Here’s my beef about the regime media. Well, it’s one of many beefs, including its bizarre, biased, and absolute commitment to America’s defeat in this struggle against seventh-century pagan tyranny, but let’s put aside the ideological part for just a minute. I mean, we’ve beaten that to death, much like the Iranians beat to death their own citizens, over which the regime media covers for them. No, I’m just talking about journalism as a profession. I’m talking basic skills at informing folks of stuff. They aren’t. They’re just doing a terrible job of reporting the objective facts of this conflict. This is the worst-reported war I’ve ever had the misfortune to see, and I’ve been involved with some at a personal level.
Here’s the bottom line, beyond what we get from the Pentagon briefings, which are important. We really don’t know what the heck’s going on in this war at any granular level. That wasn’t true in previous wars, and it should be unacceptable now. Journalists should figure out how to do their damn job and report what’s happening. Here’s some stuff we haven’t seen, which would be nice to see?
- Who are the mullahs and what is the Islamic Republic?
- What is the history of Iranian terrorism?
- How does Iran maintain internal oppression?
- What’s the history of its nuclear program and why is this idiocy about “But muh fatwa against nukes”? So dumb?
- How do drones, ballistic missiles and their defenses work?
- What is the estimated Iranian order of battle?
- How have Israel and the US forces integrated to fight this battle?
You know, basic stuff, so people have an idea about what’s happening.
What coverage do we get? Talking points and zero depth. Every day, we get shots of General Dan Caine and Secretary of War Hegseth standing up and talking about the prior day’s operations. Again, there is nothing wrong with that. That’s good, that’s important, that’s big-picture stuff, but it shouldn’t be the only thing we get. Then we get the talking heads, and that’s the same as it ever was. We see a lot of old generals, most of whom were generals during the 30-year interregnum when America failed to unequivocally win a major war, talking about big-picture strategic stuff. We do get some folks talking in a more street-level manner, particularly my friends Jim Hanson and Tom Sauer on Fox. Jim was a Green Beret, and Tom was a Navy EOD guy, for which I forgive him. They provide a picture of what’s happening with more useful detail than a lot of these highfalutin’ general officer/flag officer types. But that’s not reporting. That’s having a guest on and asking him some questions. Again, not useless and not bad in and of itself, but also not reporting.
Back in World War II, we had correspondents embedded within our military, reporters who could talk to troops and see what was going on. Yes, they were subject to censorship and military discipline at times. You weren’t going to get a June 5th X post from CBS about “Tomorrow’s the big day in Normandy!”
But you were going to get an idea of what the troops are experiencing from their level. With 12 million Americans in uniform, that was a lot of people back home who wanted to know what their sons were doing in Europe, the Pacific, Africa, or wherever. They weren’t putting up with the mushroom treatment, and reporters roasted the occasion. Some died, like beloved reporter Ernie Pyle. But just how far our reporters are from the reality of military life was illustrated by the great surf-and-turf scandal. How dare our guys get occasional third-tier sirloins and sea bugs! It was reported as if Pete Hegseth was personally gobbling them down at his sumptuous banquet; in fact, none of the reporters had any idea what was going on.
A big part of the reason almost none of them have ever served. Almost none of them even know anyone who has served. Most reporters are from the finest, most hoity-toity schools. That’s not exactly a target-rich environment for either future soldiers or veterans. They have no idea who soldiers are or what our soldiers do day to day. They’re not anywhere near them, physically or experientially. They don’t talk to them. They don’t want to talk to them. And if they do talk to them, they wouldn’t know what to ask.
Now, the soldiers probably don’t mind this too much. When I was a platoon leader in the Gulf War, one of my sergeants came up to me and asked me whether, if a reporter came into the unit area, he could shoot him. Now, I told him that was probably a bad idea, and he may have been joking. Or he may not have been joking. But he didn’t like reporters. Nobody did. And a lot of that came from Vietnam. Some reporters in Vietnam were heroic, like the AP’s Joe Galloway, who was part of the cavalry unit that was the subject of “We Were Soldiers Once,” and who acted with great bravery and honesty in the telling of that amazing story. But most were there to trash the military, and some were outright traitor scumbags who made no bones about favoring the enemy. We’ve got a lot of that here. A lot of regime media reporters would prefer that America be defeated.
That explains why our military is not very excited about inviting reporters to see what is going on. A military leader knows that a reporter, through malice or incompetence, can report something inaccurately and screw his career up. Why add that problem to a rucksack that’s overflowing with problems? But as a result, reporters are just not getting, and therefore not giving, a real picture of what’s really happening where the tank treads meet the dirt.
I can figure out some of it, but I was in the military for 27 years. A civilian must be completely baffled and totally confused when people start saying that we’re losing this war. We’re not. That much is clear. But how would we know? All you see on the air is some generals, then some video of things exploding, and nothing else. You’re not hearing from the troops. You’re not getting any explanation of the targets being taken out. You get a summary – “We’re attacking weapons, facilities, command and control, and leadership targets.” OK, what’s that really mean? What does it mean to the enemy and its capabilities? And how do targets get selected? We hear about collateral damage – do we see any reporting on the very extensive procedures of American forces to take to ensure that they hit only military targets? No. We don’t get anything at all. But if the Iranian Ministry of Taqiyya says that Pete Hegseth personally dropped napalm on an orphanage, killing infinity thousand honor students, we hear all about that as if it were pagan gospel.
When we do get a scoop, it’s inevitably a leak. And the leaks are almost inevitably baloney. It’s always somebody pushing his own agenda by giving it to a reporter who has absolutely no idea about the subject matter information. The reporter promptly credulously presents it as the unvarnished truth. It’s usually nonsense, but how would the reporter know? And with the reporter even caring, especially if it made the administration look bad?
As a result, we get a very skewed and incomplete picture of what our military is doing. We don’t know what our people are actually doing. We have only a high-level summary of what’s going on, but no details. People don’t understand the processes involved in selecting and destroying targets. They don’t understand the ins and outs of mine warfare, my friend Tom Sauer’s efforts to the contrary, and end up with bizarre misunderstandings regarding the status and challenges of the Strait of Hormuz. We don’t really know much of anything. And we’re probably not going to know much of anything until somebody writes a book about this war in four or five years. What can we do about it? Well, we can’t do anything about it until the reporters decide they want to do something about it. Until they decide they’re not providing their readers and viewers with the kind of accurate and complete reporting we citizens need to be fully informed so we can make decisions in our democracy, they’re not going to change.
And why would they change? It’s uncomfortable to go where the action is. It’s a lot easier to transcribe what generals say. It’s a lot easier to do journalism by leak. And it’s a lot easier when you don’t have to deal with those camouflaged riffraff who think you’re a dork.
But until reporters decide they want to be reporters instead of transcriptionists for whatever the narrative du jour is, things won’t change. We’re going to have to keep getting our information elsewhere, but you know, we’re used to that.
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