A note from Press and Conflict
From William Howard Russell's dispatches out of the Crimea to reporters embedded with units in Iraq, plus the rules of international humanitarian law that protect journalists: that is the ground this reference covers, and nothing beyond it.
Why it exists
Most people meet war reporting one headline at a time. Seen across a century and a half, the same questions keep returning: how close a reporter can get, who decides what may be printed, whether a famous photograph shows what it seems to, and what protection the law gives the person holding the camera. Six guides follow those questions through the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the two world wars, Vietnam, the pool and embedding systems, and war photography. A separate page sets out what international humanitarian law says about journalists, as general information rather than legal advice, and without judging any particular incident.
Students, teachers and readers of history are the intended audience. Nothing is assumed, and every guide lists the archives, museums, universities and international bodies its account comes from, so readers can go further on their own.
Arguments it leaves open
Historians still disagree over whether certain photographs were arranged and over how much television shaped opinion about a war. Where the sources record such a quarrel, the guides lay it out and stop there. There are no casualty tallies and no counts of reporters killed on these pages.
The earlier owner of this domain
In the past, mwaw.org belonged to Media Workers Against War, a group based in the UK. Press and Conflict has no connection with that group, nor with anyone else who held the domain before. It does not borrow the group's name, logo or words, and it does not revive or carry on its work. The subject of media and war was chosen because of what the domain had been used for, and the group is named here only so nobody mistakes one for the other.
Drafted by machine, unread by experts
An AI system drafted the guides and the law page, working from the documents that each page cites. A script then fetched every cited document a single time, on 2026-10-26, and searched the saved text for the specific facts the page relies on. The editorial policy explains what that search can and cannot vouch for.
No human editor, historian or lawyer has read these pages yet. Where a page and its source differ, the source is right.
The images are vector drawings written as SVG code for these pages. They are not photographs, carry no lettering, and depict no real person, place, uniform, insignia or product.
Absent by design
No campaigning, no appeals to support a cause, no sales, no adverts, no affiliate or sponsored links, and no cookies, analytics or trackers. The site does not speak for, and is not part of, any newsroom, government, armed force, the ICRC, the United Nations or UNESCO.
Writing to the site
At present it cannot be done: there is no form, email address or telephone line for it. Any future way to get in touch will be posted on this page.