The Fog of War Journalism
UK military chief Geoffrey Hoon is spot-on with his analysis of war journalism. Hoon, Tony Blair's defense secretary, writing in the London Times, says reports from the "embedded" journalists - including 128 Brits - provide people with vignettes of the war, but not the total picture.

One commentator on television this week said that, in Iraq, we were seeing a new kind of war. I disagree. It is less a case of seeing a new kind of war, more that we are seeing war in a new way. Startling pictures of a sort which have previously been the preserve of battlefield commanders are being beamed into our homes. Journalists can report changing situations as they happen, in real time. But the understandable thirst for "exciting" images has resulted in a series of disconnected "snapshots" of the conflict. Each, in its own way, may have been informative, but combined they have failed to give the viewer a genuine understanding of "the big picture," and sometimes they have had the opposite effect.

If the most exciting images of the day are of resistance from small elements of Saddam's brutal security forces - who fear their own liberated countrymen almost as much as they fear the coalition - that leads the news bulletins. It gives an impression that that is the mood of the country, when in fact it relates solely to the tiny area in which the reporter finds himself. It may not be the journalist's fault: it is a reporter's job simply to report what he or she finds. But without being framed in a broader understanding of strategy, instant pictures can mislead. So while viewers may be "seeing" more than ever before, they may actually be "learning" less, albeit in a more spectacular way.

Those who saw the hectic pictures of a night-time infantry assault on an Iraqi-held position during the battle for Umm Qasr a few nights ago, for instance, will not easily forget them. What they may not have understood, however, is that the picture hid a more complex story. With our air superiority, we could have blown that building and other targets to pieces, but that would have run counter to our strategy of leaving the infrastructure intact for the Iraqi people, with whom we have no argument, to use after the regime falls.

Hoon's piece cuts through the fog of war journalism, and provides the overall context for what you're seeing on the TV.

For more on war journalism, check out this at Instapundit today