How do we teach the war in today's news?

Thomas Sewell asked the following question in a recent Town Hall editorial:

Has the education in our schools left us so ill-equipped that we cannot see through even the most blatant hypocrisy of today's press in their reporting of such events as our war in Iraq?

Is today's reporting of our war in Iraq a re-creation of the media's role in the Vietnam war, where American victories on the battlefield were turned into defeat on the home front by the filtering and spin of the media? Even the current Communist rulers of Vietnam have admitted that they lost militarily in Vietnam but hung on because they expected to win politically in the United States -- as they did. Will the warring Iraqi factions who do not support a democratic society do the same?

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/printts20050810.shtml

But how biased is reporting in Middle Eastern affairs? And is it as biased as the Thomas Sewell article "Trashing our history: Troops in Iraq" claims it to be? Here are some pertinent links to get you started on answering this difficult question yourself because, as is the case in America, you must research the question, form an opinion, and then be able to defend it.

• New Mexico Media Literacy Project--the largest and most successful independent, activist media literacy project in the United States. http://www.nmmlp.org/
• Mideast media coverage watchdog. http://www.honestreporting.com/
• Writers Debate Media Bias, Iraq Coverage. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1834539
• Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting--a national media watch group offering well-documented criticism in an effort to correct media bias and imbalance. http://www.fair.org/index.php
• Ohio State University Communication Research News. http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/talkbias.htm
• Media Bias in Iraq. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001000753
• Media Bias (Wikipedia). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias

Not easy is it? Believe me, it rarely is...but it's all a part of the process that enables us to become informed citizens and better participants in a democratic society.