Fast talk blurs TV war news

We did what everybody else did last weekend: just hung out and watched the war.

What an odd commentary on the world and times in which we live. One minute we view the Final Four basketball teams in competition; then we switch channels to the nighttime bombings in Iraq; we watch a bit of the Academy Awards, then more of the war before going to bed.

Desert Storm introduced us to live television broadcasts of war, and now it’s as if we’re watching an instant replay, so steeled we are to violence before our eyes. Once again, we see the familiar television reporters speaking in our living rooms while plumes of smoke rise up behind them and mushroom clouds spread across their sky.

And the talk – incessant verbiage, to be sure – continues from myriad commentators, ranging from Pentagon spokesmen to journalists in the field, from talk show hosts to politicians, from retired military experts to war protesters: 24-hour talk, nonstop talk, which we are repelled by and yet drawn to as though hypnotized.

In the morning we will read news accounts and see photographs. We will pore over information, filing facts in our minds and sifting through analyses for better understanding.

But tonight, we’re at the mercy of television coverage that bombards us with images and sounds so graphic we can almost feel the “shock and awe” terror of war. That, coupled with numerous instances of unreliable – if not inaccurate – information, makes us question the wisdom of such live coverage.

In other wars and other times, the information highway, as it’s called today, was not so heavily traveled. The nation’s newspapers and radio stations relied on war correspondents whose reports and journals chronicled the battles and portrayed the troops – but here’s the difference in then and now – in past tense only. There was no spontaneous coverage; there was no speculation about tomorrow’s war movements. Facts were not considered facts until they were substantiated.

But that was before the commercialization of the mass media, before the one-upmanship of “breaking” news, before quotes without attribution, before ratings, before market strategies. Certainly before television anchormen conducting interviews with international villains, and before reporters becoming newsmakers themselves.

Today there are hundreds of journalists “embedded” in this war, most attached to military units but others independently roaming the volatile area in search of information. Most are responsible professionals who adhere to principles and standards of accurate reporting.

There are others, however, in the race against competitors, who play fast and loose with their “facts.” What results is speculation and downright misinformation. They use the phrase “we have been told” without producing authenticity. They say “apparently” without providing proof. They fail to scrutinize each and every report before disseminating it to an anxious public.

This is a public who historically has believed in freedom of the press but one who maintains that the press is not free from responsibility. In these peculiar times, when we literally watch a war unfold, this is a public who demands – and deserves – veracity.