Steve James
NEW YORK, April 3 (Reuters) - All war, all the time - 24-hour coverage of the conflict in Iraq might be good TV, but is it good journalism?
With the fog of war still swirling after two weeks, the image for most Americans is of breathless sat-phone reports by correspondents in battledress "embedded" with troops, and dramatic video of firefights that might be no more than minor skirmishes in the big picture.
Then there are the green "night-vision" shots of shadowy figures moving around, the video-game images of missiles and bombs setting off explosions in Baghdad, endless news conferences and round tables with ex-generals second-guessing the military commanders actually directing the operation.
If journalism is the first draft of history, then some observers believe this is a really rough draft. They cite the overwhelming volume of raw information that unlike World War Two or Vietnam bypasses the editing process and bombards viewers with almost too much information to digest.
"I have yet to see any outstanding piece of TV reporting (on the war)," said Todd Gitlin, a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, who summed up the coverage as: "Good pictures, poor interpretation."
"There is very shriveled interpretation with little investigation of the political and security fallout," said Gitlin, who attributed this to "timidity of the networks imprisoned within the technology.
"Even when the pictures are static - a long shot of the desert or the skyline of Baghdad - they are intensely riveted on it and so you get more of a photo album, it's not terribly stimulating or illuminating. It was supposed to be thrilling to show this stuff."
EXPECTATIONS RAISED
Barbie Zelizer, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, said that for a generation raised on television, the nonstop coverage raises expectations that are not necessarily met.
"The expectation of the public is that there will be more news and better, but we are getting the opposite," she said.
Comparing the current war to the 1991 Gulf War and U.S. military operations in Somalia, Kosovo, Panama or Grenada over the last two decades, she said the most significant change is the advent of real-time coverage.
Bob Thompson, a Syracuse University professor of popular culture, agreed. "World War Two penetrated everyone's lives, this one is penetrating because of the media presence."
He said World War Two coverage was in newspapers, radio and Movietone News at the movie theater. "Now, nuances have been flattened out. There is a sense that we are not getting a whole lot of detailed analysis among the tyranny of visuals."
CONTROVERSIAL EMBEDS
Another controversial issue is embedding reporters with military units - a departure from previous Pentagon policy.
Gulf War veteran Anthony Swofford wrote in the New York Times magazine on Sunday that reporters are never really accepted in a group of tough fighting men.
The Annenberg School's Zelizer said by allowing reporters in military units, the Pentagon "did what it could for their purposes - control," especially since a reporter relies on the military unit for his own protection.
"Embedding is not new, we had it in World War Two but then it was mostly the wire services, now it's 24/7 satellite beams - an updated version of what we had in earlier times."
"Embedding is not the devil's work," said Columbia's Gitlin. "I am more troubled by embedded reporters in Washington than with military units. If something momentous happens on the battlefield we might see it, but embedding really only shows the up-closeness of the report."
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