Shannon Love has a useful comment in yesterday's post (that I've slightly edited here for typos) about war reporting (and public perceptions):

I find it very odd that most lay people, like journalists, have no intuitive feel for the ebb and flow of war. I think this lack of intuitive feel arises because the vast majority of the population never study the history of warfare in any detail and therefore develop their intuitive understanding of "feel" of flow of war purely from its representation in popular fiction and media.

The common narrative structure of the common fictional war story bears little relation to the actual tempo and evolution of real wars. A literature professor of mine once observed that no author would have written a fictional WWII that unfolded in the same way as the actual conflict. The opening of the war with sweeping unexpected victories makes for a good story but the slow grinding down of the Fascist states by overwhelming force in the last two years of the conflict is emotionally unsatisfying. In a fictional WWII, Fascist victory would look all but certain until Americans created the atomic bomb in last great gasp of desperation and saved the day.

The other problem with fictional war is that people can experience it in its entirety from start to finish in a matter of days or weeks. I think this causes people to intuitively feel that real world wars run far to0 long and are thus failures.

In short, persistence and determination make for boring narratives. Wars won by time don't make good stories. Most of the significant battles of the pre-industrial era were sieges won by the side with the most patience and the best logistical management. How many popular depictions of sieges have you ever seen in the fiction or even in histories of the era? If you have seen a siege depicted you see it at its dramatic end, not the months or years of siege itself.

Law enforcement often complains that the time frames depicted on crime shows, in which cops solve murders in a matter of days, severally distorts the expectations of crime victims and even juries when they evaluate how competently the justice system acts.

I think the same effect cripples the electorate's popular understanding of how we fight real wars.

This no doubt a factor, though the fact that very few of today's journalists have any military experience or training is a problem as well.

post industrialization, sieges became obsolete.

The Mortar, the Howitzer, The Cannon ended sieges and
forts and walled cities. The tank and aircraft and trucks
made sieges silly. Since the industrial era of war,
besieged forces were subject to destruction without a
relieving force.

Dreaming of sieges means to live in the past centuries.

In the blogosphere there is a persistant tendency to vilify the mainstream media. You realize that this is a narrative unto itself. That anything that doesn't fit this narrative gets left out. How long will the "blame the MSM" narrative last? How long before the blogosphere finally capitulates to the fact that occasionally the MSM gets it right? I am not suggesting that the MSM has it right on the war. Maybe they don't, but maybe they have got it right on the public's opposition to the war. That's important. After all, this is a democracy and the war in Iraq was purely elective. Our survival as a nation is not at stake. Why doesn't that get any traction?

I will grant you that I could be wrong, but I get the impression, from posts like these, that perhaps you believe that if the MSM would get with the program, then maybe the public would get behind the war. Let's say for the sake of argument that the MSM's narrative of the war is incorrect. Let's say the war is going better, whatever that means. Let's say the public believes the war is going better.

That doesn't mean the public, maybe a majority of the public, won't oppose the war. That doesn't mean it won't think the war is a waste of American lives and resources. That doesn't mean we shouldn't leave the Iraqis to their own devices. That doesn't mean we shouldn't abandon the farce which claims to be the Iraqi government. That doesn't mean that we should stay the course.

The Bush people being creatures of media believe the only
solution is more PR. Bush is a coward, cheney is a coward,
the DoD was run bychickenhawks, they believe that everything
is fixed with PR

That's rich, the nameless fool calling others cowards!

How about a term for anonymous trolls who talk big but hide like a frightened child: ChickenTalk

Jardinero1 is missing or ignoring the whole point of much media criticism. By their own admission, many in the media oppose the war and their reporting reflects this. Thus, they influence public opinion with biased reporting. How many opposed to the war base their objections on incorrect or biased reporting? The NYTimes is prefect example. 56 front page stories on Abu Ghraib, good news about reduced casualties and sectarian cooperation page 19.

No Bill, What I am saying is that the public may be smarter and better informed than most people think. I think the public is able to separate the wheat from the chafe. I would guess that the public might believe the war is going better. I read Michael Yon and actively seek out good news stories. I believe it is going better. In spite of that, I am still opposed to the war and would prefer to end our involvement in it as quickly as possible.