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Recent studies have shown that embedded reporters lose perspective and objectivity. Thrust into high-tension situations of dangerous conflict, and surrounded by a corps of strong personalities devoted to a single objective, journalists almost inevitably write subjectively and sympathetically of situations that are best addressed analytically.

Yet there are other subjects that might be better served by a more sympathetic approach—like the cause of those who work to correct injustices done by our country abroad. Yet The Times’ coverage of protesters has often been anything but sympathetic. This paper has belittled the movement, marked its participants as wingnuts, and all in all written as if it were beholden to those against whom the protests were aimed.

Veteran Times reporter John Hess noted that during his 24 years of service at the paper he “never saw a foreign intervention that the Times did not support, never saw a fare increase or a rent increase or a utility rate increase that it did not endorse, never saw it take the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a raise for underpaid workers.” When anti-war protesters are covered, the Times has regularly undercounted the numbers and glossed over violent acts by riot police. It has never given the demonstrators editorial support.

After returning stateside from 16 weeks embedded with the 101st Airborne division in Iraq, this reporter decided to right this imbalance herself, beginning with some of the most interesting anti-war protest groups: Iraq Veterans Against the War, who stage simulated military operations in American cities in order to “make the truth of this war visible”; United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of 1400 peace groups nationwide; and CODEPINK, a group singled out by former President Bush as setting a “dangerous, radical agenda” for American politics.

Beginning next week, embedded reports from this movement will be featured every week in this space. You, like The Times, will come to see these organizations in an entirely different light.