The Disconnect: Boots on the Ground and Journalists

What a great essay. And speaking as a blogger who actually watches Congress on C-Span, and then watches what the MSM says Congress is saying, I can relate to our soldiers in Iraq:

November 20, 2005: American troops are developing a hate-hate relation with journalists. The basic problem is that soldiers and marines in Iraq have access, usually via the Internet, to what the mass media is saying about what they think is happening in Iraq. These news reports, all too often, do not reflect what the troops experience. It gets uglier when the troops realize that reporters are spending most of their time in the Green Zone or some well guarded hotel, leaving it to local Iraqi stringers to collect information and photos for the reporters stories. Relations are a bit better with the few embedded journalists who still travel with the troops out in field. But even the embeds are often mistrusted and disliked, because some of them are blatantly out for dirt, not an accurate story.

Read the whole thing.