Looking Back

I don't really remember all that much from the initial media coverage of the war in Iraq, but I do remember being overall disappointed by the coverage. I didn't read newspapers that much in high school so my early exposure to the reporting was all TV coverage.

I understand the concept of patriotism and not reporting too negatively in the beginning of a conflict, but we didn't get any negative news. In the U.S. media: civilian deaths weren't mentioned at all, the loss of power in Iraq took on a vaguely positive - Go U.S.A. - spin, and way too much was made of the "war heros" like those first soldiers captured (who happened to be from Texas so we heard even more about them) and Jessica Lynch.

We're at war, what did people expect? I don't understand why people got so angry whenever something happened to U.S. troops and the media only stoked the fire. They did a horrible job of reporting objectively and all war stories had horribly tabloid spins.

The absolute worse (that no one around me seemed to notice the same way I did) was Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech on the aircraft carrier. It seemed preposterous on its own and I didn't see anyone in the media challenging the fact that there was still a lot of violence in the Middle East that we had to deal with.

Everyone around me (media and the people in my personal life) were complaining about Al Jazeera's "bloodly" coverage of the war but personally I admire Al Jazeera, they covered the war like it was a war - blood, accidental deaths, sorrow, anger and all.

As the fighting continued (and is still continuing) media coverage revealed itself to be even worse than we all thought. It turns out that we knew there were no WMDs in Iraq and so did the major media outlets. Except only the people who really paid attention to the press found those stories. The media didn't bother to call out a governmental lie that led us into war and no one seemed to care ... until now when everyone is content complaining about how horrible our government is and how much we need to get out of Iraq. But I won't go into that too much because it's just beating a dead horse.