Media Missteps.(A)(EDITORIALS)

War: If you're closely following this media-saturated war, you'd think America is losing. We've repeatedly heard about U.S. "failure" and "misjudgments." But the only real failures seem to be some in the media.

Maybe it's an age thing: For a whole generation of journalists, Vietnam was the defining reality. Some of those who cut their teeth on war reporting in that conflict came back embittered, distrustful, cynical and, let's face it, hating much that America represents and stands for.

That may explain why Peter Arnett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, gave an interview with state-controlled Iraqi TV in which he called the U.S. war strategy "failed." He added, helpfully: "It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments."

That's not freedom of the press. It's comfort for the enemy. NBC fired him for his remarks, and rightly so.

But Arnett is by no means alone. It was reported the military tossed Geraldo Rivera - who else? - out of Iraq for revealing details of military operations, a faux pas that could lead to dead GIs.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., The New York Times' R.W. Apple Jr., another Vietnam news vet, finds the U.S. war effort riddled with "gross military misjudgments" -- this from a man who heard "echoes of Vietnam" in Afghanistan just two weeks before Kabul fell.

How do you explain such arrogance, such misreading of fact, such bias, such negligence among the big-time superstar media?