Independent Reading Essay

The year is 2006,watching TV, you flip through the various news stations to learn about the recent news in Iraq, the majority of the news simply says that ‘x’ amount of soldiers or marines were killed in such and such attack. You don’t like what you are hearing so you go online to read an independent embedded (embedded refers to news reporters who are attached to military units) reporters story. Online you read that two new schools were built, and the Iraqis, supported by US forces, led an attack to capture an insurgent leader. The big media corporations such as FOX, NBC, CNN, and many others distort the facts that are on the ground. The small, mostly independent, reporters generally try to get a first-hand account of the situation on the ground. They are their alongside the soldiers, sailors, and marines. In some cases these reporters may need to drop their camera or pen and defend themselves. These examples bring many questions that I want to know. The biggest of these questions is how do these different types of reporting, the “main stream media”, and the small independent embedded reporters affect the views that the American people have back home? The reason I chose this topic is that after reading The Good Soldiers and Moment of Truth in Iraq, I was intrigued in the considerable difference between what was wrote in books and what CNN reported on the nightly news. I did not find a ‘good’ answer I could find to answer my question, however I did draw three conclusions. The conclusions are as follows: the ‘big media’ misconstrues the information from the battlefield to fit their own agendas; the media fails to obtain a personal more in depth view and instead report after the smoke has cleared instead of what happened during t...

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...ish troops in Iraq multiple times. Yon uses the book to go into a block by block detail of 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment (Deuce Four) of the 25th Infantry Division in Mosul, Iraq. In addition, Yon gives a view that FOX and CNN do not. Throughout the book Yon chronicles his time with the Deuce Four and gives detail into the Iraqis that worked with US Forces. Yon describes the way Politics in Iraqi cities and towns work. He describes why a corrupt Iraq Police Chief was allowed to stay in power and his eventual arrest by Iraqi and US Forces. He gives a much more personal, yet political view into the Iraq war. This book would be a good read for anyone who likes war books, especially books that include (graphic) pictures. It would also be a good read for anyone who wants a more in depth look into the Iraq war and some of the politics (in Iraq) that were involved.