The War Tapes

In one of my journalism classes this week, we watched the documentary entitled The War Tapes.  It followed four National Guardsmen deployed in Iraq right around 2003-2004 who were given cameras to document their experience while fighting in the Middle East.  The end product was spell-binding and fascinating; it was really an amazing little snippet of storytelling in a war zone.  Each of the three men that the documentary followed were very unique in their political views, their outlooks on life, their backgrounds, and how they dealt personally with the effects of war.  While not a traditional piece of war journalism, the woman who edited and put the film together, Deborah Scranton, was really clever in how she decided to go about this.  The product shows us a prospective not normally seen by many Americans who, after a while, probably began to tune out the war because it became so normal, such an average part of everyday life.  As the war continued to push on throughout the years, segments about the war airing on the news seemed to all run together.  This documentary, however, brings us up close and personal to the real lives, real feelings and real thoughts of three men fighting for their country, something a short news segment simply cannot illustrate that well to the audience.  This movie illustrated to me that there are many different styles of journalism, and while the quick updates are important, bringing emotions and life into journalistic story telling about wars and all other sorts of genres of reporting is essential in order to make the public understand and care.