Doesn't look like actually XML in Browsers

I have a high suspicion that this isn't really related to this module, however I thought I'd try and get some information here first.

When I'm viewing my feed in my browser it doesn't look anything like XML. it just provides stuff in the brackets.

The top part looks like this:

<?php print("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>");?>

***VIEWS_NODE_FEED_ITEMS***

My bottom part has a bunch of fields but looks basically like this:

<alert>
  <headline>$node->title</headline>
</alert

but the page only comes out with the node title, not the tags themselves. If I go to View source, the tags ARE there, but why aren't they showing up in the browser? I tried both FF and Chrome with the same result. Is there something in header I need to change, and if so how would this be accomplished?