Unlike the conflicts
raging in Africa, where both the EDF and United States Military have
imposed a complete media blackout to keep the sitution from escalating
in order to continue their mutually agreed upon "Quiet War", there is
no such blackout in Central and South America.
In the first place,
the region is to close, and too open and popular with tourists to even
attempt to keep things under wraps. Also too many American
Corporations are active in the region, all of which rely on their own
support structure. Further more, the United States believes in
what it is doing, at least in as much as they want the popular support
of the people. The Armed Forces have gone as far as pre-emptively
implanting journalists with the troops in the build up, and virtually
every major media corporation on the planet has deployed their own war
correspondents. While most of the journalists and media outlets
covering the region are heavily filtered and sanitized by the
government and corporate interests, there are a large number of
Independent Correspondents (like C.J. O'Reilly of Solo Of Fortune and
Cheshire from the nomad publication Dust In The Wind) operating in the
area doing their best to tell the whole story without bias.
On the European side of things, while
at the moment they are not directly involved in any of the potential
conflicts, they do find it most entertaining to watch the Americans
getting killed and engaging in yet another conflict in South America
after their last two military fiasco's in the region.
Other countries also
have their own journalists in the region, to a much smaller
degree. And some media corporations are going as far as
approaching all participatng sides in the inevitabl conflict in hopes
of outfitting military units with recording and broadcasting equipment
in order to host the worlds first Military Combat reality show.
While most of the Media coverage in
the area is going to be primarily focused on the military and political
aspects, others concentrate on the more human side of things. In
the face of Conflict it can be all too easy to forget the ramifications
of such actions, and there will be no shortage of those eager to
educate or exploit the situation.
Written By Deric Bernier, images from Recon 2020, Chris Foss, Maria
Willams, Huxley and unknown artists.