In the hands of a lesser writer, this could have become a bad parody of Reality TV In Space. But Starship Operators was written by Ryo Mizuno (Record of Lodoss War), and he turned this premise into an exploration of doing what you think is right even when everyone else has abandoned you, the role of embedded journalists in wartime, the packaging of news as entertainment, the self-serving concerns of some people in high political office, and, above all, the importance of choosing your allies carefully. And he does all this around - and within - the space battles people have come to expect in a space opera.
On the flip side, most of the space battles are not what one would call "action-packed." Our heroes have to figure out their opponents' weaknesses, but then they have a tendency toward one-shot-kills. While this is probably realistic considering the scale of space battles, it isn't what audiences raised on Star Trek and Star Wars expect to see.
Recommended.