I caught the first showing of "The War Tapes" at the Guild Cinema last week. The film is a documentary about the Iraq conflict, shot by the video cameras of three National Guard soldiers.

I saw the film because I wanted a better understanding of the situation facing our men and women who are fighting guerrilla insurgents and helping stabilize that war-torn country, now on the verge of civil war.

I've also been on a rant lately over the self-imposed sanitization by the media of news stories about U.S. military conflicts and violent domestic crimes. My main point in my column last Wednesday was that people read the words, "shot and killed," but they can't effectively relate to them because of the pervasiveness of similar phrases and the impersonal nature of much war reporting, which is self-restrained for business and political reasons and time and space constraints. There are no real images in the reader's mind, through either text or photography, of the personal damage and cost associated with violent, harmful acts. Therefore, there is often no long-term public outcry for policy reform, other than a couple of days of expressed disgust, and no resulting public action or push for change.

It is the insider's view of the cost and damage resulting from our involvement in Iraq that makes "War Tapes" an important film. Surprisingly, all but about 30 seconds of the 97-minute film could be shown unedited on any American TV network, minus the profanity.

The primary question on my mind after leaving the theater was this: Why aren't we seeing similar footage about the Iraq war or the Lebanon/Israel conflict produced by the mainstream media?

There is certainly no shortage of interesting, newsworthy video material flowing out of the Middle East. Insurgent-made video clips, many of which are nongraphic, and photographs taken by American military personnel have flooded the Internet, in stark contrast to Anderson Cooper of CNN blathering on for minutes about mundane points like, "Is Hezbollah centrally located?"

Wolf Blitzer? Stone Phillips? Are these the names of journalists or of professional wrestlers? It's evident that the news coverage of world events is just as much about marketing the personality reporting it as it is about the news itself.

After viewing "War Tapes," I now have a better appreciation of soldier Steve Pink's comment in the film about the media's coverage of the Iraq war and the turmoil in the Middle East: "The media is a hapless joke, which I would rather laugh at than be part of," Pink says.

There is a disturbing information gap and news void created by the American media that is being filled by independent operatives - like American soldiers - who are publishing the in-depth stories and photographs which traditional news outlets won't touch because they haven't figured out yet what to do with the information.

Bullington is a senior policy adviser for the Brownstein, Hyatt and Farber law firm. He welcomes comments at jdbullington@gmail.com