BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Since before the war in Iraq began, and straight on through the military operation, we've had regulation conversations with NPR's John Burnett who was embedded with the Command Division, and then an artillery unit. We heard his concerns about the reporting constraints on an embed; we heard him work through them and then about his decision to cut his ties to cover the impact on the ground. When we reached him last he was back in Kuwait packing for home. He spoke about being on his own recognizance so to speak in Baghdad and hearing for the first time the complaints of the Iraqi people.

JOHN BURNETT: That was really a great relief, to finally talk to the other side after having talked to Marines for a month straight - after a month of living with these guys I had heard almost no negative criticism! And, and that's the thing - is when you're on the bus, you hear what the players say! So, you know, I heard how the targets were all hit and how things were going swimmingly, and in fact the whole campaign did move very fast. However, you know there was, there was certainly criticism waiting for 'em when they got into Baghdad, and it has gotten even more strident, I think, as time goes on.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:You always knew that you were looking through a soda straw as an embed, but here was the obvious evidence of it. As you sit back, now that you're back in your hotel room in Kuwait which is where we started our conversations--

JOHN BURNETT: Right.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: -- what do you think about the embedding process? It certainly seems better than leaving reporters out of the war zone altogether.

JOHN BURNETT: Remember when, when we talked several weeks ago and I said very matter-of-factly "well, this will work if the unilaterals come up behind us and do the other half of the reporting and get into the villages and talk to people and give our audience the balance that they expect." Well that really didn't happen. And I think that that's been a mistake in the coverage of this war. The importance of going back to the places that the Marines charged through and find out what were behind the smiling faces and the importance of finding out where the bombs hit was really driven home to me when I did a story this last week on my way out of Baghdad. Just by happenstance, really, I stopped into a small village, al-Taniyah(ph) which had been bombed by the U.S. Air Force. Thirty men, women and children were killed, in their beds, as they slept as we reported on All Things Considered on Friday, the U.S. Air Force says that they were precision-guided bombs aimed at tanks and track vehicles and they all struck their targets, and they really had no explanation for what I saw and what the villagers told me. Now -- embeds couldn't see that. And this really drives home for me the importance of both - at the time [LAUGHS] I wish we'd been able to do this - and the importance of going back now and stop-- just, you know, showing images of Shias flailing themselves with bloody heads and find out what the military in South Iraq.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Are news organizations under-estimating their audiences?

JOHN BURNETT:I think so. I, I think we're so obsessively focused on what's happening next - which exiles are coming - you know when are they going to get the light on - you know journalists are notoriously bad about follow-up, and I am too! And so I, I think there are some cases when we need to, you know, ignore what we think are the trends of our business and we need to do the right thing. We need to go back, to reverse ourselves and revisit some of these places and find out what happened and what the impact of this immense military invasion was on the Shia community of Southern Iraq.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:If you look back on the history of war reporting, you can see that there have been two ways that millions have dealt with the press. One was to exclude them and the other was to co-opt them. The embed experiment was an exercise in at least attempted co-optation I think. Do you agree?

JOHN BURNETT: Well sure! It was. And, and I think to an extent it worked! You know? Many of us were cheerleaders during the four weeks, in, in spite of ourselves, because that's the story we had access to. I've been thinking about what my 11 year old son got for Christmas recently; he got a G.I. Joe that was an Ernie Pyle doll. [LAUGHTER] Actually it's the first toy journalist that I'm aware of. It even comes with a little plastic Smith-Corona typewriter. And I kind of marveled, that you know, gosh war correspondent as hero! And I think about the embed process, and you know, and living with the troops, and certainly there, there will be no wars again, you know, God willing like World War II when you know there was a unanimity of the righteousness of, of the cause. You know I just, I wonder if there are going to be any Ernie Pyles again in that way.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Ernie Pyle was famous for making immortals of the soldiers he lived with in the field. Do ya think there should be more Ernie Pyles?

JOHN BURNETT: Well I think we've certainly had a lot of 'em-- a lot of that kind of journalism out of this conflict, and that's fine. But I think that what we lacked was a lot of balance and a lot of context that were very difficult to provide with the embed process.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:It seems that the toy, the Ernie Pyle doll, represents a very simple that - a single idea, and what you're saying is journalism is a lot more complicated than that.

JOHN BURNETT: [LAUGHS] Yeah. Exactly. There's, there's an idyllic quality to looking at the G.I. Joe Ernie Pyle with his little plastic typewriter living with, you know, the troops in the foxhole, and I just can't imagine journalism is ever going to be that way again. I don't think it should be. I think the world is different and I think journalism is different.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well John, it's been great talking to you over the last-- I don't know-- six, seven weeks. Thank you so much.

JOHN BURNETT: Well it's been a wild ride, and I'm glad it's over [LAUGHS] and it's been great talking with you too Brooke.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: NPR's John Burnett is leaving Kuwait for Austin, Texas where he intends to stay embedded.

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