The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo - Softcover

"Few books have deserved an updated edition more than Phillip Knightley's history of war reporting since the 1850s... Invaluable for anyone with an interest in the media, it is equally recommended as a modern history of government lies." -- Times Literary Supplement

"A durable and unblinking chronicle of the role of correspondents in covering, analyzing, and sometimes promoting war... Knightley has added post-Vietnam chapters dealing with Britain's Falkland Islands conflict, the American invasions of Grenada and Panama, the Persian Gulf War, and NATO's Kosovo bombing campaign. There is no chapter on the 2001-2002 fighting in Afghanistan, but its character is unerringly foreshadowed in the ever more stringent policies enforced by Britain and the United States to exclude, control, and coerce correspondents." -- James Boylan, Columbia Journalism Review

"This is fascinating history, with all the personalities and complexity of real life... The main modern story, aside from a few cases of decent reporting in Vietnam, is increasing government efforts, most successful, to manage war coverage. Keep that in mind as the Iraq story unfolds." -- Alan W. Bock, Orange County Register

"The most comprehensive j'accuse of journalism as propaganda in the English language... Ought to be read by every young reporter and by those who retain pride in our craft of truth-telling, not matter how unpopular or unpalatable the truth." -- John Pilger, from the Preface to the new edition

"The first casualty when war comes, is truth," said American Senator Hiram Johnson in 1917, and in his gripping, now-classic history of war journalism, Phillip Knightley shows just how right Johnson was. From William Howard Russell, who described the appalling conditions of the Crimean War in Times [London], to the ranks of reporters, photographers, and cameramen who captured the realities of war in Vietnam, The First Casualty tells a fascinating story of heroism and collusion, censorship and suppression, myth-making and propaganda. Since Vietnam, Knightley finds, governments have become much more adept at managing the media, and in new chapters on the Falklands, the Gulf War, and the former Yugoslavia, he concludes that the war correspondent's role as a seeker of truth is now in jeopardy.

From reviews of the first edition:

"[This book] may make us all a little more free to talk about and find the truth." -- Garry Wills, New York Times Book Review

"Disturbing, even dismaying, yet also in its painful way, enormously entertaining." -- New Yorker