My father picked me up from dance class, and we drove home in near silence, the sounds of reporters and war booming from the car’s speakers. It was dark as bombs pounded a city many miles from Baton Rouge.
The year was 1991, and I was 11 years old. As I listened, my stomach churned, and I was confused. I never felt so small and scared in my life.
Images of Patriot missiles intercepting SCUDDs flashed across the screen of our televisions for the duration of the first Gulf War. I had a limited knowledge of geography and I didn’t fully understand how war worked. I hid underneath my covers the night the war started and wrote in my locked diary about being scared.
I stood in front of a television screen, watching as CNN counted the minutes to war. Less than two hours later, I watched the war start on a television screen. Air sirens rang across Baghdad and gun fire punctuated the eerie pre-war wait.
The year is 2003 and I am 23 years old. As I watched, my stomach churned and I was confused. I never felt so small and scared in my life.
Images of soldiers and tanks rolled across every television I encountered for the past week. I have a greater knowledge of geography, but I still don’t fully understand how war works. I laid beneath my covers last Wednesday night and stared at the ceiling. I couldn’t sleep.
For most of us, the current war in Iraq is the second major war we’ve witnessed. This time, however, things are decidedly different.
A combination of factors — months of heated, pre-war debate, a heightened awareness of foreign policy in Sept. 11’s wake and controversial motives, to name a few — have made this war seem more significant and more real to us than any past international conflict in the last 20 years.
But it is the unprecedented media coverage of this war that has shaped the past week, and it will shape the rest of the war. After taking intense scrutiny for strict restrictions on journalists during the first Gulf War, the Pentagon has “embedded” 500 journalists with the troops fighting to overthrow Saddam Hussein. In addition, media reports indicate that at least 1,000 more “unilateral” journalists are in the region to cover the war.
The result is stunning, for lack of a better word. The “shock and awe” campaign the Pentagon is running against Iraq has, through the media, left the American and international community in a state of shock and awe of its own.
The coverage is almost addictive, like a sick reality television show that almost seems so real that it is unreal.
Early Sunday morning, CNN broadcast a skirmish in the port city of Umm Qasr, live, in real time. As I watched a tank blow up a building and Marines laid out in lines on the ground, I was mesmerized. While the journalist in me finds the new war coverage innovative, the human in me is both addicted and disheartened.
This new coverage raises new ethical dilemmas. The battle CNN aired from Umm Qasr was intense, but not gory. The danger of live television, however, is that anything can happen at anytime. No one, including journalists and CNN executives, wants to have a family lose its child while watching the news. I shudder at the thought of watching anyone, American or otherwise, perish on my television screen.
However, it is important for Americans to see what their government is doing with their tax dollars and in their name. Also, the increased coverage can help some families track their loved ones overseas, particularly if he or she is in a unit with an embedded journalist.
All in all, moderation is the key to swallowing this innovative, and at times scary, war coverage. When it gets rough, remember that you, the lucky viewer, can always turn it off — unlike those in Iraq, who must live it every day.