Corporate journos and the shit rags that hire them love war. It makes for effortless copy that they believe to be entertaining. On top of that, war lets reporters of every stripe imagine they're Ernie Pyle in some Normandy cottage writing a byline under the soft glow of a candle while sipping the local hooch and fondling a big-breasted farmer's daughter whose Pere is missing since the D-Day landing and "Oh monsieur must you leave in the morning?" "Yes, mon petite, I must go where the war goes. I must tell the free world about my . . . uh . . . our heroic struggle against Fascism."

"Dispatches" by Michael Herr is as far as I know the only book on war reporting that tells the truth about what motivated him and much of the press corps covering the Vietnam War.