"A recent Washington Post article describing the killing of civilians by U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint outside the Iraqi town of Najaf proved that 'embedded' journalists do have the ability to report on war in all its horror. But the rejection by some U.S. outlets of Post correspondent
William Branigin's eyewitness account [3] in favor of the Pentagon's sanitized version suggests that some journalists prefer not to report the harsh reality of war," Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting writes. According to the Post's account, the military did not give adequate warning to the civilian vehicle to stop and instead opened fire. In the Pentagon's version, the military followed all warning proceedures. Many U.S. papers acknowledged the discrepancy between the Post's version of the story and the Pentagon's, according to FAIR. Several news outlets, however, including the New York Times and National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," failed to mention that the Post's story contradicts the official report. Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald [4] reports the incident as "a distressing tale of a family fleeing towards what they thought would be safety, tragically misunderstanding instructions," based on interviews with survivors. The Herald does not report that warning shots were fired.