The latest casualty: Phillip Knightley and media failure

Abstract

He covers the coverage of wars and the fine borderline that journalists might cross to become propaganda merchants: World War II, Vietnam, The Gulf, Kosovo, to name a few, and now the ‘War on Terror’. And the performance so far of the news media in this latest one has left Phillip Knightley, author of The First Casualty, underwhelmed: civil rights down the drain, public debate and dissent stifled, the news media hardly batting an eyelid. ‘Well, the press in Britain, Australia, and probably New Zealand, did a better job than their American counterparts,’ he sighs, ‘but that’s not saying much.’