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Commentary: When War Correspondents Take Sides | The National Interest

Commentary: When War Correspondents Take Sides | The National Interest
An opponent of U.S. intervention in World War I, the isolationist senator from California Hiram Johnson lamented once that, “The first casualty when war comes is truth.” Indeed, as British author Philip Knightley demonstrated in his The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as a Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo, Johnson’s warning was right: war correspondents sometimes spread lies for governments and others with a stake in the outcome of the war.

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