"Shock and awe" should be the code name for the Pentagon's media strategy.
The first full day of television coverage of the invasion of Iraq revealed not the fog of war, but a firestorm of amazing combat images.
From Navy fighter jets shown as they roared off the deck of the carrier Constellation, to grainy, green nightscope glimpses of American tanks moving across the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, television showed more live military action in one day than it did in the entire bombing campaign of the 1991 war.
The unprecedented access to front-line action was not solely designed to snuff out complaints about censorship that tarnished coverage of the 1991 war. By agreeing to give hundreds of journalists a front-row seat, the Pentagon hoped to get reporters and viewers rooting for the visiting team on the first day out -- and build goodwill for any rainy PR days ahead.
On Thursday, at least, the new Pentagon doctrine of overwhelming access paid off. Many European networks, including the BBC, trained cameras on refugees streaming into camps cross the Iraqi border to illustrate the human side of war. American television was more focused on dazzling combat images and the human side of US warriors.
Journalists working without US military protection in Bagdad reported by telephone as the first wave of missiles hit government buildings in the capital, but those low-technology moments were just as riveting in their own way.
"That was a huge blast, huge," a rattled but unbowed Nic Robertson exclaimed in Bagdad, holding out his phone so CNN viewers could hear the booming explosions around him.
Peter Arnett, who as a CNN correspondent in 1991 was the only correspondent in Bagdad at key moments of the war, was also reporting the attack by telephone. Now on assignment in Iraq for National Geographic Explorer after being fired by CNN over an ethical breach, Arnett was back on the telephone describing the bombing to NBC, which does not have its own correspondent in Baghdad.
During a lull, Arnett said in yet another telephone interview that the main difference he noticed now over then was that he was not as alone, with hundreds of journalists in Baghdad, most of them non-American. He said that this time, he and colleagues can rely on television images. He also noted a relative absence of censorship. "So far, officials have not demanded on screening our copy," Arnett said. "Last time, they did."
Fragmentary images of Baghdad under fire were pieced together from network pools, news agencies, al-Jazeera and other Arab and European news organizations. In the early afternoon on Thursday, NBC quickly broadcast footage from Italian television of a burning government building while Tom Brokaw interviewed an NBC consultant, David Kay, a former UN weapons inspector.
As the two men spoke, the screen was filled by billowing smoke and flaring explosions; viewers could hear an alarmed Italian anchorwoman talking rapidly to her colleague on the scene. "Giovanna, what is going on?" the anchor woman asked urgently. "Maybe you should go find a safer place."
All the networks had battle images, and all the correspondents were careful to assure viewers that they would not disclose sensitive information. (Some cable news networks were less sensitive about scaring viewers with alarmist labels. MSNBC, for example, flashed the words, "breaking news," above a bulletin from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, that read, "The 101st Airborne Division is known as `The Screaming Eagles.'")
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