was “overcrowding by journalists.” Hard to read that one with a straight face, isn’t it?

“Haven’t seen a journalist in weeks,” he wrote.

A number of theories were offered by his fans, with some blaming Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of US forces in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s review of the Rules of Engagement after President Barack Obama took office has drawn criticism from those who have served or have family members serving.

Troop deaths doubled in Afghanistan for the first three months of 2010. Corporate media and wire services attributed the increase to Obama's increase in troops, but that is a political conclusion based on assumptions rather than a conclusion based on hard fact.[...]

A current example not related to Yon is the corporate media approach to a video of action in Iraq leaked by the Wikileaks website. [ Read it all]

On Yon's FB page he linked to this article stating "Blast from past - applicable now as ever"

Censoring Iraq In a counterinsurgency, the media battlespace is critical. When it comes to mustering public opinion, rallying support, and forcing opponents to shift tactics and timetables to better suit the home team, our terrorist enemies are destroying us. Al Qaeda's media arm is called al Sahab: the cloud. It feels more like a hurricane. While our enemies have "journalists" crawling all over battlefields to chronicle their successes and our failures, we have an "embed" media system that is so ineptly managed that earlier this fall there were only 9 reporters embedded with 150,000 American troops in Iraq. There were about 770 during the initial invasion.

Both articles are a must read as well as his FB page.

Cross posted at Jawa Report