The accuracy of the war in Iraq's news coverage leaves a lot to be desired

On day two of the war in Iraq, some American Marines faced "fierce" resistance, before being assisted by British Artillery about 45 minutes later.

"Ha!" said some pundits, "You said this would be quick, but people are shooting back."

Now I'm no military expert but the above doesn't quite sound like "fierce" resistance. In fact it sounds like the Americans were "advancing to contact" when they contacted the enemy. The American company commander, I imagine, would have conducted a quick reconnaissance of the enemy position and had a brief chat to his attached artillery Forward Observer. The commander would have formulated a quick attack plan, supported by the FO's fireplan and, hey presto, 45 minutes later H-Hour and the poor Iraqis receive an artillery fire mission on the head. The American Marines advance and clear the Iraqi pits - end of mission, target destroyed, what's next? Or so you would think.

What seems a pretty stock standard example of a company or battalion-level combined arms operation, becomes "fierce resistance". We shouldn't be surprised, because in this war, journalists and pundits regard the ambush of a coalition vehicle as a re-run of the Battle of the Bulge.

The ABC's Geoff Thompson asks a US Marine Artillery Sergeant "What do you imagine is happening on the other end of this artillery battery?"

The Sergeant jokes: "I see a lot of people praying."

However, Thompson observes on the US gun line "they are digging and hoping that, here, prayer won't be necessary on this night." The report cuts to footage of a Marine digging in. Thompson's implication is clear; for all the bravado things aren't going well for the Americans, they are bogged down and facing fierce resistance, so much so they are digging in.

Right, okay, Geoff. But isn't digging standard operating procedure, rather than a reflection of the progress of the war?

I must confess it's hard to share the gleeful pessimism of some journalists, largely because it is so ludicrous. After about 14 days the Coalition forces had arrived in the North, captured several towns in the South, by-passed others and were on the outskirts of the capital. They had total air supremacy. The Iraqi regime's command, control and communications infrastructure has seen better days, and civilian casualties have been kept to a minimum. At the time of writing 27 Britons and 51 Americans have been killed. Tragic but staggeringly low casualties. To put that in perspective, in 2002 the Australian Defence Force had 44 fatalities from training accidents, car accidents, cancer and natural causes.

If you were Tommy Franks would you be disappointed with the war's progress? Not me, but Brian Whitaker from The Guardian thinks he should be, as "invasion forces are making slow headway". Whitaker is clearly a 'glass half empty' kind of chap. He probably believes the 6 Day War was 5 days too long - what an absolute shower those Israelis are! The fact that Coalition, oops sorry, invasion forces, weren't handing out tea and medals after 24 hours is, for Whitaker, a terrible indictment of the planning of the war, the US in general and Donald Rumsfeld in particular. Those dumb Americans again, here comes another Vietnam. Yes, just like Afghanistan.

Journalists like Whitaker have latched onto Seymour Hersh's allegations of infighting between old Rummy and the military men. Apparently Rumsfeld, or so the story goes, didn't give the military men enough troops because he didn't account for the "fierce" resistance. All parties have denied it, so in journalist parlance it must be true. Here we have the fundamental problem with the media and this war.

There are so many armchair experts, each with access to unprecedented coverage of the war, to speculate and second-guess. An infantry company encounters some difficulty securing an objective and it makes the evening news around the world. The perception is of an army going slow, and it's a good chance for opponents of Rumsfeld in the Pentagon to take a few pot shots and score a few points, and some journalists are more than willing to assist.

To complicate matters, there is nothing more impatient and ignorant than the average journalist during a war, inflated and made righteous by the memory of Vietnam. The media has a right to know every possible detail, and operational secrecy sounds like a military cover-up to them. A story must happen, preferably before deadline, complete with military incompetence and/or casualties both friendly and civilian. However, the media is quite happy to run with a favourable story, especially if it involves a young blonde female soldier rescued by Special Forces. The media can relate to that, it's just like a movie script. What would have happened if Private Lynch were a crusty middle-aged sergeant? Of course, this may be unfair, Private Lynch may have been the easiest to save and we know that after the ambush in Mogadishu the United States government pulled out all the stops to secure the release of Chief Warrant Officer Michael Durant.

The onus is on the Coalition forces to prove that they have not caused civilian casualties, and even then journalists like Robert Fisk are sceptical (doesn't help that he allegedly finds US ordinance debris in a bombed market place). It seems that people haven't quite grasped how amazing the Coalition technology and strategy is. Few, if any, military campaigns have been fought with such attention to limiting civilian casualties. Australian human shield Donna Mulhearn didn't really need to turn up, she must have got pretty bored guarding that grain silo. Still, it's an easy job to be a human shield when the good guys are doing the shooting.

In the first Gulf War much was made of an air strike that killed several hundred Iraq civilians. An absolute tragedy but people forget or don't know that beneath the civilian bunker was an Iraqi command and control centre. The media is quick to examine the conduct and motives of Coalition forces but is a little slower with the Iraqis. Journalists don't censure them, at times this appears to be a form of inverted racism; we mustn't judge the Iraqis for they know not what they do. Plus it's easier to examine the West. The Iraqi regime isn't exactly open and accountable, it's hard work finding out what those boys are up to, pretty dangerous too, plus there's that deadline, let's have a crack at the US instead.

Military operations are incredibly complicated and technical, plans will change after the first round has been fired, but don't try to explain any of this to a journalist who has 2 minutes on a satellite link-up or a print journalist who has 200 words to write 15 minutes ago. I can't help but hear Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons asking his teacher: "Ms Hoover, what's a battle?"

Naturally they are going to resort to the old stalwarts of simplification, sensationalism and dumbing-down - and newspaper proprietors aren't exactly complaining.

Obviously the power of the modern media in war isn't a new phenomenon, the British Government recognised it during the Falklands. Desperate for a break-out from San Carlos they sent Lieutenant Colonel 'H' Jones and his parachute battalion to Goose Green and someone thoughtfully leaked this information to the BBC World Service; we mustn't let the media think we're bogged down. Had the Argentinians been listening to the World Service they would have worked out that 2 Para was on its way. 'H' Jones was livid, "I'll bloody sue" he was heard to say.

However, military men in the current Gulf War must now look at the Falklands War media management with envy; a handful of print journalists, reliant on military communications, and TV crews effectively restricted to rear areas because of the extreme difficulty in carrying the equipment. The Battle for Goose Green took 24 hours, some of the other battalion attacks took nearly as long.

Imagine what today's media would make of that, I can see headlines now: Thatcher underestimates resistance of Argentine Conscripts. Funny that some are surprised when a battle is hard, dangerous and brutal. The British were also fortunate that journalists in the Falklands were of the standard of Max Hastings and Robert Fox.

Briefings in the Gulf seem to be the informed telling the ignorant and impatient what happened, so they can tell the uninformed. Some are worried about the propaganda from Coalition Forces. Notwithstanding the need for probing media scrutiny, I'm more concerned about the analysis some journalists concoct.

As Arnold Bennett once said: "Journalist say a thing they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true."