by Kristin Kolehouse

Created on: July 01, 2009   Last Updated: July 03, 2009

The media is destructive. They have gone from being objective newsreaders to biased pundits. The days of hearing facts with absolutely no editorializing are over. Today, media figures fancy themselves muckrakers, constantly trying to uncover the next big scandal. Journalists, for lack of a better term, spend their time on the hunt for this generation's Watergate. They yearn to have their names listed with the likes of Woodward and Bernstein. Their digging for dirt on politicians, the government and the military makes it impossible for America to conduct a war properly. The stories on which they choose to report perpetuate racism and show the racism they have themselves. Yellow journalism does not begin to describe the current climate of the American media.

During the Vietnam War, Walter Cronkite said that the war was not winnable. Since then, wars have become almost impossible to fight because of the media. The military is now incapable of conducting itself in a manner necessary to win a war because they are afraid of what the media will say. There are reporters embedded all over Iraq and Afghanistan whose only purpose seems to be to drag the military through the mud. From the Abu Ghraib torture scandal to the "Haditha massacre," the media cannot wait to get their hands on anything that has even the slightest possibility of making the American military look bad. There is debate about whether or not throwing a foam football at a terrorist or making a murderer wear women's underwear actually constitutes torture, but the media treats the American troops involved in Abu Ghraib as though they are no different than Torquemada. In the case of Haditha, the media convicted Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Chessani and his Marine battalion as murderers from the very beginning. As it happens, no one involved has been charged with any crimes whatsoever. This is absolutely treasonous. The media should give the military the benefit of the doubt. They should understand that there is dirty work that must be done during a war and that, perhaps, it is their job not to report on those horrible Army personnel putting underpants on the heads of those poor terrorists.

The way the media handles military situations is intended to make the American public think the American military are evil. According to the media, soldiers never do anything good or helpful. They are all portrayed as know-nothing hillbillies that are capable of nothing aside from murder and torture. The military has been

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