BOB GARFIELD: As Americans watch the war unfold from their living rooms, there's a growing concern that despite the hundreds of reporters imbedded with the troops and scores of others inside and around the battle zones, we may not be getting the full story. Well, never fear. The internet is here. There are web sites to suit every type of media consumer from policy wonks to gearheads to game players. Avi Zenilman, one of Slate.com's disgustingly over-achieving high school interns wrote a guide to war on the internet for Wednesday's edition of Slate. Avi, welcome to On the Media!

AVI ZENILMAN: Thank you!

BOB GARFIELD: What was the coolest stuff you found in your search?

AVI ZENILMAN: There was this web site I found actually today after it was published which has these weather satellite photos of Iraq, and this guy realized that there were oil fires about 3 hours before the mainstream media picked it up.

BOB GARFIELD: That web site is www.methaz.com -- M E T H A Z - dot com.

AVI ZENILMAN:Yes. Also interesting was this blog called dear raed which is actually written by an Iraqi Baghdad resident, and I actually have no idea how he gets it by Saddam, but on the web page it links to a March 16th ramble how he kind of grudgingly supports the U.S. march to war and he doesn't think fundamentalism's a big deal, but it's also just the daily life of a guy in Baghdad which obviously is getting more and more chaotic.

BOB GARFIELD:Well let's talk about the Middle East. Most Americans don't speak Arabic, but are there any Arabic or Middle Eastern web sites in English that give us a kind of Arab view of what's taking place?

AVI ZENILMAN: Yes. There's the Arab News web site which is a semi-official Saudi web site, and it's very shrill; it's very propagandic, it's not really that reliable. More reliable would probably be Iran's web page, the Islamic Republic News Agency where there actually probably have been the best about updates about developments in the south of Iraq.

BOB GARFIELD:Speaking of reliability, the web is notorious for being an undependable, if diverse source of information; you really don't necessarily know how much to trust what you're reading there. In your research do you happen to check out the Israeli site Debka.com.

AVI ZENILMAN: I didn't check it out, but I'm familiar with it, because I know people who use it as a constant source, and most of the stuff there really isn't reliable at all. Actually I think it's a former Israeli intelligence agent somewhere in like Tel Aviv or Jerusalem just typing what he hears.

BOB GARFIELD:Oh. [LAUGHS] Well he had a great scoop earlier in the week when he reported that Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz had deserted Saddam Hussein and had defected, in effect, to the United States and was being interrogated by U.S. intelligence officers. Of course we suspect, having seen him on television later in the week that that probably wasn't true. For in-depth analysis or detailed discussion of military strategy or war technology where would you direct web surfers?

AVI ZENILMAN: Well for military technology everyone should check out GlobalSecurity.org. Their "Target Iraq" page has information on every single type of bomb we're using; they have terrain maps which detail how the troops are going to get into Baghdad.

BOB GARFIELD:Everyone and his brother has an opinion, and blogs have proliferated. Are there any particularly trenchant web logs on the subject of the Iraq war?

AVI ZENILMAN: Actually the best blog related to the beginning of the war is this blog called The Agonist and from what I gather, he is a international relations student in Oxford, and he's been watching TV, checking his sources, checking the news wires and has been doing rapid-fire updates on line where he's getting the news quicker than CNN.com is getting the news, than a lot of the streaming radio and video sites are getting the news.

BOB GARFIELD:The site is www.Agonist.org. Well, Avi, thank you very much for the tour. I'm just curious -- which is the site that you've turned to the most since you started this project?

AVI ZENILMAN: When I started the project on Monday through Wednesday, before the war, I was actually using The Guardian. But as the war started I've been using the New York Times web site a lot more.

BOB GARFIELD: Why?

AVI ZENILMAN:Better writing. It seemed more detailed. Although, I've been flipping back to CNN and actually The Agonist a lot just to see if anything new is going on.

BOB GARFIELD: All right. Well, Avi, thank you very much!

AVI ZENILMAN: All right. Thanks a lot!

BOB GARFIELD:Avi Zenilman is an intern for Slate.com and a-- [SOTTO VOCE] high school student. You can find links to these web sites and many more including political humor sites and Avi's article The War on the Web. We have a link to Avi's piece at Onthemedia.org. [MUSIC]