TV GOES TO WAR.(television coverage of the Iraq War)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 31-MAR-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

"Shock and awe”: it was no euphemism. Not since September 11, 2001, has the world seen images of such tremendous devastation occurring in such an unbelievably short amount of time. Beginning at around 9 p.m. in Baghdad on Friday, as many as two dozen buildings were destroyed in spectacular fashion in mere minutes, by some three hundred cruise missiles. The veteran war correspondent Peter Arnett, reporting by telephone from Baghdad, was no more able to find original words for the event than the rest of us were, and resorted to the now common cliche used to convey the magnitude of man-made disasters in terms that American audiences can understand: "It's like an action movie, only this is real."The silent green static images of Baghdad that we'd been seeing from locked-down nightscope cameras for the previous twenty-four hours gave way to live footage,...

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