All journalists have perspectives that color and shape their reporting. Many factors influence not just what questions get asked but what issues get reported on in the first place. It takes much more work to remain objective when some of the people journalists cover are similar to them in terms of class and culture while others are very different. For embedded reporters in a war zone, there are further complications. They travel, eat, sleep and are protected by the soldiers they are with. There is literally no distance between the journalists and the troops thus their vision can easily be blurred. This has been a particular problem with reporting in Iraq.

Dahr Jamail, an American, saw these problems of perspective clouding the reporting about the war in the U.S. media. He decided to do something about it. He went to Iraq where he reports outside the bubble of American control. His articles appear in The Guardian and The Nation. He also posts his dispatches on his own widely read website, dahrjamailiraq.com.