BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. As the world holds its collective breath in anticipation of war, hundreds of journalists are filing into divisions of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines as "embeds." The military's new accessibility has been hailed by news organizations, but some reporters waiting to decamp with the troops are torn between enthusiasm for the assignment and the risk it may pose -- not just to life and limb, but to journalistic objectivity. NPR's Burnett has been embedded with the Marines and he joins us on the line from Kuwait City. John, welcome to the show!

JOHN BURNETT: Well thanks for having me, Brooke.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Where are you standing right now?

JOHN BURNETT: I'm actually standing on the front porch of the Hilton Hotel in Kuwait City which overlooks the Persian Gulf, and we're sitting here waiting to embed with the troops, watching the waves and-- waiting for our call.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What is the role of the battalion that you'll be embedded with?

JOHN BURNETT:I'm going to be with the headquarters command of the First Marine Division which is going to be the brain of a frontline spearheading force that is going to be one of the first over the border into Iraq if this war takes place, so I think it's going to be a great place to be to get a bit of a larger picture. And, and that's one of the toughest things about covering this is every reporter will only see what his unit sees, and we are locked into our units. The embed rules say you may not leave. You can't go wander off into an Iraqi village and interview people about, you know, have you had any civilians hurt? Are you turning against Saddam? We can't do that! We have to stay with our military unit.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The non-embedded reporters will do that.

JOHN BURNETT:Yeah. I love this; the military language. They're calling them "unilateral reporters," [LAUGHS] so the unilateralists, like Mike Schuster who is in Kuwait right now with us and as soon as the front moves into Iraq and, quote, "liberated Iraq" is behind him, Mike is going to get in as quick as he can, and he's going to get to Basra, and he's going to get into the Mesopotamian Valley; then he's going to find out what has been the impact of this invasion on the civilian population. You know he'll balance out what we're seeing. [PLANE]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: I hear something flying overhead.

JOHN BURNETT: Yeah, there's a big Air Force jet flying over. This happens all day long.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You've already got a hint of how you'll be functioning on a day to day basis. Anything to give you concern?

JOHN BURNETT:Yeah-- we had a meeting here in Kuwait City with some of the public affairs people with the military last weekend, and some of the Q&As they had e-mailed to us said that you will all have an escort while you're in the theater of operations, and well whoa! What's this?! I mean any reporter who gets an "escort" is, is immediately suspicious that this is a "minder" - this is someone who's going to be, you know, the eyes and ears of-- the Pentagon. And so I raised that with the Marine public affairs guy who will sort of be in charge of us, and he said "Let me tell you about escorts. An escort is somebody I pay 75 dollars a night for and take to a hotel room. I don't care for escorts." Ha, ha, ha. The press laughed it up, and then he followed up and said "What you're going to have is a Marine buddy." And so all the laughing stopped. And we all looked at each other and -- what is a Marine buddy? And he said "This Marine buddy is going to be assigned to each one of you and he's going to keep you safe and he's going to explain how we war-fight, and he's going to help you get interviews, and you'll be glad you have him." We're very curious what our Marine buddies are going to be like. However, I've heard from some veteran defense correspondents who've worked around the Marines that they want to get their story out, and mainly involves just getting you to places for interviews.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:I just wonder what "the story" that they want to get out - how that would necessarily coincide with a reporter's. I-- I was watching Nightline the other night, and they had a report from one of their embedded reporters in Kuwait. He couldn't talk about what their operational plans were, naturally and appropriately, and so basically ABC had to get its money's worth, so this guy filmed the Marine getting a picture of his new baby and handing out cigars and smoke 'em if you got 'em, and it was all very cozy and--and don't we love our boys, and -- of course that goes without saying! Is that the message, though, we'll be receiving day after day from costly embedded reporters, because there's nothing else to report? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

JOHN BURNETT: Well-- Clearly that's part of what's happening here. I mean that's part of what they're doing. There will be things that happen that the Pentagon will not be happy about. They're going to be showing their warts on this! They're embedding 800 reporters. They've never had this scale of the eyes of the media watching them before, and so they're nervous also that-- it's going to be - you know - making sausage and, and we're going to see like never before what goes into, to fighting a war -- the mistakes - and the successes.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Are you concerned that you'll come to love your military colleagues - your comrades - so much that you'll be less inclined to report the warts?

JOHN BURNETT: You really get to the heart of what my greater concern is. I'm not as worried about how the Pentagon wants to control our message. I'm more concerned about human nature and what's going to happen to me when we get in a combat situation and we are with these men and women who are fighting and there's incoming, and they may have to save my life -- how much am I going to identify with them? One of the things that a veteran war correspondent told us when we trained at Fort Benning to do this is-- you - the, the greatest threat out there is to remember you're not one of them. You have to retain your independence and you can't get subsumed into the whole military culture. I'm very mindful of that. And I'm going to be listening to myself and to the tone of my stories to hope that they are independent, but-- that's - you know, that's, that's definitely a concern!

BROOKE GLADSTONE: John, thank you so much.

JOHN BURNETT: Well, thanks Brooke. It's good to be on the show and-- we'll talk later.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:NPR reporter John Burnett is stationed with the Marines in Kuwait. He'll be checking in with us from time to time over the next few weeks. [MUSIC]