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Live from Iraq: CNN filters war's grim reality
© St. Petersburg Times It's happened again: I'm a CNN junkie. I watch the news when I get up, at midday in the newsroom, and any time at night when I can get control of the remote and switch off the cartoons. I'm like a rubbernecker at an accident. And what do I see? A picture of the Baghdad skyline at dark, lit up intermittently by bombs and gunfire. It doesn't tell me much. It is merely a backdrop for the urgent voices of CNN's anchors. They appear at regular intervals, after the big screen that shouts WAR IN IRAQ -- as if we didn't know -- disappears. And if it's not the war logo, I see AT THIS HOUR or LIVE FROM. I REALLY wish they'd drop the glitzy packaging, say hello and tell the story in calm, no-frills fashion. The words filling the screen, the melodramatic music that accompanies them, exist to promote the network, not to facilitate the coverage. War is somber business, not a public relations opportunity, and in this case it's a war unfolding before our eyes. The presence of a TV camera changes everything. I watched a newsman interview a pilot just in from a bombing run. They both were nonchalant and upbeat. The reporter sounded like a sportswriter asking questions in the locker room. The pilot came off like a ballplayer after a game where he has performed very well. Something was very weird with this picture -- or else it reflected the new face of war, in which bombs and missiles are launched miles from their targets, guided not by pilots but by computers, and death is made an oddly clean event. Clean was how the war sounded, as the reporters traveling with the troops described it in the first few days. On Sunday, when real losses began, and it was clear this would be no stroll in the park, I heard the anchormen and reporters express genuine surprise -- as if they somehow believed American troops were special and were immune to the inevitable losses of war. Like other news organizations, CNN at first cooperated in not showing the videotape of those American POWs. Bad idea. We deserve a chance to see it. Broadcasting the video might even force the Iraqi government to be honest about the POWs' treatment. CNN finally decided to show just still photos or abbreviated clips of the POWs. They were sensitive to the Bush administration's opposition to showing the tape and concerned with the feelings of the POWs' families seeing their loved ones on TV. But the same worry has not extended to the families of captured Iraqis. This newspaper, for instance, has published a few pictures of captured Iraqi soldiers, their faces plainly visible. The rules are apparently different when the shoe is on the other foot, and the captured man's family is not within receiving distance of the American press. No matter what I think, I watch the screen. I keep the set on, even as I go about my chores in the house, washing dishes, feeding the dog. CNN has become elevator music for anxious times. I don't want to miss anything new, although the news on CNN is repeated so regularly I would catch up quickly. I stay attached to the TV, until a kind of exhaustion sets in, and after that, boredom. Boredom ought to be the last emotion provoked by circumstances as dangerous as those in Iraq, but that's what happens when you are in sensory overload. Now and then I wonder if CNN can keep up this breathless pace forever, or whether a time will come when the network will decide to report other stories while pursuing its war coverage. The world really is bigger than the way Americans, and American journalists, see it. There are other stories to tell. I wonder if the course of the war would be different if it weren't conducted under this vast electronic microscope -- and how the coverage will change as the war gets harder for us, and the battle for Baghdad begins. So far, even with all those reporters, all those photographers stationed with the troops, the bleeding and dying have taken place off stage. Wait until the bloodshed is front and center on the screen. We may lose some of our taste for this invasion then. -- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com
or (813) 226-3402.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
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Times columns today From the Times Metro desk |
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