New technology and access change our view of battle.

Byline: Steve Johnson

Ted Koppel, with the 3rd Infantry Division in the Southern Iraq desert, was speaking to Peter Jennings, back in the ABC studio in New York.

Koppel's microphone, Jennings took time away from the war discussion to note, was reminiscent of those used in World War II, big and bulky like a talk-show host's desk prop.

"You and I call them 'lip mikes,'" Koppel responded, putting his mouth up close again to explain to ABC viewers that their sound-suppressing capability is valuable amid the noise of war.

This strange desert interlude was one more instance _ and admittedly one of the most low-tech _ of the technology becoming, at least for a moment, the story in the early days of coverage of the U.S.-led attack on Iraq.

The now-prevalent videophones and the Pentagon's strategy of "embedding" journalists in coalition units, allowing them to report from amid the troops, are among the factors that have brought a historic immediacy to the coverage.

"I doubt that in a conflict of this type there's ever been the degree of…