Who is winning the media war in Afghanistan?

Withdrawal has begun for some Coalition troops in Afghanistan. David Cameron and Barack Obama have both set end dates for their country's involvement in the Afghan imbroglio, when they will pass on the task of fighting the Taliban to the country's local troops and police. In reality, they have realised that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. It is simply consuming too many young soldier’s lives. They're quitting while they're behind.

How has our noble profession performed? Like a curate's egg – some good but much too much of it obsequious, 'Boy's Own' stuff. Read the dispatches in regional papers and watch the regional TV news reports of journalists given a pass to report the local boys on the frontline. Some of it veers very close to pure army PR. It is designed to – that’s why the army embeds them.

Over the past week, Journalism.co.uk has published extracts from a book I edited with Richard Keeble entitled Afghanistan, War and Terror: Deadlines and Frontlines. Pieces by reporters including Channel 4 News' Alex Thomson and Sky News' Alex Crawford have made for chilling and thought provoking reading, and provoked a rebuttal of some of Thomson's comments from the denizens of MediaLens about what exactly 'total silence' means).

Next week we will host an event at the Frontline Club, entitled "Who is winning the media war In Afghanistan?" Brigadier Mark van der Lande – who looks after Army PR in the theatre of war, will engage with a frontline correspondent or two under the watchful eye of Kevin Marsh, former editor of the Today programme on BBC Radio Four and now executive editor of the BBC College of Journalism. Come along for a ringside seat. Book via the Frontline Club.

Meanwhile, have your say. What do you think of the reporting of the Afghanistan war? Brilliant, good, bad or just awful? Over to you.

Afghanistan, War and Terror: Deadlines and Frontlines is edited by John Mair and Richard Keeble and published on 13 September by Abramis.

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