The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero & Myth-maker from the Crimea to Kosovo

by Phillip Knightley, John Pilger (Introduction)

"The most comprehensive j'accuse of journalism as propaganda in the English language... Ought to be read by every young reporter and by those who retain pride in our craft of truth-telling, not matter how unpopular or unpalatable the truth." -- John Pilger, from the Preface to the new edition "The first casualty when war comes, is truth," said American Senator Hiram Johnson in 1917, and in his gripping, now-classic history of war journalism, Phillip Knightley shows just how right Johnson was. From William Howard Russell, who described the appalling conditions of the Crimean War in Times [London], to the ranks of reporters, photographers, and cameramen who captured the realities of war in Vietnam, The First Casualty tells a fascinating story of heroism and collusion, censorship and suppression, myth-making and propaganda. Since Vietnam, Knightley finds, governments have become much more adept at managing the media, and in new chapters on the Falklands, the Gulf War, and the former Yugoslavia, he concludes that the war correspondent's role as a seeker of truth is now in jeopardy. From reviews of the first "[This book] may make us all a little more free to talk about and find the truth." -- Garry Wills, New York Times Book Review "Disturbing, even dismaying, yet also in its painful way, enormously entertaining." -- New Yorker

Genres: History, Journalism, Nonfiction, War, Politics, International Relations, Military Fiction

592 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Phillip Knightley was a special correspondent for The Sunday Times for 20 years (1965-85) and one of the leaders of its Insight investigative team. He was twice named Journalist of the Year (1980 and 1988) in the British Press Awards. He and John Pilger are the only journalists ever to have won it twice.

He was also Granada Reporter of the Year (1980), Colour Magazine Writer of the Year (1982), holder of the Chef and Brewer Crime Writer’s award (1983), and the Overseas Press Club of America award for the best book on foreign affairs in 1975 (The First Casualty).

He has lectured on journalism, law, and war at the National Press Club, Canberra, ACT; the Senate, Canberra, ACT; City University, London; Manchester University, Queen Elizabeth College Oxford, Penn State, UCLA, Stanford University, California; the Inner Temple, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He is a patron of the C.W. Bean Foundation, Canberra ACT.

His two main professional interests have been war reporting and propaganda and espionage. In more than 30 years of writing about espionage he has met most of the spy chiefs of most of the major intelligence services in the world. He dined with Sir Maurice Oldfireld, head of MI6. He lunched with Sir Dick White, head of MI5 and MI6. He corresponded with both. He lunched with Harry Rositzke, head of the CIA’s Soviet bloc division. He lunched with Lyman Kirkpatrick, the CIA’s Inspector-General. He dined with Leonid Shebarshin, head of the KGB. He lunched with Sergei Kondrashov, chief of KGB counter-intelligence. He had drinks with Markus Wolf, head of East German intelligence. He spent one week in Moscow interviewing the notorious British traitor, Kim Philby. He helped KGB general Oleg Kalugin write the outline for his book. He has met dozens of officers and agents from all sides and has written many articles on espionage. Few writers today have his depth of knowledge of the international intelligence community.

Phillip reviews non-fiction books for The Mail on Sunday, The Sunday Times, The Independent (London) and The Australian’s Review of Books and The Age (Australia). He was a judge for Canada’s Lionel Gelber Prize, the world’s biggest for the best book on international relations. He is European representative of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Washington DC.

He is involved in the the Indian literary and publishing scene and has written columns for several leading Indian newspapers and magazines.

He presented the war reporting documentary to mark the 30th anniversary of This Week; a half-hour documentary on truth for schools’ television; has reviewed the papers for BBC Breakfast TV and many What the Papers Say. He has appeared in many documentaries in Britain, Canada and Australia. He is a judge for Canada’s Lionel Gelber Prize for the year’s best book on international relations ($50,000). He is on the management committee of The Society of Authors, London.

Phillip was born in Australia but has worked most of his life in Britain. He now divides his time between Britain, Australia and India. He is married with three grown-up children and relaxes by playing tennis most days.

Reviews

[Simon Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

FIRST DRAFTERS DEBUNKED

"The first casualty when war comes, is truth"
- Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917.

Phillip Knightley is a fine journalist with a long career of first class investigative reporting, as well as a number of fine books under his belt including "The Second Oldest Professtion: Spies and Spying in the Twentieth Century" and his biography "A Hack's Progress". In "The First Casualty" (originally published in 1975, but updated in 2000 and 2003) he casts his eye upon his own profession and how they have acquitted themselves reporting the many wars of the past century and a half.

The book starts with William Russell Howard the self-declared "miserable parent of a luckless tribe" and his and others record during the Crimean War, followed with the American Civil War, the small imperial wars that punctuated the twentieth century, and on to the Boer War whose reporters included that half child and half man Winston Churchill with his boys own style of writing. Knightley covers the First World War in some depth, the militaries attitude to the press, as well as the other side of the coin, that of the press to the military, for example: "a principal aim of the war policy of [The Times] was to increase the flow of recruits. It was an aim that would get little help from accounts of what happened to recruits once they became soldiers." That little gem of journalistic integrity was from The Times own account of its performance during that war! The book goes on to deal with the Russian Revolution and the western intervention, the Spanish Civil War, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam, Algeria, the Falklands War, the Gulf War of 1990-91, and Kosovo, before ending with an early account of the reporting during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, including some amply deserved criticism of those "embedded" (in beds?) with the military.

The record brought to light is not one of total success, indeed the reflections of many correspondents are liberally quoted to indicate the limitations they worked under, the danger, deadlines and the technology of particular times, as well as the things they missed (which generally includes any attempt to give the broader context within which events occurred), the lack of perspective in what they reported, and the attitude of the military in particular and the authorities in general to their profession, not to mention their own proprietors and editors back home. While the emphasis is on English language reporting, there is some room made to tell of the experience of Japanese, Italian, Russian and German correspondents, and the attitudes of their respective militaries and governments.

In "The First Casualty" Knightley brings to the reader his own not inconsiderable judgement on the performance of war correspondents, and though his judgement is often harsh he does not shy away from recognising some of the brilliant examples of journalism that war correspondents have from time to time produced. This is an endlessly fascinating read, full of analysis and anecdote, fluently written, and an excellent introduction to the subject for those who, wisely given the often-lamentable record, prefer to get behind the headlines and see what is really happening. An excellent book that I'd highly recommended reading.

[The Final Chapter · Rating 4 out of 5]

High 4. Knightley traces the history of the war correspondent from its first celebrated individual, William Howard Russell, who termed himself "the father of a luckless tribe". Prior to the Crimea War, newspapers had relied on foreign coverage or reports from junior officers with no nose for news. The popular enthusiasm for the Crimean War finally led the 'Times' to abandon this trend and despatch Russell in Feb 1854 and this stocky Irishman would greatly influence the conduct of the war. The British army had not seen action on a prolonged campaign since Waterloo, and the expedition was led by Lord Raglan, who had been Wellington's military secretary. Though a brave, competent, staff officer, he had no previous experience of command in the field - a fact made worse by having to rely on the worst collection of subordinate officers ever assembled, such as the hard-drinking commander of the Light Brigade, the Earl of Cardigan. Though Russell's report would focus on the courage of the suicidal nature of the Charge of the Light Brigade in Oct 1854, he lay the blame for the tragedy firmly on Raglan's issuing of commands to his commanders on the field, and in not recognising that they did not share his vantage point above the battlefield. Moreover, at the bloody but inconclusive Battle of Inkerman, two weeks later, Russell was appalled at the level of casualties and stressed Raglan's incompetence in private letters to his editor, who circulated them to his friends in the Cabinet. The growing popular discontent was mirrored by the antipathy Russell aroused within the armed forces and the Establishment, and when Raglan died of natural causes after the failure of the seige of Sevastopol, Victoria herself revealed her displeasure with the 'Times', with Prince Albert calling Russell "that miserable scribbler". This change in the tide of official opinion led to calls for restraint on the freedom of the press, and the danger to national security posed by journalists' reports such as troop movements, thus leading to the beginning of military censorship. Though too late to affect the Crimean correspondents, due to the ceasing of hostilities before the issuance of this military order, the precedent had been established. Thus, coverage of the Boer War and First World War would be greatly curtailed. Historical research has revealed that Raglan was ill-served by Russell's accounts, as he tirelessly campaigned for better resources and cared deeply about the humane treatment of his men. Yet, the war correspondent had arrived, and in the American Civil War, the Union side alone was followed by 500 of them. The author reveals that the pressure to provide good coverage on meagre wages led to inaccurate and falsified reports, even instances of correspondents being bribed by army officers to comment on their imagined courageous deeds in their despatches. In the Confederacy, the position was worse with correspondents sharing the partisan belief in the South's cause. The first instance of military censorship surrounded the first clash of the war at Bull Run, where precipitate reports of a Union victory were allowed through, but an updated account of the subsequent rally of the Confederate troops and rout of the Northern forces was blocked. The mounting censorship was soon under the auspices of the Secretary of`War, Edwin Stanton, who massaged casualty figures, arresting editors and suspending their newspapers, while initiating a practice which would be repeated in later conflicts of publishing official accounts of the progress of the conflict, based on his own war diary. the generals themselves had differing opinions of the corresponents with Grant embracing them, while Herman banned them from accompanying his entourage, thus making his campaigns in the west and south poorly reported, though his actions effectively won the war. Thus, the correspondents failed to recognise his capture of Atlanta, combined with a 'scorched earth' policy in a sweep through Georgia to the sea, split the Confederacy and destroyed its lines of supplies. However, the worst standards of the coverage of this conflict were provided by the 'Times', where the proprietor and editor's own sympathies for the Southern cause were allowed to smother objectivity, and whose correspondents' biased reports would harm relations with the US for a generation to come. It had all started differently with the posting of Russell, whose reputation had since been further garlanded for his perceptive reports on the Indian Mutiny. Yet, despite his Union sympathies, his objectivity would soon fall foul of American readers with his truthful observations of the panic and rout of northern forces at Bull Run, and when accusations arose of financial speculation by his informing of an American business associate of the outcome of negotiations between Union and Bristish diplomats, he found himself denied access to the battlefront. With his departure, the 'Times' was able to appoint an individual with political views more akin to the management of the paper. Charles Mackay was so obvious a supporter of the Confederacy, and the latter so valued his reporting of the war, that his return to British shores for holiday was curtailed and his steamship passage paid for. When the fortunes of war waned for the South, and the Union emerged victorious, Mackay would be fired and made the scapegoat for the obvious impartiality of the coverage in the 'Times'. With the rise of the popular press and widespread use of the telegraph, the period between the American Civil War and the First World War is regarded as the 'Golden Age' of the war correspondent. The profession now attracted those with a thirst for adventure, who had undoubted bravery and resourcefulness, but also editors saw the merit of the narrative for their growing readership, and thus reporters were appointed due to their literary ability in depicting battle such as Stephen Crane for the 'New york Journal'. For many of this new breed, the glorification of war held far greater sway than any moral concerns as many conflicts surrounded the pacification of native peoples in the pursuit of Empire. This all changed with the Boer War, where British interests once the bitter taste of defeat took hold would not welcome obtrusive impartiality. Kitchener's disdain for correspondents was clear from his attempts to hamper their activities during his Sudan campaign to avenge the fall of Khartoum and the death of Gordon. The mutual animosity which grew between him and the reporters would foreshadow how the Boer War and First World War would pit censorship against the newspapermen. Moreover, aside from those shackled by the military censor, many fell foul of furthering the jingoism of the time, or of becoming so embroiled in the action that they forego their responsibility to be neutral observers. Churchill epitomised the adventurer in search of self-aggrandisement, who joined the ranks of the correspondents, but more than others shaded the distinction between neutral observer and active combatant. His undoubted skills at self-promotion ended up with a lecture tour both sides of the Atlantic recounting his exploits and netting him £10,000 in the process. As the country entered the twentieth century, the clampdown on reporting the truth had failed to reveal lessons which should have been learnt about the unsuitability of trench warfare. The censorship surrounding the First World War would permit more deliberate lies being told to the unsuspecting public thsn for any other conflict in history.In this deceit, both the newspaper proprietors and correspondents were complicit and the scale of propoganda was so organised that it would serve as a model for Goebbels and the Nazis to emulate. The leading newspapers share the blame for this official line of deceit by publishing outrageous claims of atrocities committed by the Germans, including express orders from the Kaiser himself to pay rewards in double to submarine crews which sank shipping carrying women and children. The worst and most influential example of such malicious invention was the Boyce Report, issued by a committee headed by the former ambassador to the US, Lord Boyce, which claimed to provide comprehensive witness testimony of the systematic murder and violation of the Belgian populace by German troops, but the depositions on which it was based mysteriously disappeared when requested by post-war commissions of enquiry. Despite clamour to allow the posting of correspondents on the front, in a perfect illustration of poacher turned gamekeeper, approaches to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill, met immovable resistance. Indeed, Churchill would even propose to his Prime Minister, Asquith, that the 'Times' be commandeered and transformed into the official means of guiding public opinion. Kitchener had given the army express orders to arrest and confiscate the passport of any correspondent who managed to evade the ban and find himself on the field. The official approach only changed in response to Cabinet pressure, after a letter reached the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, from former President Theodore Roosevelt, pointing out the harm such a blanket ban on correspondence was having on failing to evince sympathy in American public opinion. Despite the ban being lifted to a select group, the restrictions imposed, including being shadowed at all times by travelling censors, made it almost worthwhile their remaining at home. Even the 'Times' would later acknowledge that restrictions aside, the principal aim of the war coverage was to increase the number of recruits into the services, and thereby avoid publishing the true horror of the trenches. Knightley reveals that those correspondents who witnessed the Spanish Civil War allowed their own political agendas and sympathies to colour their coverage. Thus, interpretations of events at Guernica even included reports that this was a Republican self-inflicted attack in an attempt to blacken the name of Franco's crusade. The blindness which so affected such correspondents could no better be exemplified than by Hemingway's refusal to publish any accounts of the purges and executions conducted by the Communist forces despite having first-hand knowledge of such events. During the Second World War, the certitude with which the Allies challenged the evils of Nazism allowed correspondents to identify so closely with the military that myths, such as the extent of influence of the flotilla at Dunkirk and the display of courage under fire, were consciously generated at the expense of reporting the chaos and acts of desertion which characterised the retreat to the coast. Perhaps the most illustrative examples of colouring a more victorious portrayal of events than the true nature of the defeat, surround the reporting of the Dieppe raid and Operation Market Garden, where casualty figures were concealed as were the blunders in military planning. In the final chapters, Knightley catalogues the constant pressure exerted on correspondents to restrict reporting true events in the disastrous campaigns to stem the tide of communism in Indo-China. An excellent work of historical research which deserves far greater readership.

[Muhammad Ahmad · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first edition of this book are an excellent read that takes one through the history of western war reporting but the segments appended since then are perfunctory and derivative, more the work of a polemicist than a historian. Since the recent cases are more familiar to me, it made me wonder if the earlier parts of the book would seem just as superficial to a historian of Korea, WWII or Spain.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ponderous and with extraordinarily small print, I almost didn't read this one, but having only it to hand upon going to bed I was sucked in, finishing the thing in a couple of days.

Basically, this is an account of the work of war correspondents. The wars treated include the Crimea, the Boer, WWI, the Russian revolution, the invasions of the U.S.S.R., the Spanish Civil War, WWII, Korea, Algeria and Vietnam during the involvement of the U.S.A. Most of the correspondents discussed wrote or broadcast in English, but there is considerable attention paid to others as well.

The central concern of the text is with what might constitute good war reporting, little of which is evinced in the history of the trade owing to the failings of the correspondents, their editors, their publishers and the governments involved. The author regards as outstanding exceptions such as Jack Reed, author of Insurgent Mexico and Ten Days That Shook the World, for having admitted to having a preference (support for the Bolsheviks), yet maintaining accurate reports of events. Edward R. Murrow and I.F. Stone come across well also, though neither were actually battlefield war correspondents. Most examples adduced are from print journalism, though photographers and cameramen are mentioned as well in the more recent period. Weakest is the coverage of radio journalism.

[Michael Gerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do not always believe the things that you see and hear on the TV, radio, print, and in the Internet.

It's not always what you see is what you get.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be mandatory reading, not only for journalists, but in every classroom everywhere. Phillip Knightley effectively obliterates the media's own image of standing up to power - which Noam Chomsky calls a very self-serving view in his, by now, classic interview with BBC journalist Andrew Marr - and unmasks them as the propagandists they more often than not are.

In the end I'm reminded of Steven Colbert's roast of George W. Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner, which turned into a roast of the failure of media in general:

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The President makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!

It is however quite sad, and very telling, that the same comedians and media personalities (including Colbert), who obviously have pledged fealty to the DNC, gave up any criticism of US imperialism and military crusades as soon as Saint Obama was sworn in. When the orange fascist clown took office, the same media doubled down on their quest for more war, simply because Hillary Clinton was a sore loser. And now that power is nominally in the hands of a senile old fool, media is again carefully toeing the line.

Knightley's book begins with the Crimean war in the 1850's and ends with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some conflicts covered in the book are the American civil war, World War I, the American-European-Japanese-Australian invasion of Russia, the Spanish civil war, World War II, and the wars in Korea, Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Kosovo. We're told of the media's failure at holding power to account, as well as the success of the government and military in controlling the media, ending in the ludicrous system of "embedded" journalists.

One quote attributed (most likely erroneously) to Mark Twain says that history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Reading chapter 5 and 6 about World War I literally gave me chills, because it's a perfect description of the media today with the Ukraine war where everyone is marching in the same direction and dissenting voices are either silenced or denounced as traitors. Substitute the Kaiser with Putin and Germans with Russians, and the following paragraph is a perfect description of the media today:

The Kaiser was painted as a beast in human form. (In a single report on September 22, 1914, the Daily Mail succeeded in referring to him as a “lunatic,” a “barbarian,” a “madman,” a “monster,” a “modern judas,” and a “criminal monarch.”) The Germans were portrayed as only slightly better than the hordes of Genghis Khan, rapers of nuns, mutilators of children, and destroyers of civilisation. Once the commitment to war had been made, an overwhelming majority of the nation’s political and intellectual leaders joined this propaganda campaign.

Speaking for my own country, the Swedish media has failed on a massive scale. The same military spokesperson is interviewed over and over again, and has for the last 12 months claimed that Ukrainian victory is just around the corner, without a single critical follow-up question from the useful idiot in the studio.

Bert Sundström, the Russia correspondent for public service network SVT, called the Azov Regiment a "questionable element" ("tveksamma element"). Responding to my email where I expressed my dismay at his description of Nazis as merely "questionable" he responded that "some" in the group probably were Nazis. I then referred him to an extensive article in Time magazine which reports that 17 000 right wing extremists from more than 50 countries have received military training from the Azov organization, whose long-term goal is "to form a coalition of far-right groups across the Western world, with the ultimate aim of taking power throughout Europe".

Furthermore, Canadian media covered a report entitled “Far-Right Group Made its Home in Ukraine’s Major Western Military Training Hub” and published by the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, which revealed that a group of Ukrainian Nazis have received military training from Canada, and most likely Sweden since the training took place in the same center where Operation UNIFIER was located. Moreover, images of advanced Swedish weaponry, Pansarskott m/86 (AT4), in the hands of Nazis have been posted online. The only Swedish media I have seen reporting this is Proletären, a fringe weekly published by the Swedish Communist Party. Mainstream media is completely silent.







Bert Sundström's response when I gave him this information was total denial. Without hesitating he told me that what is in the IERES report isn't true and that no Nazis have received advanced Swedish weaponry. Without reading the report, or even having any knowledge of its existence before I informed him of it. Or bothering to look at the actual photographic evidence. One can call that a lot of things, but journalism isn't one of them.

And there is the article in right-wing pro-war (as long as the war is aimed at enemies of the US) Expressen about a Swedish man who has been fighting Eastern Ukraine since 2014, and was now facing the death penalty in Donetsk:



I asked the journalists why they didn't inform the reader that the symbol he's posing next to is the Wolfsangel, a symbol used by American and European neo-Nazi groups, including Azov. That might give the reader a clue why he chose to leave for the Ukraine in 2014. Expressen's response? Cropping the image to leave out the symbol, of course.

A month later, after the Swede was released from custody, Expressen saw fit to inform its readers about his Nazi sympathies and "a longing to kill people".



One can only wonder why it took them over a month to discover that he's a Nazi, information which was readily available when they published their first article. I received no response to my email. As for public service SVT which reported on the same story the following day, they make no mention of his Nazi sympathies and refused to answer why.

These are just a few examples, but they illustrate Western media today. Report only one side of the story, trust the government and its armed wing implicitly, and denounce anyone who doesn't subscribe to your propagandist views as a traitor or at least puppet for Putin (it's funny how no one is ever described as a puppet for Biden or Netanyahu in Swedish media...). Lie every chance you get, and when outright lies don't work, lie through obfuscation or silence.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The first rule of journalism is 'governments lie'. The second rule of journalism is 'all governments lie'".---I.F. "Izzy" Stone

Caveat: Read the latest edition of this explosive exposure of wartime journalism. The first dates from the late Seventies and while masterfully written does not cover post-Viet Nam, never-ending, wars. This new edition is also much more critical of American correspondents than the first. Literally starting with the ancient Greeks, Knightley's history picks up steam in the middle of the nineteenth century when major newspapers could send out journalists to cover foreign wars. While it is not surprising to find Britain's finest covering the Crimean War, which nobody ever did figure out, a special delight is finding a young Leo Tolstoy reporting from the Russian side, and even more surprisingly, telling the truth. After that, the collusion of newspapers with governments gave us such uncut gems as " Spaniards Blow Up USS Maine in Havana Harbor!" (Pulitzer and Hearst), "Germans Toss Belgian Babies in Air for Bayonet Practice!" (British press, passed on to America as unquestionable truth) and "Stalin the Stinker! (NEW YORK POST, post-World War II). The great turning point in war journalism, for better and worse, came with Viet Nam. John F. Kennedy demanded the NEW YORK TIMES expel David Halberstam for reporting the Viet Nam War was being lost (at a time when Halberstam was still pro-war!) while TIME magazine gleefully informed its readers of "The Turning Point in Viet Nam" had been reached by 1967. On the flip side Seymour Hersh broke open the My Lai massacre of 1969 after a year of U.S. Army cover-up, and Harrison Salisbury of the TIMES traveled to North Viet Nam and proved the U.S. Air Force was bombing civilian targets hundreds of miles from Hanoi. After Viet Nam the American military learned its lesson in dealing with war correspondents: Don't allow any in country that are not officially approved. George Bush I independent coverage of the Somalia fiasco of 1991-1992 and the first but not last Persian Gulf War. American journalists now had to be "embedded", as "in-bed with", U.S. military units. Bill Clinton followed suit in Haiti and the air war on Yugoslavia. Journalistic lies about the second Iraq war and Afghanistan are too numerous to count. The American public found out about Abu Ghaib and CIA torture centers from Afghanistan to Guantanamo thanks to leakers, not a leashed press. Does the first amendment have a future? Are we closer to the truth thanks to the internet? Too early to tell, but the skies over the battlefield is darkening day by day.

[David Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ignorance is bliss (at least for those of the privileged classes). The First Casualty was difficult to read; apart from insomnia, it also gave me an upset stomach. It’s an excellent book.

This is a “preaching to the converted” book - I knew it would upset me, but in these times of fake news, widespread media manipulation, politicians who lie as they breathe, it is comforting to know that one is not alone. I have been aware of the early wars described by Phillip Knightley since my earliest school days; I have been alive during the more recent ones, and even witness to some, notably the NATO strikes in Yugoslavia. I have also and continue to work closely with many military organisations working in either peacekeeping or peace enforcing operations in numerous conflict zones in Africa - the military tends to be averse to media coverage, generally seeing journalists as part of the “enemy” camp (a bit of cooperation and trust from all sides would save many lives and shorten most wars).

In his brilliantly researched book, Knightley dives deeply into the parallel world of information manipulation - something that is anything but new. Beginning with the Crimean War, and taking us through the US Civil War, the two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Grenada, the Falklands, and Kosovo, he pays particular attention to government leaders in London and Washington in particular, without leaving out Berlin, Buenos Aires, or Belgrade. Prime Ministers, Presidents and Generals make no qualms in their beliefs that the people who elect them and pay their salaries do not deserve the truth. In more recent times, they hire expensive public relations firms, or the Hill and Knowlton and Bell Pottinger variety, to “create” a narrative to “inform” opinion - there’s no need to include any element of truth in the narrative.

A number of years ago I unwittingly (they are good at hiding their motives) got involved with a subsidiary of one of these greasy outfits in Somalia - it was a tough and expensive lesson.

The First Casualty is quite difficult to find. It’s a book many would not want you to read. it is 550 pages of uncomfortable truths.

Although reading it was painful, it has only served to motivate me ever more in my attempts to work with people to provide credible information in places where it cans be lifesaving. Life is extremely expendable to many of those referred to in Knightley’s work.

Of course, times have changed, and NATO is only telling us the truth these days! Too bad Phillip Knightley is no longer with us.

[Brian Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE FIRST CASUALTY: THE WAR CORRESPONDENT AS HERO AND MYTH-MAKER FROM THE CRIMEA TO IRAQ is Phillip Knightly’s classic, influential, and angry look at the relationship between the press and governments at war. He spares no one: “Had the correspondents had the moral courage to refuse to play their part in the charade, the government might have been forced to reconsider its attitude.” (p. 103) Here he’s speaking of World War I, but this same indictment is applied to essentially every conflict until the American war in Vietnam. Not that the situation with Vietnam comes off easy, either: “…Vietnam stands out, for it was there that correspondents began seriously to question the ethics of their business.” (p. 448) Nor does he confine his criticisms to the nebulous entity, “correspondents.” Knightley names names. In each conflict from Crimea to Iraq, he notes which correspondents measured up to his standard and which, he felt, were co-opted by the military (or worse, fabricated stories).

Knightley’s own position is obvious throughout the book and is summed up nicely in a single sentence: “…in a struggle for existence, if the people actually doing the fighting have not the right to know how the war is really going, who has?” (p. 268)

This is an important book, for although Knightly is considering the press in relation to conflict journalism, much of the manipulation he cites applies equally to governments at peace as well as at war.

[Joshua Greer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking work that should be read by more than just journalists and military personnel.

As a journalist in college and a military officer of 14 years now; I identify with both sides. Does the military lie, spin, obfuscate? Absolutely. Does the military do so because the people feel like it is necessary and the right thing to do in order to win? Yes. Is this right in a democratic society where the military is ostensibly subservient to the will of the people? There are no easy answers.

It’s a long book and it occasionally drags but that’s because there are just so many examples and stories to illustrate the historic conflict between the objectives of journalists and the military. If you can’t make it through the whole thing, at least (as an American) read about the Civil War, WWI, and Vietnam. It will make you question what you think you know and why you were so convinced of it in the first place.

[Hans Brienesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

For its age (1975) I found this to be quite the definitive report on war correspondence and war correspondents. It details how from the very beginning of organised reporting from the front lines reporters have been stymied by officialdom. Some of the blocking seemed to be because of the fear of giving information to the enemy, some because of unfavourable reaction from the home front, some because of perceived unfavourable reports of the combatants and commanders, and some of sheer bloody-mindedness. It details how the war correspondents fell into three basic moulds; those who actively sought out a personal experience, those who did their best to report from first hand accounts and communiques, and those who just sat back and reprinted whatever they thought would suffice. The levels of obstruction are unbelievable and one can see now with fresh eyes just what is always left out. It shows that the public's idea of wars and why they are fought are deeply sanitised.

[Nate Hendrix · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an in depth look at war reporting from the mid nineteenth century to modern day. After reading this book I have trouble believing anything I hear related to conflict anywhere. Governments are doing anything they can to keep reporters from telling the stories that need to be told. Because of the scope of the book each time period is only briefly discussed. Any more detail would turn this 500 book into a tome of 1000 pages.

[Robert Aretz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not sure where I got my copy from, but it has been on my bookshelf for as long as I can remember, and I'm glad that I finally got around to reading it. The book is educational and provides a comprehensive understanding of how wars are presented in the media. It highlights how biases, government control, censorship, propaganda, misinformation, and journalistic integrity have always been integral parts of the reporting experience, proving that these issues are not new phenomena brought about by social media alone.

[Ian Boyle]

A compelling detailed book about war reporting

[David Rush · Rating 3 out of 5]

The early chapters of the Crimean War and the American Civil War lay out pretty clearly what follows for the rest of the book, mainly that any contemporary reporting of war is at best, crap, and even more likely totally wrong.

In WWI the very purposeful use of “news” as actual propaganda is developed. Usually with the full cooperation of the reporter. During WWI, the prime minister is at a dinner and after hearing actual stories from the war says..”if people really knew, the war it would be stopped tomorrow” pg 109.

By the time the USA got involved “reporting” was truly propaganda and the American people ate it up eagerly. At least this was reported by Raymond B. Fosdick in and article called “America at War” who summarized this “ecstasy of hate” by writing “We hated with a common hate that was exhilarating” pg 123

Reporting of the Russian revolution had no relation to reality, although it is interesting that John Reed's “10 days that shook the world” comes off favorably. And Reed seems to be the model of the idealistic yet honest reporter. Of course the side Reed favored won, so I wonder how his reporting would be adjudicated if the Reds had lost?

There are my tidbits like finding out that Time magazine was openly pro-Mussolini during the invasion of Ethiopia. pg 182

And more odd-ball trivia is Ernie Pyle's disdain for soldiers in the Pacific war “(Pacific theater troops)...have no conception whatsoever what our war was like” pg 327


WWII reporting is summarized by Canadian reporter Charles Lynch... “It's humiliating to look back at what we wrote during this war. It was crap – and I don't exclude the Ernie Pyles or the Alan Mooreheads. We were a propaganda arm of our governments...I suppose there wasn't and alternative at the time. It was total war. But for God's sake, let's not glorify our role. It wasn't good journalism. It wasn't journalism at all” pg 333

The only difference is that Lynch views this as something wrong. The majority of reporters were very willing to get on board.

So, what is the reporters role in a war? That is the crux of the book, and I think Knightley has the view a reporter can and should report objectively and still pass along shock and horror and outrage. As long as it is done honestly and with facts. But the number of times that happens seems to be almost nil.

And when something does come through, like a CBS documentary during the Vietnam war that covered Marines turning flame throwers on the elderly and children of a Vietnamese village. After the show “CBS's switchboard was jammed with calls from viewers attacking the piece as a piece of Communist propaganda” 396

So if the government doesn't want the truth reported, the media doesn't want the truth reported, the reporters don't want to report the truth, and the public doesn't want to hear the truth....why do we continue to fool ourselves into thinking any of it matters?

Nora Ephron quote..

“Most of Americans are stuck in the Hemingway bag and they tend to romanticize war just as he did”
pg 408

In the end, reporting on wars with the suffering of innocent and guilty fuels jingoism, religious indignation, moral outrage, political justifications, nationalism, macho-ism and probably a bunch of other isms. Just not the truth.

I meant to write a more in depth review full of insightful comments, but by now I am so depressed I just want to move on.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a lot of issues with the book and I'm not going to list them here. Besides the lack of verifiable facts and the constant use of specific chosen stories, I would say what annoyed me most was the not so very hidden normative ideas. Let's just leave it here...

[Jerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The First Casualty seeks to fill two needs: to catalog the failures and successes of war reporting since it began as a recognizable form, and to analyze its failure to engage news viewers into ending war.

As a catalogue of press behavior and roadblocks in the major wars from the Crimean war to Vietnam, this is an extensive and useful tome. But analyzing the press’s failures and censorship’s failures, it gets lost. Even transparency seems to end up a failure when it comes to war reporting… but he never ventures beyond a superficial analysis. At the end of the Vietnam section, he repeats the claim that perhaps the problem in Vietnam was the lack of censorship: journalists could go anywhere and interview anybody, but because the journalists would also print anything said, people were afraid to talk to them. So is one solution to bring back censorship? And one other potential solution: he quotes another reporter that the problem with Vietnam is that the sum of the facts did not equal the total of the war. What was needed was a novelization of the war, to fictionalize it.

Ultimately, is this book an argument that there should be no press coverage of wars, only novelizations? It seems a silly conclusion, and yet, there it is given primacy of place in the final section.

[Pascal Lapointe]

Un livre des années 1970, mais plus d'actualité que jamais, à l'heure de nos interrogations sur la couverture de la guerre en Irak (en fait, la version que je viens de lire date des années 1970, mais je viens d'apprendre qu'une réédition, incluant la guerre en Irak, est récemment publiée). Ça commence avec les tout premiers correspondants de guerre, au milieu du 19e siècle, et ça va jusqu'à la guerre du Vietnam: l'auteur passe en revue des générations de manipulations de l'information, de censure, de rumeurs traitées comme de vraies nouvelles; et au milieu de tout cela, les journalistes sont loin d'être les pauvres victimes de vilains censeurs: certains ont participé avec enthousiasme à l'effort de guerre, beaucoup d'autres n'ont pas fait beaucoup d'efforts pour se dégager du carcan de la censure. Le livre fourmille également d'anecdotes hilarantes sur des manoeuvres pas très catholiques par lesquelles certaines informations ont malgré tout filtré, ou sur l'ingéniosité avec laquelle ces scribes de l'ère pré-Internet, pré-téléphone portable, pré-informatique, ont parfois réussi à envoyer leurs scoops.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Knightley provides a polemical history of war correspondents, analyzing their general failure to provide accurate reporting. In broad strokes it's an effective argument, showing how easily journalists are influenced by government pressure and personal beliefs. But Knightley is extremely inconsistent in his criticisms. He excoriates anti-Bolshevik reporters during the Russian Revolution but upholds John Reed as a paragon of integrity (!). He similarly praises Herbert Matthews' pro-Fascist writing during Italy's invasion of Abyssinia. Then when discussing the Spanish Civil War he smugly criticizes everyone for allowing bias to overcome reason. It's hard to sense what Knightley's point is with this sort of contradiction.

[jeano · Rating 4 out of 5]

organized chronologically with each chapter devoted to a war (and not limited to the wars that america was involved in), the book is a compendium of the courageous, lazy, romanticizing war correspondents and the plotting military and conspirational government forces that met them, from the 1800s til Iraq. its best feature is the rampant use of punctuating, romping, outrageous, hilarious, or merely cold and sinister quotes from everyone. a little difficult to make it straight through as it seems to fit more into the mold of a reference book. oh and it's about 608 pages long.

[Missmath144 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dull reading at first, but gave an impressive feeling for the drudgery, callousness, and injustices of war. I read it in conjunction with The Naked and the Dead, Hiroshima, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

[Ava Semerau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've just started this book and frankly, had to put it down because it was so personally upsetting as a journalist. I am now reading it in small pieces, digesting what I've read and learned, and then going back to it. Powerful. Provoking and deeply disturbing.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book a while ago and it set me on the road to becoming a journalist, a road, I might add, that I have long-since turned off. Nevertheless, this is first rate stuff from the first man to interview Phiby.

[Gordon Howard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was going to say this book, written in 1975, is out of date, but I see that the author published an updated version more recently. Nonetheless, the book was too far into the weeds, and skimmed too much material.

[Cody VC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprisingly even-handed and very engaging; a real shame it ends in the 1970s.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

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Truth is the first casualty of war. Want to learn a bit about world history, wars of consequence and war reporting…read this book.
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