In the fog of war, America needs news it can trust 

It is never a good thing when news outlets become major players in the stories they are reporting. But that’s the situation now, as establishment media inject their spins and chosen narratives into stories about the military action in Iran.  

Journalists and editors are not content to just report on the events and known facts of the war. Instead, these sanctimonious “surrogates of the people” insist on massaging story lines and pushing agendas. Simply reporting news is apparently a thing of the past.  

This narrative management comes from both left-of-center and right-of-center media, but as most Americans acknowledge, establishment media generally lean left. It is little wonder the nation’s news consumers are struggling to make sense of the various narratives masquerading as journalism. War time is not the time for either liberal or conservative slants. 

Sensible Americans want full, measured and even-handed information about news events. News consumers can make up their own minds and develop their own opinions based on the facts of any situation. That approach served the nation well for decades, when news was supposed to be delivered in a nonpartisan, impartial manner, with opinion and analysis clearly labeled. It only figures that as the professional journalistic standards of the past have decayed, public confidence in the news industry has collapsed.

Providing news coverage of a military conflict is certainly one of journalism’s most difficult challenges. Various pronouncements from the American, Israeli, Iranian and other interested governments must be scrutinized and vetted. Nothing can be taken at face value. It is also obvious that there is a lot that news organizations just don’t know, the fog of war being what it is.  

But the difficulty of reporting war is no excuse for the media to constantly outkick its coverage. The overall lack of perspective and context in recent war reporting has been stunning. News narratives constantly speculate about how soon the war will end, as if anybody could possibly know. Imagine journalists needling FDR in January 1942 about how soon World War II would end.

Also note the media’s daily obsession with gas prices, as if the cost of filling the tank of an SUV is more important than preventing a terrorist enemy from developing nuclear weapons. Maybe this war really is needless, as left-leaning outlets harp, but surely journalists can’t possibly have had access to all of the prewar intelligence the Pentagon has.  

Every military action comes with serious dangers and risks that should be explored, of course, but the establishment media’s reporting over the downing of a single F-15E plane in early April came off as hyperventilation. This sort of clumsy perspective has led some observers to complain that media coverage is unbalanced in favor of Iran. The American Enterprise Institute even published an essay asserting that legacy media are rooting against the U.S. 

The leaders of Iran — at least, those who remain — are likely delighted with how American media are characterizing the conflict, focusing on every perceived American problem and ignoring 47 years of Iranian misbehavior. 

Professional journalism has developed a confusion about its mission. Instead of serving as surrogates for the public, too many reporters come off as self-righteous, promoting their own views instead of simply providing the information needed to fuel democracy. Former NBC anchor Lester Holt let that cat out of the bag several years ago when he blurted out that “fairness is over-rated” while accepting a journalism award. CNN anchor Dana Bash echoed the sentiment in a recent interview, suggesting “objective reporting doesn’t mean just giving all sides of the issue.”

It is damaging for the nation when Americans are working with widely separate perceptions of Iran war reality. Citizens have distorted views of the same elephant, depending on whether they rely on left-leaning or right-leaning news outlets. Viewers of right-leaning media see a smashing military success. News consumers of left-leaning outlets likely judge the conflict as a failure that will lead to widespread chaos.  

Thankfully, a handful of news organizations are trying to report about the Iran conflict in a more reasoned, impartial manner. Those are the media outlets with a “centrist” rating in the  AllSidesMedia bias chart. Sadly, the shrill, partisan news outlets work hard to take the oxygen out of the journalistic sphere. 

The First Amendment created a free press to allow journalists and editors free rein on what to publish and how to monitor the government. That has made democracy rather messy throughout two and a half centuries, but the nation has survived. It is up to citizens to be responsible in news consumption — even when the journalists aren’t.  

Jeffrey M. McCall is a media critic and professor of communication at DePauw University. He has worked as a radio news director, a newspaper reporter and as a political media consultant.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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