THE MEDIA FILTER

But U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. George Krivo complains the media focus too heavily on the simmering guerrilla war. Some soldiers are ''frustrated because much of the incredible progress that is being made in the vast majority of the country seems to go un- or underreported,'' he said. Another colonel, James Otwell, protested that, for example, ''no media at all covered the arrival of 100 new fire trucks in Baghdad.''

Some of the loudest complaints focus on what American officials say is poor news coverage of the U.S. rehabilitation of more than 1,000 Iraqi schools.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said it was only by coming to Iraq that he learned of the program. ''I was not told by the media in my country that thousands and hundreds of (Iraqi) children went back to school this week,'' he complained Oct. 6.

Concluded his delegation's leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., ''Journalism schools teach that news means bad news.''