What many fans of the movie may not realize is that there is more to the story than just the film. In addition to a pair of direct-to-video sequels, there's also an animated series that followed, titled "Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles," released in 1999, and running for a total of 44 episodes.
On Reddit, u/aqua_zesty_man explained that each version of the story is a chronicle of the same Arachnid war but told from a different perspective. Robert A. Heinlein's original novel, for example, is written from the memoirs of Mobile Infantryman Johnny Rico. In it, he massages reality to make himself and the Terran Federation seem much more heroic and uses it as a way of spreading his own military philosophy. By contrast, "Roughnecks" is the story as it actually happened, or as the Reddit user explained, "This is ultimately the third person omniscient and unbiased point of view of the war with the bugs."
The movie and its sequels, then, are posited to be a series of docu-dramas based on the journalistic writings of Robert "Paperboy" Higgins, a character exclusive to the animated series. While the films are based on real events, Higgins has exaggerated and dramatized much of it for entertainment value. As for why Higgins isn't present in Rico's memoirs, well, that's because Rico wasn't happy with the way the journalist exaggerated the war, and in particular, himself.
