|  Hot Topic
War coverage evokes both pride and shame
By Kathleen Richardson
I awoke one night in
mid-April to find
my husband sitting, entranced, in the
flickering light of our TV screen. He had been flipping through the channels
before going to bed and stumbled into a firefight - or, rather, CNN's coverage
of a firefight - somewhere outside of Baghdad.
He was watching a war and couldn't
turn away.
Journalists made history in Iraq, not only accompanying troops into the battlefield
but also sending images of the conflict back home in real time. The technology
was dazzling and often moving.
But if the coverage of the war was so gripping, why do so many American journalists
have such mixed feelings about it?
This ambivalence is reflected in Drake news and electronic media faculty and
alumni.
"This has to rank at the top for dramatic encounter facilitated by reliable,
lightweight
cameras, computer interfaces and suitcase-sized satellite uplinks," said
John Lytle, Ellis and Nelle Levitt distinguished professor of broadcast news.
Said Gary Wade, associate professor of radio-television: "Early on, [embedding
reporters with troops] was a game, but when some of the fighting began, it became
relevant and added needed visual perspective. ... It was also nice to see how
hard journalists had to work for some stories."
The war is seen as a watershed for online news media as well.
"Paralleling the breakthroughs in TV technology were breakthroughs in online
news
and multimedia," said Jill Van Wyke, JO'85, assistant professor of news/Internet
and SJMC internship coordinator. "Convergent news is still young, but we'll
look back at the coverage of this war and say it was an early milestone."
"This was not World War II. This was not Vietnam," said Robert Woodward,
Ellis
and Nelle Levitt distinguished professor of news/Internet. "The coverage
of the war
in Iraq clearly was influenced by the short duration of the war, the 24-hour
news mentality of the cable TV news organizations, the embedding of journalists
with the military in the field and the first major involvement of Internet journalism
in a U.S. war."
But appreciation for cutting-edge technology and journalistic derring-do is tempered
by frustration that the Big Picture was sacrificed to a blizzard of images -
and, even worse, that U.S. journalists weren't (and aren't) asking the tough
questions necessary to provide context and perspective.
"Viewers think they are getting a more accurate account of what is happening
because
they see so much 'live,' " said Herb Strentz, professor of news and media
law. "Coverage is still sanitized and shaped for us. [I] despair that even
or especially in
such complex situations, people want, and journalists provide, easy answers."
Said Larry Vint, JO'74, a retired copy editor, "The main problem with nonstop
news coverage of the war [is that] endless bits and pieces of what's going on
crowd out the opportunities to take a step back and provide a broader perspective."
"The coverage was unsatisfying; there was too much of it ... and it wasn't
well-focused," said
Rick Shacklett, JO'75,
a copy editor at The Des Moines Register. "Television anchors and two- to
three-person newspaper reporting teams tried to stitch together comprehensive
stories from multitudes of sources, but the results were too often rambling and
repetitive."
Andrea Fryrear Davidson, JO'90, assignment editor at KWQC-TV in Davenport, IA,
said she wondered if increased access
to troops came at a price. "I've noticed
very little criticism on the air of anything related to the war," she said. "On
the local level, the pressure not to appear too critical of the government is
very much alive in
the newsroom."
The director of the British Broadcasting Corp. has said that U.S. broadcasters'
coverage of the war was so unquestioningly patriotic that it threatens to undermine
the credibility of the American media. SJMC alums voiced similar concerns.
"The BBC reporters seemed to ask tougher questions at the military briefings,
seemed
to cover the war from a 'global' perspective, which included asking questions
of particular interest to the Arab world," said Mark Bowden, JO'75, executive
editor of the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette.
Said Jane Burns, JO'83, a sports copy editor at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "The
media seems to have forgotten that questioning authority is inherent in what
we should be doing."
Jennifer Glover Konfrst, JO'96, GR'98, manager of public relations at Iowa Public
Television and an adjunct journalism teacher, summed up the reactions of many.
"Too much style, not enough substance," she said. "As is always
the case in major stories like this, I was as proud of and as ashamed of our
profession
as I've ever been - at the same time."
| Kathleen
Richardson, JO'76, GR'01, LW'02, is an assistant professor at the School
of Journalism and Mass Communication. |
 |
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