David Philipps

Who is David Philipps?

David Nathaniel Philipps, born in 1977, is an American journalist and author. He was named a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize, which cited "his painstaking stories on the spike in violence within the Band of Brothers, a battered combat brigade returning to Fort Carson after bloody deployments to Iraq, leading to increased mental health care for soldiers."

Philipps also won the 2009 Livingston Award for his reporting on violence in infantry troops returning from Iraq. Philipps' book, Lethal Warriors chronicles how the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 12th Infantry Regiment, stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado, produced a high number of murders after soldiers returned from unusually violent combat tours. Philipps worked for eight years as an enterprise reporter at the Colorado Springs Gazette. Philipps has attained a reputation around Fort Carson for producing unreliable and one-sided articles that often portray the United States Army in a negative light and victimizes Soldiers found guilty of gross misconduct. His critics have accused him of perpetuating the idea that veterans are not only broken, but also that their gross misconduct can be blamed on the government or some form of mental health diagnosis. Too often, his critics contend, Philipps has written articles about Soldiers with serious discipline issues and argued that they are representative of a widespread problem among veterans returning from combat, thereby making the public suspicious of veterans and alienating them further.