Moderator: “Dear embedded Journalist, we employ in our network, is embedded journalism shit?”
Embedded Journalist: “I dont think so, and technology got a lot better” -- now let me show you this one example, where our handlers didnt preselect who we were allowed to interview. It was amazing! One russian women told us Putin is a great guy! This was this earthy, gritty fluff that we were looking for. That gives you this real feeling of having been there as a news consumer! (Click, click, click, click, click, like and subscribe.)
What?
Oh! And that one time, when - quote french embedded journalist, getting asked those hard hitting questions by a moderator of her network: “We were allowed to walk around in Sudscha and show the town folks on an Ipad, look, look, this is what its really like, this is the war out there”.
Well - who was we in that instance? Because to my recollection, the ukrainian soldiers showed those clips to rural people there on their devices and let a few journalists film that, right? Of course on seperate trips. So everyone of those handpicked journalists had their “exclusive”, see:
Oh, what fun times, we had, when, we, I mean they - had that great idea! The french embedded journalistrice just doesnt see the propaganda angle here…
Dont worry, nothing to see here, move along. We have to go back to base now. Enough Sudscha for a day!
Well you say - “this one example where handlers didnt preselect” you just mentioned is very unfair and leading, right?
Right.
Here is the youtube channel for Voice of america, filtered by the search terms ukraine and military, watch this, and tell me any difference to the best western embedded reporting that is out there: https://www.youtube.com/@VOANews/search?query=ukraine%20military
You know, highlights like “there is a store near Kursk, all the ukrainian military guys go to (siehe NZZ und andere)”, and “grandma was evacuated from her farm to Sumi, so she’s safe from bombs (click)”. All the highlights! Maybe also compare it to “After our handler from the Ukrainian Police Headquarters Donezk Region told us to leave the city, we still went to a (random, not attacked) maternity ward the next day, to ask a doctor if he could lead us to the hospitals morgue to unpack a random baby corpse so we could film it, while the handler from the Donezk Region Police Headquarters was still with us, and then drove us out of Mariupol in his own Hyundai. He was called Vladimir - we forgot to mention all of that for 8 months until a flipping interview at the sundance film festival in the US. Oh, but that wasn’t even embedded Journalism, that was free as can be journalism.
With an entirely independent crew! Consisting of the head of the professional photographer society of Ukraine, and Vladimir, from the Ukrainian Police Headquarters Donezk Region, a chance acquaintance.
Well we first lied and told the world, someone else drove us out of Mariupol, and Vladimir just pointed us to were cars were that drove out of the city, but…” You know, war journalism. So you can feel, what its like. Which is the most important thing. Your feeling on those things. So you get that sense.
