Over the last few days of debate about the rescue of the New York Times journalist Stephen Farrell, in which his translator and a British paratrooper died, I have noticed an alarming subtext.

As soldiers former and serving, bloggers close to the military, and commentators on military matters have been wheeled out, the same line has been iterated and reiterated: journalists have no business being in war zones unless accompanying the military.

Those who work unembedded in high-risk areas – in the words of Max Hastings – are gung ho, self-serving or "nutters". Our boys – in the words of an American commentator and former special forces soldier delivered to the BBC World Service chatshow I was asked to appear on – should be allowed to "get on with the job" without reporters "getting in the way".

The issue that this ignores is the question of democratic accountability.

The experience of working in Afghanistan and Iraq has underlined, for me at least, that neither our politicians nor our military can be trusted to tell us the truth about what happens when we go to war.

I have been told outright lies, lies mixed with truth and analysis so twisted as to be unrecognisable. Statistics – for instance about the trend of the rate of attacks – have been packaged to give misleading impressions about how we are winning, while military press officers seem to delight in arranging trips to the modern equivalent of Potemkin villages to demonstrate how peace, freedom and democracy are taking root.

Last year with considerable trepidation I made an unembedded trip to Kandahar, a place the diplomats and military informed me had had its Taliban problem resolved. That was until I pointed out that a colleague and I were planning to visit. Then, of course, the warnings were delivered. It was too dangerous for us to go there.

We went. And in being in the city among Afghans – not soldiers and diplomats – we learned the truth. The Kandahar described was fantasy. The reality was a fearful place heavily infiltrated by insurgents.

The bottom line is – as it has always been – about control. It is in the interest of the powers that be to frighten journalists. To warn them off from making their own investigations. Sometimes, it appears from the whispering of the last week, to smear brave journalists who get into trouble with the aim of discouraging others. It is not new. For as long as I have been covering conflicts, there has been an effort to undermine any kind of independence in conflict reporting.

Those such as Hastings – labouring under the illusion that most war reporters accompany the military most of the time, as he did in the Falklands – may be happy with their cosy relationship with the top brass. But there are very many others, who bridle at the assumption that they should only see one, official version of reality that military press officers are happy to show.

The second issue, I believe, is an equally worrying one. It is the existence of an innate anti-democratic tendency in the military that is reflected in the idea that wars should be fought out of sight of the journalists.

That the official version should never be cross-examined by representatives of civilian, non-combatant society. By voters who might object to either the fact of war, or the method of its prosecution.

In essence, it is a demand that we trust those given a terrible power: to exercise the use of permissive violence. It is an argument too for censorship, for hiding the horrible facts about conflict, not least the abuse and atrocities that are committed.

It is a request for a blank cheque for murder. For the excesses of Abu Ghraib. For the bombing of the civilians of Afghanistan. For poisoned, pointless policies that lead only to more death and injury.

Without any questions asked.