Pen and Sword: American War Correspondents, 1898-1975. Mary S. Mander. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010. 188 pp.

Evaluation and Stance in War News: A Linguistic Analysis of American, British, and Italian Television Reporting of the 2003 Iraqi War. Louann Haarman and Linda Lombardo, eds. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009. 256 pp.

Both these books concern an increasingly vexing contemporary issue: the role of a free press during wartime. They use cultural history and analysis to examine the subject, and this approach will be frustrating to some journalists or historians seeking a treatment that might tell the story of the challenge of war reporting or shed light on its chronological development. Nor are the authors firsthand witnesses, having neither worked as journalists nor served in the military.  [Read more...]