In light of the U.S. functionality test to Article 51(3), the role and use of today's embedded journalist in international armed conflicts poses a direct threat to their civilian protections under Article 79 of Protocol I. Despite the fact that embedded journalism has helped to facilitate better military-press relations and generally enhance news coverage of military conflicts, its increased level of integration in U.S. combat operations approaches the legal threshold of making the journalists themselves lawful targets. It is the U.S. military's responsibility to create new measures to ensure embedded journalists' activities are not so comingled with information operations that they become targeted. The overall integration of war correspondents into information operations, the eroding distinction between PAO and war correspondents and the loss of reporter objectivity on the battlefield are all factors that provide significant evidence that today's embedded journalists are probably not engaged in their "professional mission" within the meaning of Article 79. Embedded journalists are no longer performing their professional mission when they are in fact being used to directly support military information operations. To the extent this continues in U.S. military combat operations, war correspondents can be lawfully targeted by the enemy under the U.S. functionality test to Article 51(3).
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