From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

Violence and chaos, missiles and landmines, and trucks full of Taliban soldiers in advance or in retreat?

Hard to tell. The war week in Afghanistan has led to extraordinary developments, and for the journalists trying to cover it, extraordinary challenges.

Some reporters, including three killed last week by Taliban fire, traveled in the company of Northern Alliance troops. Others have set out on their own.

Among them, the Los Angeles Times Paul Watson, reporting veteran of 14 conflicts.

He's been on the move with a photographer and an Afghan translator commuting daily to the front lines.

He speaks to us now via satellite phone from Kabul. Paul, welcome to

on the media. Thank you. Now, I understand that the combatants are busy fighting a war,

but how are they regarding you? How are they treating you especially? Are they cultivating you,

I guess, is what I want to know. Well, the strange part about this is the Northern Alliance fighters, when you get out

toward the front, especially when you go to areas that journalists haven't reached before,

are just kind of glad to have the interest.

They're happy that somebody cares about their front line.

When you get higher up the ranks, you're back into a more

traditional, bureaucratic, stone-walling, manipulative military machine.

Early in the war, you did a piece where you described Northern Alliance troops

performing military exercises and mock assaults that basically were staged for media consumption.

And after the foreign press turned off the cameras, the soldiers just sat around chatting and looking bored.

How often have you found yourself the target of a spin machine?

Not as often as you would, if you were hanging around a Western Army, to be frank.

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