Based on extensive original research Shoot First and Ask Questions Later provides a
comprehensive analysis of media coverage of the war in Iraq in 2003. The authors look closely
at the main actors involved through a broad range of interviews with journalists (both embedded
and non-embedded) news editors news heads and with key planners at the Pentagon and the UK
Ministry of Defence. This book also investigates how the war was represented on television
employing both a systematic content analysis of the broadcast news coverage of the war and a
series of case studies that unravel key moments of good and bad reporting during the war.
Finally it examines how people responded to and interpreted the information they received from
the media drawing upon both large-scale surveys and focus groups. What emerges for all its
blemishes is a picture of a sophisticated military public-relations campaign ¿ one that had
less to do with censorship than with promoting certain kinds of coverage. At the heart of this
was the embedded journalists program which has clearly changed the way war is reported. In
future the authors argue journalists need to understand their role in this public relations
effort and to ask questions not only when access is denied but also when it is granted.
