While serving with the Marines in Iraq, I had the opportunity to drive around Fallujah every day, come back to base, and watch the evening news broadcast from Europe. The stories were given without rhetoric, emotion, or the slightest hint of propaganda. Unfortunately, there’s a difference between being factual and being informative. The video clips shown portrayed the most violent hour out of any given month, and the stories gave no hint of what was really happening in Iraq. They were tailored to grab attention rather than inform.

Journalists have to make a living. Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, CNN, Fox News, Stephen Colbert, MSNBC, CBS, and ABC are basically the same. News reporters are experts at selling stories because their paychecks depend on it. The fact that 99% of my patrols were boring doesn’t grab attention; a burning Humvee does. I frequently watched a 15 second clip of last week’s burning Humvee loop for 5 minutes straight. This would be less infuriating if news anchors used that time to say something important, but they seem incapable of doing so.

Watching journalists report on Iraq would be comical if it weren’t so tragic. Imagine a graduate of business school telling an aerospace engineer how to design a plane, and you will have an idea of their ignorance. I’ve never seen a news channel balance a horror story with the good news coming out of Iraq. No news is reported of Iraqi oil production, no stories are reported about the many cities with decreased violence, and no attempt is even made to find out what the Iraqi people think about us. In reality, the insurgents extorted money, ran black markets, and coerced common people into doing their dirty work. They were organized criminals, and the locals wanted them out. Journalists never bothered to learn this information or didn’t find it as good of a selling point as a burning Humvee.

The entire insurgent strategy was to drag the war out until America gave up. They knew they couldn’t beat us in a fight, so they would use explosions as publicity stunts. The news reported explosions, Americans got upset, and politicians fiercely debated withdrawal. We needed the local Iraqis’ help finding insurgents, but the locals needed us to protect them from the insurgents. If we left Iraq, anyone who helped us would be murdered, and that was a real possibility based on what the media and congress were saying. Thus, the insurgents extended the war with the help of our own media– killing thousands of soldiers and civilians in the process. The journalists, in their ignorance, saw themselves as loyal dissenters and protectors of the first amendment.

To properly protect the first amendment and loyally dissent, journalists need to be well educated in warfare and capable of putting complex situations in perspective. Unfortunately, this kind of informative reporting doesn’t sell as well as burning Humvees, dead soldiers, and suffering civilians. Next time you watch the news, keep in mind who is telling the story, what their credentials are, and what incentives are driving them. Even when they’re being completely honest, there’s usually more to the story.