Pajamas Media: How Many Embedded Reporters Cover the Iraq War? (A Pajamas News Special Item)

Given the tsunami of news coming out of Iraq in the papers and on television, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that the media organizations of the world must have a battalion or more of reporters assigned to cover the war. But if you guessed “one or two battalions,” you’d be far off the mark. If you guessed “several squads” you’d still be wrong.

Pajamas Media, in the course of a casual conversation with a Marine Corps information officer who tracks the number of embedded reporters in Iraq, learned the real number of embedded reporters covering the Iraq story on September 19, 2006. It was, according to the officer, a fairly typical day. To illustrate his point, he provided Pajamas Media with the illustration he uses to brief with on the state of media embedding in Iraq.

What was that number? Take a guess and then see the truth. No peeking.