Do the reporters get in the way?

Question

I was just curious about when reporters are doing stories regarding the war...are they more of a pain or beneficial to "show" the story?

I tried to send you an email awood but your address isn't confirmed.

Answer 1

From my own experience:

SEP 2003 Baghdad, Iraq

we had a journalist from one of the big 3 networks riding around with us for a week. During that week, my unit cleared 40 tons of unexploded ordnance from Iraqi schools, conducted 4 humanitarian missions, providing medical supplies to Iraqi hospitals, detained over 30 various criminals, Former Regime Loyalists, and outright insurgents. Conducted a number of combat/presence patrols through some of the poorest neighborhoods in Iraq and we drove by the barricades on the canal road near the UN headquarters in Baghdad once (it had just been blown up a few weeks before)... DO YOU KNOW WHAT ACTUALLY MADE THE NEWS??? THE BARRICADES, along with a scorching report on the US's lack of security for the UN personnel in Baghdad.

I'm often reminded of how you'll hear a report about a plane crash for months, but the media won't cover the hundreds of planes that defy the laws of physics daily and land safely...

I'm all for the media reporting to the taxpayers what their money is being used for, but for crying out loud... report the whole story, not just the failures (and actually the UN asked the American forces to leave the area a few days before they got bombed so I don't see how anyone can hold the US to blame for that fiasco).

Answer 2

I think the media has become the bane of society.... They keep broadcasting all the killings of innocent people who are not involved in, or who don't want to be involved in war. This has only become prevalent in the past few decades. Peoples go to war for religion, religious freedom, to fight oppression, whatever... But you don't hear people getting all heated about how many innocent people died in the wars that took place during the Roman Empire, or any of the wars in America before, say, 1900. Because the media kept their noses pretty much out of it. They weren't there on the front lines getting in the way. It's WAR, innocent people will die, but it's been happening for thousands of years. It's not going to change. I'm not trying to sound heartless about innocent kids getting killed, but trying to be practical here. The only way to completely destroy terrorism, is to completely destroy all the terrorists, and sadly their children too. Do you think that they're not teaching their kids to follow in their extremist footsteps? I seriously doubt that Osama's telling his kids that they have to love their neighbors, and shouldn't kill people.

The media is too concerned about showing all the bad things that happen. Very seldom do you see a story about all the good that our soldiers in Iraq are doing.

Answer 3

They might be beneficial if they actually told the story. Try and think of one positive story you've seen about the war on "the" news in the last year.

Answer 4

Whoa, folks!

Journalists are for the most part good people. They are employed by organizations that have certain formats they have to adhere to. That's the real problem: 30 second stories, re-run four hundred times.

A lot of people not in uniform risk their lives for your free speech too.

Answer 5

Yes they do , my husband is deployed now and they are like dogs they look for any thng to get the aw facter, i think they should not report like they do report the truth only if the military tell you , the jobs our men do is dangerous and when they start makeing reports of their locations and what they are doing they put our men in danger in there missions i think they should just but out and only report what they are told to report.

Answer 6

they are uwful, y do u think we have all thses bad stories of wat the soldiers are doin. i only read like 3-5 articles in the news since this war started that were actually good. but everyday u hear of all the bad things, i think they need to get out. we dont need them and we dont want them.

Answer 7

They get in the way and they do not report as acuratly as one might think.

Answer 8

yes they are in the way