How free are journalists when reporting on events in their own back yard? As a young Brit working for CBS News in the late 1980s, I recall bristling at the anti-British prejudice that one correspondent brought to his reporting of the Northern Ireland story.

In recent years, bloggers seeking to question the neutrality of international MSM have criticised the role of local journalists, photographers, and film crews in reporting- and demonstrated occasions where material has been falsified.

It’s hard not to be concerned for individuals reporting for international news organizations. Not only do they run the risks of covering conflict (Reuters‘ Fadal Shana), they have friends and families who can be targets of intimidation and coercion.

Ruthie Blum Leibowitz wrote an interesting piece bringing some of these arguments to light from an Israeli perspective in November 2008:

[A]re the media in a free society supposed to serve as a public-diplomacy vehicle for the state?

The answer should be a firm “no.” But what the answer actually is lies somewhere between “maybe” and “that depends on who’s in power.”

As far as the “maybe” is concerned: A case can be made for a certain degree of cooperation among all echelons of a society when it is under threat. Unfortunately, this country has been in that category throughout its existence.

This is why, in spite of the fact that submitting military material to the IDF Censor has become an anachronistic practice due to the wide-open Web, the local media agree – albeit grudgingly at times – to observe the regulation. After all, however sacred we hold the right to freedom of speech, most of us have no interest in endangering national security – particularly since we journalists also serve in the army and/or have children or spouses who do so. In other words, unlike our counterparts in the United States and Europe, we are in the peculiar position of having to fight our battles with pen and sword simultaneously.

Ironically, this has the opposite of the effect one would expect. Rather than turning the members of our media into mouthpieces for the military, it tends to make us bend over backwards to express empathy for the enemy – or at least to present “balanced” coverage of an imbalanced conflict.

Then there’s the “that depends on who’s in power” answer – or, more accurately, “that depends on which policies the leading party is promoting.” If it is peace conferences, prisoner releases and territorial withdrawals on the agenda, the media here tend to behave more like a branch of the government than like its watchdog.