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In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, it has become a fairly common practice for journalistic organizations to "embed" reporters, columnists and photographers with military units in a bid to provide more-detailed and more-personal reporting from the scene of combat.

But it has also generated pointed questions from other journalists and from some members of the public about whether the embedded journalists can become too close to the story. Some fear the embeds might be censored or might self-censor their reports or might lose their objectivity about the soldiers and the country about which they are assigned to report objectively.

The idea prompts strong debate inside the journalistic community. Globe Beijing Bureau Chief Geoffrey York wrote about the experience last Saturday in this article Dispatches from an embedded life

Mr. York writes: "I was skeptical about my assignment in Kandahar last month. Four weeks embedded on a military base? Was it the right way to cover Canada's role in Afghanistan? . . . I approached the assignment with some disquiet. But what I found, over the past month, was a more complicated picture than I had expected."

Even journalists within The Globe have strongly different opinions on the issue. In April, columnist Lawrence Martin criticized the practice in his column Are we being taken for a ride on Afghanistan, too? prompting a pointed response 'I'd take an army corps over the press corps in Ottawa any day' from columnist Christie Blatchford, who had just completed a weeks-long tour of embedded duty.

Ms. Blatchford, Mr. York — who participated in this discussion live from Beijing — and Globe Moscow Bureau Chief Graeme Smith — who participated in this discussion live from Kandahar, Afghanistan — were on-line earlier today to take your questions about their experiences as embedded journalists with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan.

The questions and answers can be found at the bottom of this page.

Christie Blatchford started at The Globe in 1972 while still at Ryerson and worked here for six years, four as sports columnist, before joining The Toronto Star for four years as a general assignment reporter. She spent 15 years at the Toronto Sun, first as a humor columnist and then as the paper's main news pages columnist. Christie joined The National Post for five years, dating from its birth, and then came back to The Globe where her primary beat now is the criminal courts. She's also a general assignment columnist who still dabbles in sports and in politics.

Mr. York is a graduate of Carleton University who has been a Globe and Mail reporter since 1981. He has been a foreign correspondent for the newspaper since 1994.

He was the Moscow bureau chief from 1994 to 2002. He has been the Beijing bureau chief since 2002.

He is a veteran war correspondent who has covered war zones since 1991 in places such as Somalia, Sudan, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans and the Palestinian Territories.

He has just finished a one-month stint in Afghanistan. It was his fourth visit to Afghanistan since 2001. He first visited the country in the spring of 2001, when the Taliban ruled the country. He later covered the U.S.-led war to topple the Taliban in the fall of 2001, and visited again in 2002.

He is the author of three books, including two books on aboriginal issues in Canada. He has received several journalistic awards, including nominations for National Newspaper Awards.

Mr. Smith took up his post in Moscow last year. Since then, he has covered events in Russia, the massive earthquake in Pakistan and has visited Afghanistan several times. He joined The Globe in 2001 and had previously worked at The Toronto Star while attending Ryerson University in Toronto. In 2003, he won the Edward Goff Penny Memorial award, which is given to the best young journalists under the age of 25. He also was part of a team that won a Canadian Association of Journalists award for investigative journalism in 1999.

Editor's Note: globeandmail.com editors will read and allow or reject each question/comment. Comments/questions may be edited for length or clarity. We will not publish questions/comments that include personal attacks on participants in these discussions, that make false or unsubstantiated allegations, that purport to quote people or reports where the purported quote or fact cannot be easily verified, or questions/comments that include vulgar language or libellous statements. Preference will be given to readers who submit questions/comments using their full name and home town, rather than a pseudonym.

Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: Welcome Geoff, Graeme and Christie. Thanks for taking the time today to discuss this important and very interesting issue. There are a lot of readers participating in this discussion already. Before we get to their questions, can I ask all of you to give me a quick summary of your personal experiences with "embedding." How did the actual experience stack up to your expectations? What, if anything, would you suggest be changed for the next wave of journalists who go to Afghanistan with the Canadian Forces?

Christie Blatchford: It was frustrating at first . . . lots of bureaucracy, paperwork, etc., and then a lot of waiting around for a seat on a patrol . . . rather like being in the army itself, I suspect. You spend a lot of time waiting. But once out with the troops, everything changed, and it was fascinating.

Geoffrey York: Jim, I found it frustrating at first, because there wasn't much in the way of big news happening in my first couple of weeks in Kandahar, and the military control was greater than I expected. The censorship was tougher and more arbitrary than I had expected.

Also, I felt that it wouldn't be too interesting for our readers if I kept writing stories about military life and military patrols, which had already been written brilliantly by Christie and Graeme, so I was casting about for new stories, which were more difficult to find.

But later in my stint in Kandahar, when bigger news began to happen, I could see the advantages of embedding. When the Canadian troops are at the centre of a big news story, as often happens, you need to be embedded if you want to write the best possible story. It would be very difficult for an outsider to anticipate a news story, to travel to the military base in time to be there for the news, and then to have access to the right people to do the best possible story.

For the next wave of Canadian journalists in Afghanistan, I don't really see an alternative to being embedded. But the embedded reporters need to get outside the base, to go into Kandahar, to talk to civilians and ordinary Afghans and do a broader range of stories, beyond just military stories. Actually we're already doing this — Graeme has been working very hard to do this, with great success, and I did my best to do those kinds of stories too.

Graeme Smith: Kandahar City has two realities, both important to the future of this country and the success of the Canadian mission.

The first, and most important, is reality as experienced by the Afghan people. This evening I was passing through downtown Kandahar as soccer fans were streaming out of a stadium onto a broad avenue, and the grassy verge was covered with men kneeling to pray. This kind of scene is never even witnessed — much less experienced up-close — by most of the Canadian military and diplomatic officials who are responsible for helping these people. It's too dangerous for them to roam the streets.

Their view of Afghanistan generally comes from inside their barbed-wire fences, or from drinking tea with local leaders, or, occasionally, watching the street life from the hatch of an armoured vehicle. I'm not saying the military is ignorant, by any means. They get intelligence reports and political updates that give them important insight into what's happening here.

But it's crucial for reporters to immerse themselves in both worlds. This is exactly what I expected when I took this assignment, and it's my advice to any journalists who visit: Spend time inside and outside the wire. Your view of each side will be enriched by the other.

Jim Terrets, Vancouver: Isn't "embedded journalism" just a euphemism for propaganda? Even if you're trying your hardest as a journalist to be as objective as possible to get the complete story, isn't it impossible not to identify with the troops and "the cause" since you're living with the troops, getting to know them, sharing the dangers and seeing everything from the military's perspective? After all, it's only human nature to be influenced like that. As we saw in Iraq, embedded journalism often degenerated into oohing and aahing about impressive military weaponry and victories without much consideration given to context, accuracy or balance. So shouldn't "embedded" stories be labelled as opinion/editorial or forgone entirely?

Geoffrey York: I think this is a very common misconception about embedding. I think everyone tends to remember the TV coverage of the first couple of days of the Iraq war in 2003, when CNN was showing very dramatic images of U.S. tanks racing across the desert, and the early TV coverage did seem to be uncritical.

But that's a misunderstanding of embedded journalism. At its worst, yes, embedded journalism can produce reports that seem like cheerleading. But there were many excellent stories produced by embedded journalists during the Iraq war — stories that were far from uncritical.

In Kandahar, I never felt any pressure to write uncritical or supportive stories about the army. In fact, you can easily look at my stories and see that I wrote a lot that contained negative information about the Canadian military. I think, overall, my stories were fairly balanced.

An independent-minded reporter can always find ways to remain independent, regardless of the pressures or sympathies.

For example, I have 25 years of experience at The Globe and Mail, always as an independent-minded reporter who questioned government officials at all levels. Why would I suddenly abandon that style of reporting in just a couple of weeks at a military base?

I've spent many weeks with the Afghan people in my previous visits to Afghanistan, so I have a perspective that's broader than just the military perspective. If a reporter is credible and accurate and unbiased, he or she can find ways to maintain those standards in any situation. That's our job, and we work hard to do it.

Christie Blatchford: Mine are labelled as opinion. I'm a columnist, as you probably know, and part of my job description is to say what I think. That said, I did some straight reporting from Afghanistan too, as when there were casualties . . . But just FYI, I don't believe in so-called "objective reporting" — period. I think the far better thing to strive for is fairness.

Ben Kaufman, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A.: Did you sense a "Stockholm Syndrome" with the units with whom you lived and who protected you? Was your copy as an embed different from those of U.S. reporters in the same or similar situations? (Full disclosure: I write a monthly media criticism column for an alt weekly in Cincinnati, citybeat.com, and have 40+ years reporting, photojournalism and editing here and abroad behind me. I'm interested because of what I've read from U.S. reporters and my own experiences with non-U.S. military abroad.). Thanks.

Graeme Smith: Jim, Ben: You asked about "propaganda" and "Stockholm Syndrome."

My job as a reporter is to burrow myself as deeply as possible inside the lives of my subjects, glean every possible scrap of information from them, and write about what I've learned with compassion, strict fairness, and a hard eye for the reality of the situation.

Embedding is a good way to achieve the first part of that requirement. It brings us closer to the military, which is perfect because the military is one of the most important subjects here.

The second part is more difficult. When you sit down to write, you have to detach yourself from the friendships you've forged inside the military and treat the topic with the same analytical approach you'd bring to any other article.

Frankly, I'm a little mystified about the fuss over embedding, because this process — getting close to someone, then stepping back and writing from a more objective viewpoint — is exactly the same methodology that journalists use with many other subjects. The only difference, I'd argue, is that fewer journalists succeed with doing their jobs properly in a war zone. But you have to cut them some slack. It's a war zone, after all, so reporting is a little more difficult.

Geoffrey York: Oddly enough, there are relatively few U.S. journalists in Afghanistan. As far as I know, only one American media organization (The New York Times) has a full-time correspondent in Afghanistan, and every other U.S. media outlet is covering the country with occasional visits by journalists who are based elsewhere. So it's difficult to compare Canadian journalists to American journalists in Afghanistan — it's only the Canadians who are embedded heree full-time.

In general, however, I think U.S. and Canadian journalists have a similar approach to war-zone coverage. You try to do the best possible job, digging up the best possible stories, without getting killed.

As for the "Stockholm Syndrome," again I think this is a common misconception and an inaccurate view of how we work. Look at it this way: if you lived in Canada for your entire life, and you went to visit your American cousin for a month, would you automatically become pro-American? Would you become biased in favor of Americans, forgetting your entire life in Canada? I don't think so.

A month on a military base does not force you to become a pro-military cheerleader. Why would a journalist suddenly forget everything he or she learned about journalism within a few days of arriving at a military base? We have our standards, our experience, our training and our pride, and we don't throw those away easily.

Christie Blatchford: I don't know, to be honest. Once you're embedded, or at least I was the first time around, I was virtually incommunicado for the eight days I was in the mountains with the soldiers . . . didn't see anyone else's copy. But do you start to like and enjoy the people around you, in this case, the soldiers? Absolutely. I also like and enjoy hockey players, when I cover sports, and criminal lawyers, when I'm in the courts . . . I think it's perfectly normal. I like most people.

But for what it's worth, the greatest threat in Afghanistan is IEDs, and for all that the soldiers would protect journalists, there's bugger all they or anyone else can do to do so . . . and we know that and so do they.

Nick Wright, Halifax: I worry about journalists stepping too eagerly — and naively — into the profundity of warfare, and wonder if their instinct should not be to rather take a step back and learn more, rather than to immerse themselves too quickly in such powerful currents. Please comment as respected journalists with experience in reporting on the dreadful thing called war.

Christie Blatchford: Don't worry . . . the way things work, one is usually allowed a little settling-in time, just because of the nature of the bureaucracy . . . That said, I think it IS a profound experience, and I'm glad I'm not a kid . . .

Geoffrey York: First, I'm not sure what the alternative is. When Canadian troops are involved in a shooting conflict, for the first time in many years, somebody has to be there to cover it, to report what they do and to hold them accountable. It's just essential that journalists be there.

Of course you are right that journalists need to step back and learn more background about the conflict too. Sometimes that can be done by the embedded journalists, and sometimes the broader stories need to be written by others, but I agree there has to be more than simple news stories in a war zone.

As for the powerful currents of war: please keep in mind that the average day in Kandahar is not a day of bullets and bombs. The journalist is not immersed in warfare at every moment. Most days are fairly mundane, and the journalist has to search aggressively for stories, just as he or she would do in Ottawa or Toronto.

R. Bonnell, Toronto: I have a bias. Most people do. I respect and support Canadian troops in Afghanistan and the difficult task they have been assigned. However I do not agree with embedded journalism. Is it journalism? Part of a journalist's job as I understand and respect it, is to try and be objective even if not particularly successful . . . A journalist must be a voice of rational observation and balanced factual reporting. If not, how is a journalist different then some fundamentalist Christian minister or an imam preaching hate?

Geoffrey York: Perhaps there is something in the term "embedded" that makes people think that we are automatically biased or automatically pro-military. If so, just forget the terminology and consider the logistical question of where the reporter should be based.

Our readers are Canadian and, naturally, they are more interested in the Canadians (the soldiers) than in the Afghans. That's just normal human nature. The soldiers are the family, relatives and friends of many of our readers, and most of our readers can sympathize with them as Canadians. Therefore it's pretty clear that a Canadian reporter in Afghanistan is likely to write more often about the Canadians and somewhat less often about the Afghans (although of course we need to write about the Afghan context and the Afghan people too). So it just makes logistical sense for the journalists to be based at the Canadian base.

But keep in mind that you can reach downtown Kandahar in just 30 minutes from the Canadian base. It's easy to get there, and I often did it. So, even if you are based at the Canadian base, you can still cover the Afghan perspective as well. It's possible to do both.

One problem, in my opinion, is the Canadian military rule which allows the military to expell any journalist who spends an "inordinate" amount of time on non-military stories. This is an attempt to discourage us from writing about the Afghans, and the rule (in my opinion) should be scrapped.

Christie Blatchford: I think I answered the objective question earlier, but to reiterate: I don't subscribe to the notion that there is such a thing. What there ought to be is fairness. And I don't quite get the last line, or the leap you make, in the last question.

Trevor Hache, Ottawa: I find it troubling that being embedded with militaries is now viewed as a legitimate way to gather the news. I understand how dangerous it is in war zones, but I feel as though news organizations are being manipulated by government officials when they agree to this type of arrangement. Why are there no Globe reporters embedded with the civilians of Afghanistan and Iraq? Since it is these civilians who are routinely being murdered by the military personnel and the insurgents, is their story not more legitimate and trustworthy than those being spoon-fed to the embeds by our governments? I think journalists do their job best when they serve the public, not the war machine.

Graeme Smith: Trevor, I'm writing this response on a painfully screwed-up keyboard at a guesthouse in downtown Kandahar. My dinner of vegetable mush, chickpeas, and rice is cooling on a table in front of me. I spent the entire day with Afghans — in fact, the only Canadian I spoke with today was a guard who let me out of the gate at Kandahar Air Field this morning.

I'm embedded with the troops, but I also consider myself embedded with the civilians . . . and believe me, I'm not risking my life every day to serve anybody's war machine. I am trying, in tiny increments, to serve the public.

Christie Blatchford: First, I think some of my Globe colleagues have effectively been embedded, as you put it, with the civilians of Afghanistan. Certainly, they've done more of that sort of reporting than I did when I was there. I went because I wanted to be embedded with the soldiers. It's they who interest me most, though not exclusively.

I don't know that it's practical for a white, blonde, middle aged woman to even try to embed in either of the countries you mention. You stand out like a sore thumb, for one thing, and most reporters like to blend into the background.

And Iraq, at least, is so damn dangerous, I wonder how do-able it even is.

Geoffrey York: The government does try to manipulate the story — just as governments everywhere in the world will always try to spin the story to their own advantage. Businesses and citizen groups also try to manipulate the story. That's what they do. Everyone tries to control the message.

But journalists learn to resist those pressures, and we have many ways of getting the truth without being manipulated.

It's not accurate to say that reporters are "spoon-fed" the story in Kandahar, and it's just wrong to think that we are serving the military machine. Believe me, a lot of military people are unhappy with some of our stories, and they certainly don't think that we are blindly serving their interests. I spent a lot of time outside the military base with Afghan civilians, and being embedded does not prevent that.

Gap Gap, Winnipeg: Are Canadian embedded reporters biased? They are (for the most part) Canadians. They are telling the story to Canadians. Why should they not have a slant that supports Canada? Just because a reporter gives some praise to the skill and abilities of the soldiers, does not mean they are not reporting all aspects of the story. I especially enjoyed Christie Blatchford's reports. She tells it like it is from a Canadian soldier's perspective, without leaving out any of the story, and in the telling, she is able to put transport you there and see through her eyes. Some other reporters, I find, tend to write as though the story is secondary, and the judgment of themselves as reporters and the stance they took, is paramount.

Christie Blatchford: To be frank, as a Canadian I'm probably biased whether or not I'm formally embedded with the troops. I like my countrymen. So in that sense, sure, I'm biased. But no more biased than the press gallery reporters in Ottawa, who sometimes move in the same social circles as the people they cover, or sportswriters covering the CFL, who get to know and like some of the athletes they cover.

Thanks for the kind words, BTW.

Aubrey Charette, Ottawa: Journalists have always been considered non-combatants in war and not legitimate targets. However, the U.S. in its wars against Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq have targeted journalists who they accuse of promoting the war effort or engaging in propaganda (the latter two cases were against al-Jazeera and the U.S. claimed they were accidental, which is improbable). If journalists become embedded and attached to the military, do you think that there is a risk that journalists could become viewed as legitimate targets for the same reason the U.S. used to justify its attacks on journalists?

Geoffrey York: In the Taliban's eyes, Canadian journalists are already viewed as legitimate targets.

Graeme Smith: I'm already considered a legitimate target by the insurgency. I'm not sure the Taliban would understand the difference between embedded and un-embedded.

Christie Blatchford: Oh, I think journalists have been considered targets for a while in the modern kind of war . . . no different than ordinary civilians at least, who as you know are deemed fair game. I was in the former Yugoslavia the first summer of that war and was shot at every day and every time I left the Holiday Inn garage. The people shooting at me there weren't Americans, nor are they Americans doing it in Afghanistan.

Ron MacGillivray, Flatbush, Alta.: Good afternoon. Let me start off by complimenting your reporting on Afghanistan. I am highly critical of our involvement in Afghanistan. I believe we are there to prop up a government that clearly is not being accepted by the Afghan people and that we are in a fantasy world if we think we are going to "succeed" any time soon. I don't have a problem with embedded journalists. I understand that it comes out of a tradition of war reporting, that it's an attempt to be the eyes and ears of the soldier on the ground. But on another level, I get the feeling from some of the embedded reporting that the local Afghans are some kind of primitive alien life form in need of radical reconstructive surgery which, of course, we are there to provide.

My question today is about the morale of our troops which appears to be high. But maybe that's because they know they will be coming home in a few months. What would happen to morale if Stephen Harper announces that their six-month tour has been extended to a year? Would the morale of our troops plunge? Would that be reflected in the embedded reporting?

Geoffrey York: If the morale of the Canadian troops plunged steeply for any reason, I think the embedded journalists would probably spot it pretty quickly, and I don't think we would hesitate to write about it. Of course the soldiers are under orders (from their superiors) that they shouldn't talk to reporters without authorization, so it would be difficult to get on-the-record quotes from unhappy soldiers. But it's natural that conversations would happen anyway, and pretty soon the story would get out.

Christie Blatchford: Well, I certainly don't think I ever felt local Afghans are "some kind of primitive alien etc." I like them, and I think it showed in my writing (and thanks for the compliment BTW). I dunno what effect lengthening the tour would have on morale. The PPCLI were still only getting their feet wet, really, when I was there, and it might be they would be demoralized if they had to stay on past August. But my hunch is that they'd be okay with it. They really believe in their work there.

Charles Fagenbaum, Toronto: How often have you been censored with regards to something you feel is important, and are you able to publish your censored passages at a later date?

Geoffrey York: In my four weeks in Afghanistan, I experienced two clear attempts at censorship. The first case was a relatively unimportant story and I was able to write about it eventually (see my "Dispatches" column of last Saturday). The second case was the attempt to suppress the photos of Canadian soldiers with Taliban prisoners. This, in my view, was a fairly important issue. I believe that Canadians have a right to see how their soldiers are detaining prisoners, because of the human-rights issues involved. But in this case, the Canadian journalists refused to be censored. We rejected the military's attempts to suppress the photos, we consulted our lawyers, we studied the Geneva Conventions, and we published the photos within a few hours. This actually shows that the military does not have full control of journalists, even in an embedded situation.

Christie Blatchford: I wasn't censored except for a map we wanted to do to show where Pvt. Costall was killed. My photographer was afraid it would reveal too much and asked the public affairs guys to have a look. They in turn called in some intelligence guys, and they said they'd rather we not run it. I disagreed with decision (had a nice small fight with the photog about it even), but we yielded to it in the end. Army thought it was a case of giving the bad guys too much info.

Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: Thanks again, Geoff, Graeme and Christie. We're coming to the end of our time for this discussion. Any last comments?

Geoffrey York: I'd just like to thank the readers for their provocative and interesting questions.

Christie Blatchford: I guess that's it. Thanks to everyone for the questions, and thanks to Geoff and Graeme, both of whom i think have done great work in Afghanistan. This is especially impressive for Graeme, who is I think about 18 . . . I'm kidding of course, but he writes with the authority of someone with a lot more miles on 'im.

Graeme Smith: Reading all of these pages of writing about embedding, I was initially amazed that we could spend so much time talking about something that is, fundamentally, just another tool in a journalist's kit of tricks.

Why are so many people interested? Maybe because they feel they're missing something from our coverage, and they suspect the embedding process may be to blame.

I really don't think embedding is the problem, but it's worth talking about that undefined feeling that we should be getting better information.

North Americans are accustomed to a media environment where every time there's a gunshot, they get a full explanation. Maybe it's just a one-line entry in a police blotter ("Local resident, 25, charged with reckless endangerment after rifle goes off accidentally") but usually we know what's happening.

The same just isn't true in a place like Afghanistan. I heard gunfire a few minutes ago, and I will probably never know whether it was a wedding celebration or warning shots or an attack on a checkpoint. It's a dangerous and chaotic country.

We track it as best we can, and The Globe has better resources than most other newspapers for the job, but the size of the reporting challenge often dwarfs our ability to give you a full accounting of the situation.

Stay tuned, though. We're learning more every day.

Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: To our readers, as always, we couldn't get to all the more than 100 questions submitted in the one hour alloted to this discussion. If you have any comments on the discussion, please submit them in the usual way or use this link to do so.

If you have any questions or comments on the format of this discussion, if you wish to suggest other guests or other topics for a live on-line discussion, please feel free to e-mail me your views