What's with embedded?

[roger_thornhill]

Even on the BBC World Service radio, you get reports from intrepid journalists in Iraq described as being “embedded” with US forces, or allied forces, or whatever. Actually, I’m not usually listening by this time, because I keep asking myself why not simply “with allied forces”. Why embedded?

Two visions come to mind: one pretty obvious, the other of this journo in one of those foxholes they dug in the frozen wastes of the Ardennes in ‘Band of Brothers’, complete with flak jacket, helmet and notepad.

Or is embedded code for the-following-report-has-been-censored? So, by telling you the hack’s embedded, they’re really throwing the listener a kind of verbal wink: “Believe the following at your peril”.

[Kythereia]

My guess, YMMV, etc.:

‘Embedded’ is taken to mean actually in the midst of the action, filming the fighting and battle scenes and convoys. Anybody can walk into a base, sit down at a desk, and get an interview ‘with allied forces’. But to stay with the troops and go through what they’re going through, in the name of journalism… that’s ‘embedded’. Also, sheer guts.