Nick Berg

I make it a point to watch things the U.S. news won't show me. I made it a point to view the photos of the soldiers' bodies from the ambush in which Jessica Lynch was captured, and I purposely sought out the video of Nick Berg's murder on the internet to view.

Why? Because I want to see what the Arab world and others are seeing. I want to see reality, not some sugar-coated version from TV talking heads. I watch Arab TV news broadcasts on LinkTV, which is on DirecTV and probably other distributors. I read alternative news sources, like Information Clearing House, to get a wider perspective than one gained from Peter Jennings. Some of the most enlightening sites are the unglamorous, apolitical counter-spin sites, like SpinSanity and Daily Howler.

The mainstream media is not serving the public, and we must resist the soothing "human interest" crap they feed us daily and seek out real information, from many perspectives, if we are to be citizens of the world and not just consumer automatons.

Ambrose Bierce said, "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." His cynical view of our pitiful lack of awareness plays out in our current international mess. We hate what we don't understand, and we revel in our ignorance.