Just some thoughts:

1) The enemy has a natural understanding of how to use the media whereas the United States military does not.

2) The media is naturally attracted to 'if it bleeds, it leads' because thats what sells rather than 'well dug in africa'.

3) The insurgency in iraq has effectively managed most, but not all the big Western media by kidnappings, etc, limiting them to reporting from the green zone or embedding.

4) Anything the US military says or the US government is treated like propaganda, even if its correct the media is unlikely as a whole to endorse it because they don't want to be seen as stooges of the government, and the medias natural sympathys is towards the underdog terrorists because they can provide news that bleeds.

5) There is a perception in the West that war can be clean and sanitized, and this is mainly down to the very successful media operations of Gulf War 1 showing surgical missile strikes.

6) Most feedback is negative. If you ever run a business, you'll always hear when somethings gone wrong, never when things go right. This is probably part of being human and is going to reflect in the media uploaded onto the internet. The 7/7 bombings had a media cycle of detanation -> recorded by mobiles - > uploaded / passed onto the media in what 30 minutes? The terrorists are always going to be setting the media agenda.

7) The only pro-goverment line that is accepted and rewarded is the insider doing a blog or the like on the internet because it is felt that they are 'the real deal'. Problem is their impact is always going to be less than the 'pro-terrorist' message of the other side.

Just some thoughts. What do you think?