Why (some of) the Military Hate (some of) the Press

Photo Courtesy of Jarhead, the movie.

I interviewed a Marine the other day for my story. He was running a MySpace page in support of George Bush. It didn't relate to my story, but we got on the topic of the press and the military.

"I'm so sick of the news," he said. "All they say is all of the bad things that happen, why didn't they talk about the school I helped build? Or the sick kids I helped?"

This is one of many soldiers who I have heard complain about press coverage of the War in Iraq.

Contrary to soldiers' opinion, a lot of press regarding the war was fairly status quo. I did a thesis analyzing the first year of coverage of the War in Iraq, and found that most journalists (embedded or not) had a strong reliance on U.S. official sources. Now, I don't blame them--they were in a new country and didn't know the language and were being fired at--but that was the truth.

The one journalist who stuck out was Anthony Shadid, a Lebanese reporter for the Washington Post. He had a tremendous amount of civilian sources, as well as officials from both sides, and, surprisingly, some of the lowest ranking army and marine sources (i.e. the Privates, a.k.a. 'grunts', rather than the Lieutenants).

I read another article the other day that reminded me of the type of reporting I saw from Shadid. It was in the Raleigh News Observer by a man named Jay Price. He has performed three tours of Afghanistan and he wrote a three part series highlighting two pilots who nearly died in a helicopter crash. He covered how they got along with their brigade, what happened, and what is occurring in their lives now. It was not episodic or overly official-based. It painted a picture of what it was like for them--the good and bad.

Thinking back to my conversation with Christopher, the Marine, I wonder what he would have thought of it. I'm sure it would have been different than the stories he had read. It showed knowledge of military life, an understanding of the structure and struggles. This is lost on a lot of journalists, who I think often see themselves as smarter or better than folks in the military.

Being from a military family (three grandparents served for longer than one war, one was a life member), I have a respect for the military that runs deep, and yet I know I don't understand what folks are going through. I would like to be a reporter that military families could read and trust. Someone who understood the culture and told the story that needed to be told, without patronizing the soldiers or their sacrifice.

-Katharine Jarmul