A war is won or lost depending on whether public opinion is on one’s side. This lesson, learned by the United States during the Vietnam conflict, is being relearned today. In Iraq, war correspondents now have to choose between reporting from a hotel or accompanying military troops as embedded journalists, which means lacking real autonomy. In Russia, the murders of journalists like Anna Politkovskaya, Italian Antonio Russo, and more recently Natalya Estemirova, who reported on violence in Chechnya and the broader Caucasus region, raise disturbing questions about press freedom in a country where most media and critical voices are forced into silence.
