Enemy Image
Enemy Image is a 2005 documentary by Mark Daniels about how wars are shown on television. Narrated by Jessy Joe Walsh, it uses archival footage of reporters like Peter Jennings, Morley Safer, Jon Alpert, Dan Rather, and Bernard Birnbaum to show how coverage has changed over time.
The film notes that the Iraq War produced about 20,000 hours of video, while only 800 hours of combat occurred. It begins with the Vietnam War, the first war televised live from the front lines, where reporters had little supervision.
Enemy Image then explains how the Pentagon tightened control after Vietnam: journalists were kept out of battle zones in Grenada, news packages during the first Gulf War were provided by the military, and in the Iraq War many reporters became embedded with troops. The main idea is that military authorities have increasingly restricted journalists’ access to soldiers and civilians in war zones, so television is less likely to raise moral or political questions about war.
The film premiered on October 14, 2005 at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival and later aired on Canadian television.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 13:37 (CET).