Let's see...
The journalist was in a vehicle that was travelling at a high rate of speed towards a checkpoint. The soldiers at that checkpoint were wary of the threat of suicide bombers driving rigged vehicles towards checkpoints, and detonating them, although those soldiers were in their sixth day of their first tours of duty. Not to mention that all this took place in the dead of the night, while some wonder why the soldiers were shooting at the passengers in the vehicle. Did it occour to some that the soldiers thought the passengers in that vehicle were suicide bombers, about to kill them? In war, nothing can be left to chance.