IMPRESSIVE BUT INCOMPLETE
TV networks struggled to find a balance in war coverage
by Deborah Potter

This time, the hype was right on target. Television coverage of the war in Iraq was like nothing we’d ever seen. Embedded journalists using satellites and videophones sent the action back live to American living rooms. NBC’s David Bloom, before his untimely death, reported from an armored vehicle as it rolled across the Iraqi desert with the 3rd Infantry. CBS’ Mark Strassman told viewers about a grenade attack on US troops in Kuwait mere minutes after it happened, something that simply would not have been possible in any previous conflict. But gadgets and bandwidth aside, the broadcast coverage still had some rocky moments.

Despite the amazing, live-from-the-battlefield reports, cable news channels couldn’t let well enough alone, festooning the screen with banners and crawls and split-screen video of unrelated events that left viewers more confused than informed. Anchors repeatedly cut off reporters in mid-sentence to air compelling but unexplained images of explosions or fires. Every network had its own stable of retired generals, supposedly to offer perspective, but too often what they provided was inside baseball on military tactics, or paeans to American weaponry.

Television stumbled, too, when video from Iraqi TV showing captured and dead American soldiers was broadcast around the world by the Arab network Al Jazeera. The US networks initially refused to air it, but they couldn’t seem to stop referring to it, leaving viewers to wonder just what it was they weren’t allowed to see. ABC News president David Westin called the footage “very graphic and very disturbing.” NBC aired video of one soldier being questioned after learning that his family was aware of his capture, but kept the rest of the tape under wraps for a day, calling it “gruesome and exploitative.”

There’s a fine line between restraint and self-censorship, and the networks had trouble finding the right balance. They showed good judgment by not airing the video of US soldiers until their next of kin had been notified. But the decision to keep most of the pictures off the air made it more difficult for American citizens to be fully informed about the war’s impact.

ABC’s Ted Koppel, embedded with an infantry division in Iraq, said people need to be reminded in a graphic way that war is ugly. “War is a dreadful thing,” he said on the air, “and to sanitize it too much is a mistake.” He pointed out that video can be altered to disguise identities. In other words, the networks could have chosen an alternative between showing nothing and showing everything—a middle ground that would have protected the families’ feelings while still conveying the true horror of war.

The Pentagon urged the networks to withhold the tape; some officials argued that showing it would violate the Geneva Conventions against public humiliation of prisoners. But if the real complaint was that the Iraqis already had done that, wouldn’t showing the tape have allowed Americans to judge that for themselves?

At least there was a vigorous debate over what to do with the POW tape, quite different from what happened when Fox News Channel got exclusive video of a helicopter crash that killed four Americans and eight Britons. Former Marine Col. Oliver North, a Fox embedded correspondent, turned a copy of that tape over to the military while his network delayed airing it for several hours. Fox officials said they agreed to a request from the British military to keep the tape off the air until families had been notified. But the result was hours of confusion over what actually happened, which the video might have clarified.

Fox News presented a blend of flag-waving, cheerleading, and self-congratulation. “We never had a meltdown,” anchor Shepard Smith told his audience, referring to the network’s first five days of coverage. “Under normal circumstances I’d be whistling but it just didn’t seem right.” Washington bureau chief Kim Hume defended the patriotic flavor of the network’s reporting. “The public tends to be patriotic, and we're a reflection of America,” she told Minneapolis’ Star-Tribune.

In truth, all US networks were mostly pro-American in tone at first. Anchors adopted the Pentagon’s “shock and awe” label for the bombardment of Baghdad and used it repeatedly, without attribution. But a different take could be found on international broadcasts such as those by the British Broadcasting Corp. or Newsworld International, a news service produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. One example: “A tough day” on CNN was “a big embarrassment” on the BBC.

Perhaps the lasting lesson for broadcasters won’t be that TV can take viewers anywhere, live. It may be that viewers who really want to be informed need to sample more sources, and draw their own conclusions.

This article was originally published by American Journalism Review, May 2003.