''Enemy Image'' is a 2005

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

by Mark Daniels about the portrayal of warfare in television news. Narrated by Jessy Joe Walsh, the film includes archive footage of

Peter Jennings Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings (July 29, 1938August 7, 2005) was a Canadian-born American television journalist who served as the sole anchor of '' ABC World News Tonight'' from 1983 until his death from lung cancer in 2005. He dropped ...

Morley Safer Morley Safer (November 8, 1931 – May 19, 2016) was a Canadian-American broadcast journalist, reporter, and correspondent for CBS News. He was best known for his long tenure on the news magazine ''60 Minutes'', whose cast he joined in 1970 ...

Jon Alpert Jon Alpert (born c. December 13, 1948) is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films. Life and career A native of Port Chester, New York, Jonathan B. Alpert is a 1970 g ...

Dan Rather Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist, commentator, and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hur ...

, and Bernard Birnbaum in their news reporting on the various conflicts.

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 The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

as the first war ever televised "

live Live may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Live!'' (2007 film), 2007 American film * ''Live'' (2014 film), a 2014 Japanese film *'' ''Live'' (Apocalyptica DVD) Music * Live (band), American alternative rock band * List of album ...

". During this war the American government allowed reporters onto the battlefield with little supervision or control. The documentary follows the way

The Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a metonym ...

learned from this experience to control access by journalists to battle areas in subsequent wars, through the

Invasion of Grenada The United States invasion of Grenada began at dawn on 25 October 1983. The United States and a coalition of six Caribbean nations invaded the island nation of Grenada, north of Venezuela. Codenamed Operation Urgent Fury by the U.S. militar ...

(where journalists were excluded completely) to the first

Gulf War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...

, where news packages were provided by the military, to the

embedded journalism Embedded journalism refers to news reporters being attached to military units involved in armed conflicts. While the term could be applied to many historical interactions between journalists and military personnel, it first came to be used in the ...

of the

Iraq War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق ( Kurdish) , partof = the Iraq conflict and the War on terror , image ...

. 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 Sheffield DocFest (formerly styled Sheffield Doc/Fest), short for Sheffield International Documentary Festival (SIDF), is an international documentary festival and Marketplace held annually in Sheffield, England. The Festival includes film s ...

, and aired on

Canadian television Television in Canada officially began with the sign-on of the nation's first television stations in Montreal and Toronto in 1952. As with most media in Canada, the television industry, and the television programming available in that country ...

later in 2005."Enemy Image" airing schedule at the CBC website
/ref>

Reception

References

External links

*
''Enemy Image'' at Top Documentary Films
French documentary television films Documentary films about the Vietnam War Documentary films about journalism 2005 films 2005 documentary films Documentary films about war correspondents 2000s English-language films 2000s French films English-language French films English-language documentary films {{war-documentary-film-stub

Synopsis

Screenings

Reception

See also

References

External links