Enemy Image

Enemy Image is a 2005 documentary film by Mark Daniels about the portrayal of warfare in television news.^[1][2][3] Narrated by Jessy Joe Walsh, the film includes archive footage of Peter Jennings, Morley Safer, Jon Alpert, Dan Rather, and Bernard Birnbaum in their news reporting on the various conflicts.

Enemy Image
Directed by	Mark Daniels
Written by	Mark Daniels
Produced by	Benedicte Massiet Christine Le Goff
Narrated by	Jessy Joe Walsh
Cinematography	John Hazard Ned Burgess
Edited by	Catherine Peix Pascal Vernier
Production companies	Multimedia France Productions] France 2 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation SBS Television YLE
Release date	October 14, 2005 (2005-10-14) (Sheffield International Documentary Festival)
Running time	93 minutes
Country	France
Language	English

Synopsis

The film makes note of how the invasion of Iraq lasted 800 hours but produced over 20,000 hours of video, and focuses initially on the Vietnam War as the first war ever televised "live". During this war the American government allowed reporters onto the battlefield with little supervision or control. The documentary follows the way The Pentagon learned from this experience to control access by journalists to battle areas in subsequent wars, through the Invasion of Grenada (where journalists were excluded completely) to the first Gulf War, where news packages were provided by the military, to the embedded journalism of the Iraq War. The theme of the film is the progressive tightening of control by the US military on the contact journalists have with soldiers and civilians in the war zone, in order that (as the film says at the end) "never again will television raise the moral and political questions that face a people at war."

Screenings

The film premiered October 14, 2005 at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival,^[4] and aired on Canadian television later in 2005.^[5]

Reception

See also

• Dispatches
• Information warfare
• Pentagon military analyst program
• Public affairs (military)