Reporters and Soldiers on Embedding

Gina Cavallaro, who's traveled to Iraq four times to report for the Army Times, has mixed feelings about embedding journalists. "The media is afraid ... and rightly so," she said. "They're relying more on the military to get them where they want to go, and as a result, the military is getting smarter about getting its own story told." But, she added, "I don't necessarily consider that a bad thing." Iraq War veteran Paul Rickhoff, who started Operation Truth "to tell the public the truth of the war from a soldier's perspective," feels that "embedding reporters actually limits the stories they can tell." If reporters don't "play along," he said, "next time they'll deny you access."