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Originally Posted by Rob_G
News is usually only new when it's bad news. Business as usual isn't considered news. You don't report an airplane taking of and landing safely some time later, you only report it when a plane crashes, killing a lot of people. The same with Iraq. Do you really want to see soldiers on patrol, when nothing happens? And while that is being aired, not seeing other soldiers torturing prisoners?
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True, but I would like to see what's actually happening in Iraq. Do you think that the bad news we hear every day comprises the majority of what is happening every day? If so, how can that be? As I said, the overwhelming majority of US troops are not involved in any combat operations. What are they doing? I would like to see soldiers on patrol and hear commentary from an impartial reporter. I would like to see how the Americans and the Iraqis interact. I would like to hear from the soldiers how they actually feel. I would like to see some interviews with Iraqis.
A "reality" type program would be perfect for Americans. It peaks their interest AND it serves as a conduit to explain what is really going on.
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What I don't understand is why you take embedded reporters seriously. They are like a dog on a collar. The army can dictate 99% of what they see, and more important, what they don't see. That's not what journalism is about, to me.
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Well, according to a
study done by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust:
"the overwhelming majority of the embedded stories studied, 94%, were primarily factual in nature."
I do tend to believe facts more than I believe opinion, or reports filtered through that opinion. Call me crazy.
This embedded reporter doesn't agree with your opinion that he was a "dog on a collar":
"The commanding officer of my battalion gave us virtually unlimited access, even on sensitive stories. He said his orders were to let us report on "the good, the bad and the ugly." And that's what we did."
And that echoes the opinion of every reporter interviewed for the Discovery Channel's production
Reporters at War.