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View Full Version : Why is the war coverage so lame?


David Steele
04-06-2003, 12:49 AM
In the first few days of the war you got to see any number
of embedded reporters on the scene 24x7, now only the
couple that work for CNN and MSNBC. I don't mind that
the make up half the stories, but only a small fraction
of their coverage is on-the-scene in any sense.

The Canadian coverage totally sucks.

BBC reporting is ok but a bit heavy on analysis when the
interesting thing is the events taking place. I like their
coverage from Basra.

There is some fairly good coverage running with the
Kurds in N.Iraq on many of these channels but nothing
much in the other places.

What happened to Ted Koppel, KIA? Is he on only in
his Nightline slot? and there are 500 others?
They should have used a pool.

D.

Billy LTL
04-06-2003, 01:47 AM
Why is the war coverage so lame?

I can throw out a few possible reasons for you. The U.S. military has banned embedded journalists from using Thuraya satphones because of the global positioning service those phones include. So unless a text journo or photographer has an isdn satphone, and some of them do but many don't, they can no longer file.

Next, the wire agencies have reportedly been told by Baghdad that unless they stop feeding to CNN, and I think Fox as well, they will have to face the consequences. When you have 15-20 journalists in Baghdad covering that side of the war considerations for their safety must outweigh the contractual considerations of your clients. And by the way, much of what you were seeing on CNN was Reuters or APTN footage.

Other problems include the luck of the draw. An embedded camera crew might be 500 metres from a heavy firefight but they move with their unit. If the unit fights they get to report it, if not they are sh*t out of luck.

Also, both the equipment and the bodies of the journalists are starting to break down and replacing either of them is a near impossible task.

Billy

BruceZ
04-06-2003, 02:55 AM
FOX has several embedded journalists. They banned transmissions from Baghdad, but they still have some secret cameras set up and running anyway.

Dynasty
04-06-2003, 03:31 PM
The war coverage is lame? Compared to what? As is so typical, people who don't like the war coverage are comparing it to their fantasy version of what it should be.

The coverage of the war has been incredible. We've seen live battles on TV. We saw same-day (live?) coverage of U.S. troops making a penetration into Baghdad. We've seen dozens of reporters give reports live from inside Iraq.

Maybe I'm just a naive young guy. Is this the way TV covered WWII? the Civil War? the Revolutionary War?

David Steele
04-06-2003, 03:57 PM
I agree compared to history. I meant compared to
the early days of the coverage and the implied potential
of the 500 embedded reporters. Most of them have
stopped what they were doing in the first few days.

D.

Cyrus
04-06-2003, 05:01 PM
"The war coverage is lame? Compared to what? The coverage of the war has been incredible. We've seen live battles on TV. "

Television is not everything. There is a reason that dispatches in newspapers, back in the 60s, were making an impact as strong as the images.

You are confusing information with knowledge. You (or me) might be taking in a deluge of information, and, with a hundred channels at our fingertips, we are, but this doesn't mean that we get to know things a hundred times better.

"Maybe I'm just a naive young guy. Is this the way TV covered WWII? the Civil War? the Revolutionary War?"

Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. But please tell me, are we been taught at school the texts of war reporting from the last Gulf War? Or are we been taught the text of a "war reporter" that filed his piece more than 2,000 years ago? And, if so, what could be the reason for that? Step back a little from the picture and think about it.