I am interested on how many of you caught "Band of Bloggers" on the History Channel last night and if you watched it what did you think of it?
I found it to be a compelling and worthwhile show.
The show presented about a half dozen Iraq milbloggers, bloggers who were on active duty in Iraq when they posted their blogs, interspersed with pictures and videos from Iraq and some of their postings.
I thought the show was well balanced.
First, it focused on the bloggers themselves and allowed them to talk about why they blogged, what they were trying to achieve, what they actually said.
This worked very well I thought. The History Channel deserves a big kudos for this format. By presenting the bloggers themselves and letting them speak for themselves, they let the viewer come to their own conclusions about milblogging.
There were no talking heads pushing their talking points about blogs being the new media or the work of satan, etc., just the bloggers.
One of the aspects that this brought out about milbloggers is that they were telling their story. They didn't claim that their blog was the only thing going on in Iraq, or that they were the source of all truth, etc.
The bloggers were all very well presented. They were talking about what they saw, what happened to them, how they felt.
One point that many of them brought up, was the lack of MSM coverage of significant events in the war. The worst days of the war warranted were hardly mentioned on CNN, NBC, etc. Not really a big surprise.
The show deserves another big kudos for not flinching. The pictures and videos showed Iraq. They showed war like it really is which is pretty gruesome. They showed IEDs going off and the results, mangled bodies, pools of blood, burnt human remains.
Okay, I really don't want to see this stuff but it is real and it needs to be seen whether I like it or not.
One of the big problems with war in the US is that it is heavily romanticized. The administration and talking heads can get away with romanticizing war because the presentation of war is heavily sanitized in the MSM.
When people actually see the results of war, half burned bodies in a pool of blood, or medics treating most of a person, people quickly begin to question what is worth this death and suffering.
The History Channel did a good job on this show. One thing that would be great would be if they had the links to the blogs on the shows website, if they are still active. One entry on their site suggests milbloggers.com.
So, if you saw the show what did you think?