Posted on 03/30/2003 7:42:16 AM PST by Dog Gone
Embedded reporter David Bloom races across the Iraqi desert aboard a tank recovery vehicle equipped with microwave, satellite uplink and a transmitter mounted on a gyroscope. The Bloom Mobile allows him to report back often to NBC and MSNBC with live, clear pictures under extraordinary conditions, including sandstorms and at night.
His $500,000 roving TV studio is the gizmo with the most razzle-dazzle in a war where marvelous inventions (videophones, satellite phones, cell phones, nightscope lenses, digital cameras and battery-operated laptops), combined with unusual cooperation between the media and the military, have made Operation Iraqi Freedom the most television-accessible war in history.
That combination of access and technology has provided viewers with remarkable journalism and touching TV moments. One highlight last week came when NBC/MSNBC reporter Kerry Sanders phoned home -- Sugar Land -- for wounded Lance Cpl. Joshua Menard of the 2nd Battalion 8th Marines.
"It just seemed like a logical thing to do," said Sanders. "He was lucid and wanted to talk to us and I asked him if he wanted to say anything to family and friends."
Connecting a faraway story to worried folks back home is a terrific example of how "embedding" reporters -- allowing them to travel with the troops -- has benefited both viewers and the image of the military.
Sanders, it would turn out later, was among the first to transmit pictures of alarming finds in a "hospital" in An Nasiriyah -- evidence of apparent POW torture and hundreds of chemical suits.
His reports have stood out, along with reports from CNN's Walt Rodgers, ABC's Ted Koppel, Fox's Rick Leventhal and CBS' Byron Pitts. They are among the hundreds of players in the battle for television viewers.
Eleven days into the war, two networks have emerged as slightly better than others in providing balanced reporting, NBC among broadcast networks, MSNBC among cable networks.
NBC has multiple outlets -- the Nightly News and several prime-time news hours each week as well as reports on its morning Today show and sister networks MSNBC, CNBC and Telemundo.
ABC and CBS are only a whisker behind.
ABC tripped at the start, caught shorts-down and 20 minutes late getting to air when the first U.S. missiles were launched May 19. The situation snafued from there when the network signed off its war coverage at 10 p.m. CST after promising more to come, leaving some markets (Houston not among them) in the lurch.
But ABC recovered handsomely. For example, Friday's20/20 included a series of brilliant reports, including John Quiñones' interview with an Umm Qasr family grateful to be out from under Saddam Hussein's thumb, and Barbara Walters' report on U.S.-ensconced Iraqis speaking out against Saddam Hussein.
CBS, which has had to weave war news into college basketball coverage, has taken optimum advantage of its sterling magazines -- 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes II and 48 Hours Investigates -- to provide context and great prose in its news coverage.
The cable networks are less interested in perspective and more interested in being first with the news and continuous.
MSNBC is leading, for reasons already cited and because of no-nonsense anchoring from Lester Holt, a headline-updating service every 15 minutes and soft touches like its wall of heroes, where pictures of servicemen and servicewomen are displayed.
CNN and Fox are a step behind.
Two of CNN's biggest assets, Christiane Amanpour and Wolf Blitzer, are behind desks instead of doing what they do best: reporting. Reporters John King and Nic Robertson have become sideline players as CNN makes optimum use of its embeddeds. Anchor Aaron Brown's New Age introspection is off-putting.
But Fox is a case unto itself. It proudly wraps itself in the U.S. flag and openly cheers on Bush. Television critics may recoil at how unbalanced the network appears, but some Americans following the war apparently approve. A half-million more people are watching Fox (3.6 million) than CNN (3.1 million). MSNBC is far back (1.6 million) and CNBC trails (300,000), according to Nielsen Media Research.
What network are you watching and why? Write to tvmail@chron.com.
Mike McDaniel is the Houston Chronicle TV editor.
He asked! click here
A handful of "critics" may approve of (MS)NBC, and think CBS and ABC are "a whisker behind," but Americans following the war by the millions apparently know better and recoil at what ABC, CBS and NBC (not to mention Aaron Brown) have to say.
This self-serving tripe deserves no more column inches than what my high-school fishin' buddy would write--if he could. At least my buddy has common sense and isn't serving the agenda of the elite Left.
HF
If these are CNN's greatest assets it is no wonder they suck!
Mine too! Here I was at 9:00 a.m. Sunday morning waiting for FOX News Sunday Morning and by 9:05 they were sitll shoowing commercials and then finally switched to some old sitcom reruns. I wonder what happened? I didn't get to see any of what I was expecting.
The Katy Couric-Mat Lauer-NBC smell is definitely in the air: our troops are bogged down, running out of supplies, the guerrillas are too much for us, etc.
Meanwhile, at Fox, Hasan Akbar was first identified as a Muslim who was against the war in Iraq.
America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
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I watch Fox because, quite frankly, I find the anti-American sentiments and the almost gleeful attitude towards every American casuality or apparent setback displayed by other news outlets, both inappropriate and sickening. Not only that, but I make a diligent effort to convert those who have yet to discover Fox, who, in spite of the bitter claims of conservative bias, only appears that way through the lens of extreme liberalism. It seems to me that to those with a leftist bent think that any attempt to present a viewpoint other than their own amounts to conservative bias. Unreal. Fox has more than its share of left wing nuts, but the difference is that some of the ignorance they shamelessly put on display is actually challenged with the expectatiion that they will be able to support their opinions. They rarely can."
No. Clearly Fox is the channel of choice for the troops and why not let them trumpet it? Here in Tucson when a local channel covered the troops at the air base watching the president on tv, the camera showed the set they were watching and it was on Fox. Note: Not the local station's channel, even though the reporter was right there. It doesn't strike me as tacky.
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