Six guides to war reporting, in historical order
Each guide covers one period or practice and names the archives, museums, universities and international bodies it draws on. The reference page sets out how international humanitarian law treats journalists.
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1854 to 1856
The Crimean War and the first war correspondent
How a newspaper correspondent and a government-backed photographer covered the Crimean War, and why their work still shapes how war reporting is studied.
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1861 to 1865
The American Civil War: photographers in the field
How wet-plate photography, Mathew Brady’s studios and Alexander Gardner’s pictures from Antietam changed what the public could see of a war.
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1914 to 1945
Reporting the world wars: censorship and accreditation
How censorship, patriotic expectation and official accreditation shaped what correspondents could report in the First and Second World Wars.
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1960s to 1975
Vietnam and television news
How film crews and television anchors covered the Vietnam War, what Walter Cronkite said after the Tet Offensive, and what the journalists themselves later recalled.
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1983 to 2003
From press pools to embedded reporting
How the Pentagon’s press pool worked from Grenada to the 1991 Gulf War, why it was renegotiated, and what a study of embedded television reports in Iraq in 2003 found.
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1855 to today
War photography: what the camera could and could not show
How technology, convention and intent have shaped war photographs since the 1850s, the questions raised about staging, and how the law treats photographers.
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Reference
How international humanitarian law protects journalists
What Additional Protocol I, Article 79, the Third Geneva Convention and customary law say about journalists in armed conflict, and how the UN has followed up.