Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 135

Live CoveraRe of War

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importance of live coverage and realize the talking stage, for better
or worse, is over. War is here, now.
(6) The public gets more knowledge and information. Democracy
demands a well-informed citizenry. With the deletion of censors and
editors, citizens get an unvarnished view of events as they occur.
(7) Censorship by other countries (Iraq, China) does as much to
reinforce our sense of freedom as anything we see on TV. War
coverage affects us all, and depriving us of such reporting raises the
question: What are they trying to hide?
(8) Censorship by U.S. sources should provoke a healthy debate on
the nature of such restraint, good or bad.
(9) Repeated news coverage allows citizens to make their own
interpretations of events, facts, statistics, restrictions, etc. Seeing the
flow of information through various press settings--war zone press
conferences. Pentagon statements, British news coverages. State
Department briefings. White House interviews—permits citizens to
weigh analyses or "spins" by various agencies versus what the
citizens may have witnessed on live TV.
(10) Directly affected groups can get direct results: relatives of
soldiers can have their fears calmed or increased, military branches
can see their preparations achieve or fail to achieve results,
historians can view the first draft of history, commentators can have
their preconceptions confirmed or denied.
(11) Viewers can see the evolution of military technology and its
impact on strategy and the outcomes of battles. The Patriot anti
missile was seen on TV worldwide as it attempted to intercept scud
missiles, another first for the military and popular culture.
(12) The average citizen can see history in the making in an
unprecedented fashion.
(13) Affected countries' citizens can see their own futures unfolding as
battles rage.
This is not to trivialize the differences between being in one's
living room watching TV versus being in a zone of conflict. As an
illustration of the shrinking of the global village, the story of an
Israeli-bom TV producer is perfect. The woman lives and works in Los
Angeles but her family lives in Tel Aviv. As she watched the CNN
coverage of the Persian Gulf War, she was horrifed to see a scud
missile launched toward Tel Aviv. She rushed to the phone and
called her mother's apartment, where it was the middle of the night.