War being televised?
 

There is talk that if and when we go to war, it will be televised. What are your opinions regarding this? I'd really like to hear opinions from everyone.

I personally do not think that this should be televised. I understand we are going through this whole reality TV epidemic, but this is definitely not reality TV material. There are just some things that should not be shown on televesion and this is one of them.

I don't want to see minute by minute coverage of the atrocities that will be comitted by both sides. As if we weren't already desensitized enough!
I think we should just be kept aware of major developments. That's all I need to know. I'll use my imagination for the rest.

if the reporters want to do live broadcasts where the war is taking place then fine. but i dont want to see any killing or anything of the sort. that is just downright inhumane

No
 

Personally I do not want to see one bit of coverage on it. I really don't think that we should even be going to war, plus with all the anti-war rallies that are going on by people in the entertainment industry, that would just add to why we don't need to see live coverage of the war. If they decide to show the war that would only hurt Pres. Bush's ratings (as if they are not hurting right now). I know to many people over there and don't need to see the image of them getting bombed. That's just my 1874 cents.

One heart, One way

During Desert Storm, were we not getting reports or feeds from that Peter Arnett guy and Bernard Shaw from CNN?

I know there was some coverage, yes. I remember being a little girl and watching that. I STILL remember what I saw, and that is part of the reason why I say NO to anything being televised. We do not need to see that, especially children. They don't understand what's going on, and what if their parents are in Iraq? Children seeing the possible war on television would scare the holy crap out of them.

Dove Gal, I agree with you 110%, although I gave my 1872 cents. :p

I'm not sure. I want to know what is going on, and what our country had gotten itself into this time, but I also could not deal with seeing my friends and family over there fighting. I think live broadcasts are fine if you don't see the shooting, bombing, etc...just not every second of the day

Definitely.

I think it's really important to know what's going on over there because it affects us in a huge way -- we can't just bury our heads in the sand and pretend like it's not going on. As for little kids seeing footage, I remember seeing Desert Storm footage and yes, it affected me, but it didn't scar me for life. If anything, it just made me more aware of the role the United States plays in worldwide politics and things like that.

NO COVERAGE please.

I know we have the technological means to do so but really that is just TOO MUCH.

War coverage is an interesting thing. People believe that coverage of what was going on in Vietnam was what led a lot of Middle America to think that the conflict wasn't the best thing for the United States. On the other hand, it can be graphic. I don't really consider what I saw during Desert Storm as war coverage in the same way as what was shown during Vietnam--there was little hand-to-hand conflict in the Middle East.

We're going to see it on the nightly news. How much we see will definitely turn the tide towards or against any war.

I agree -- I don't think the media will get too graphic or anything because if it does show what war is actually like, half the people who are pro-war now would change their minds! There are a lot of people out there who are content to pretend they know what's going on, but when it gets right down to it the reality is a lot worse than what they're thinking.

It's easy to be pro-war when your enemy has no face and you don't have to watch anybody getting killed.

We don't need to actually see what's going on in order to understand.



What I heard on the radio this morning is that a television station (not sure which one) is thinking about showing "live coverage." There was also mention about having cameras on the helmets of soldiers, although I do not know how likely that would be. Basically, they wouldn't be showing soldiers having a cup of tea, rather in full combat gear, at work.

Guarantee ya that when the Tomahawks and Nighthawks start flyin' and the Batbombers start bombin' there's gonna be wall-to-wall-round-the-clock saturation news coverage on a scale unprecedented since 9/11. Probably way too much.

Reportedly they're supposed to be testing MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Burst, aka the super 'daisy cutter' bomb) today. (The 'daisy cutter' (military designation BLU-82) was designed during the Vietnam War to clear out thick jungle to allow helicopters to land, but it also found a new use during Gulf War I and Afghanistan as an area-denial bomb designed to wipe out minefields and troop concentrations in the open. 'Big BLU-82' had something like 12,000 pounds of explosive, MOAB has almost twice as much and packs an even nastier punch.)

They're supposed to be videotaping the test, to show Saddam he's NOT going to be safe anywhere in Iraq when the shooting starts.

My honest to God, deep down opinion is that reporters and cameras have no place in the war. I understand that the American people like to be informed of the situation, but i would rather the US Govt be giving us our updates as opposed to Wolf Blitzer on CNN. To me, allowing reporters on the front lines is a security risk, as they are not trained to respond to capture and interrogation as are soldiers.

Call me naive, or a hawk, or whatever, but i'm from the school of thought that when this country is at war, we rally behind our gov't officials and our military and give them the support they deserve. I guarantee that the Bush Administration knows far more about the situation in Iraq than any of us do and i for one am willing to trust my president. I would rather they release information concerning the war that is declassified and not a threat to reveal our plans or troop movements than have some news organization broadcasting potentially sensitive information for all the world to see.

Kitso
KS 361 times some of the most vehement anti-war protestors will have to eat their words after we over-throw sadaam and gain full knowledge of his atrocities.

Okay. Just rub it in. At the time I was a SF in college. :o I guess that's what you called us back then. :confused:

I don't remember seeing anything gorey or gooky.
BUT, If the media can put out ads with folks' private parts showing and the after affects of copulating, then I'm sure showing a WAR on TV isn't that big of a deal.

:rolleyes:

Kitso...I have to agree with you. I too will rally behind my president. I may not agree with the war but I'm going to support the decision of his administration. Like you said...they know way more than any of us do so they obviously feel this is the right thing to do. I feel the same way you do about news reports also. I'd much rather be getting reports from White House officials than Dan Rather. Just my .02 cents.

Nah, you're what I call old school. :p Juuuust kidding!!! :D

Ok, why do I feel so old. I was a junior in college during the Gulf War and the TV coverage was all day long. I remembered the soaps were shown after 1AM in the morning due to the TV coverage.

BJ

I beat all of you. When the Gulf War was on, I was 26 years old and working as a reporter down South. So you can call me a fossil.
:p :p

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! @ fossil!
:o

I agree too. I get the impression that many war supporters are dehumanizing both our fighters and our targets. I think it is only fair for war supporters to see the direct effects of war and what takes place during it.

I don't think full-war-coverage is neccessary.

It's one thing to show a few snippets of video on the news over & over..(like the bombs I remember seeing when I was younger the last time we went at it w/ Iraq.. it was a dark black sky and there were random lights in the air...)

...and it's quite another thing to make it reality-tv-like or even movie-like.

I think full-war-coverage would be hard for the families and friends who know people there fighting... and everyone.

If they don't want to watch the coverage then they don't have to. What it sounds like is that there would be one channel that would show the war all the time -- it's not like it would just randomly pop up on Fox in the middle of "The Simpsons" or something.

You guys gotta be kidding. I was directing the 6:00 and 11:00 PM news during the last half of Vietnam.

And that coverage was a whole lot more graphic.

Here's what I think is the real deal, though, is that the coverage of Vietnam was a lot more graphic -- and the military didn't like it.

Desert Storm was one of the most "managed" wars in history in terms of news coverage. We saw what the military wanted us to see and very little else.

Unless the networks are ready to lose some crews and take a lot more chances than they did in Desert Story, I doubt that coverage of this war will be much different. More live talking heads, but not much in the way of live battlefield coverage.

OK, Delt. You got me there. But I figured that you'd weigh in, and you made a good point about Vietnam and the news management of Desert Storm.
:cool:

"they know way more than any of us do so they obviously feel this is the right thing to do."

Oh really? They know more than the rest of the world? They know more about war and it's repurcussions than Europe and the Middle East, which have experienced centuries of bloodshed and battle in their own land? Riiiiiiiiight. Meanwhile we sit here comfortably watching CNN's synopsis of the battle(edited to keep the sheep from bleating about what damage our armies are doing to an already ramshackle country), only to click the remote and switch to American Idol. I wish they would show every detail of what happens, so we can take a good look at ourselves in the mirror and see what the rest of the world sees. Maybe then we wouldn't be show quick to attack this fabricated "axis of evil"(btw, I hope you all realize that if we were REALLY so benevolent and committed to ending terror and human rights atrocities in other nations, we'd be at war with about 50 countries right now). Ok I'm rambling now, but my feelings about the situation are very easily riled up...bleh.

I have several friends and aquaintances who are already over there doing freelance technical work for the networks.

The state-of-the-art equipment they're using would, in theory, make it easier to do live broadcasts -- but these guys are my age, have covered several wars, and are anxious to live a while longer. I don't see any of them taking unncessary chances simply to be live on the front lines.

Besides, they go where the authorities tell them they can, or take the chance of losing their credentials. Plus, there's the spectre of being killed by "friendly fire."

The networks pay great money for these jobs -- but not enough to die for.

True, true. If we were really committed to human rights, it wouldn't have taken a personal attack like 9/11 for the United States to muster the manpower and offense to eradicate the Taliban. It would have been done years before, because we've known that the Taliban were horrid human rights violators. We tend to get involved when our own interests are at stake, and put it under the guise of "humanitarianism". The Marshall Plan? Basically a bribe for European countries not to go Communist--but I'm sure there are people out there who are deluded enough to believe that we really had the interests of those bombed out in Dresden and Palermo first and foremost in our hearts. :rolleyes:

What's wrong with having our interests at stake? I for one think that our national security and our safety are 2 huge interests that need to be protected. We went after the taliban because they demonstrated a fanatacism that was a threat to the American way of life. We are going after Sadaam because he has failed to live up to the statues outlined to him at the end of the Gulf War. When did that end? 12 YEARS AGO! For 12 years he has failed to comply with the terms of the resolution and disarm. Now he's "destroying" weapons that he never said he had. The man can not be trusted, and by extending inspections all we are doing is giving him more time to rally support, hide other weapons, and prepare himself for war.

Look y'all, i'm not a warmongering person. I have lived for 23 years as the son of 2 Army officers. I hardly saw my father during Desert Storm, thank god he wasn't deployed, but he was still working around the clock in the Pentagon. I would right now be a 2LT in the US Army if not for an unfortunate circumstance that i beat myself up about every day. Yes, i will completely believe that the US government has more information on the situation than any of y'all(sorry, it's true) and the majority of our allies. Any politician knows that war is a controversial subject. I can't rightfully believe that the Bush Admin would knowingly put itself under such intense scrutiny unless it was 100% certain of the facts involved.

I'm done. But, when this war does start, and there WILL be a war, regardless of your feelings for Bush and his Admin i encourage all of you to support our troops wholheartedly. They are, after all, fighting to ensure our way of life and the freedoms we enjoy.

Kitso
KS 361

I didn't say there's anything wrong with having our interests at heart...I just think there's something inherently wrong with doing something with those interests at stake and calling it humanitarianism. Call a spade a spade...don't cover it up with roses and call it a corsage.

I will support our troops--I am from a military family and grew up between two military bases. I will not, however, support this President. There's a difference.

Lets see, we train the Army to be aware of and abide by the Law of Land Warfare. We train every soldier in the requirements laid down by the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice). We enforce strict Rules of Engagement. We plan our operations to target combatant forces and avoid civilian casualties. We put great effort into developing smart munitions which will allow us to avoid to the max extent possible any friendly fire disasters. We make a point of going the extra mile to fight clean and not do the sort of horrible things for which the Republican Guard are famous (infamous). And yet you blandly assert that we will perpetrate "atrocities" in the same manner as the "the other side". You actually compare the US Army, composed of your brothers and sisters, your fellow Americans, to the gang of thugs whose leader uses terror and atrocity as a routine matter of policy? Your statement is nothing short of outrageous!
Yes, it is your right to say this, a right guaranteed by those who go in harms way to defend you and your rights. It does, however, seem to me that you are better served by those you accuse of appaling misconduct than you realize.
War is terrible and presupposes the failure of civilized people to deal with each other in a reasonable manner. In war terrible things happen despite our best efforts to minimize if not eliminate these occurances, but it is not American policy to resort to atrocity as a means to accomplish our ends. You need to look to Saddam and company and to others of their ilk to find that sort of evil.
Tomorrow at morning formation I'll look with pride at the young Americans who have answered their country's call, and reflect sadly on some of their fellow citizens who hold them in such low esteem that they would be willing to casually assume that these American soldiers would act in such a dishonorable manner.
Perhaps televising the action might not be such a bad idea. Then you could see, from a nice safe distance, just how Americans fight, and just how the other fellows do it.
dekeguy
Captain, USAR, forward deployed

dekeguy,

Two words for you and your platoon/company/battalion.

Thank you.

Kitso
KS 361

All i feel like saying is ...... YEAH!!!

Kitso,
Actually, its an Armored Cavalry Troop, and you are very welcome. Remember, the Army today is an all volunteer Army, so we are just doing what we signed up to do. You can count on us to fight clean and accomplish the mission.
Best regards and interfraternal greetings.

CPT. Dekeguy,

I salute you, sir! Well said! My prayers to you and your troopers on deployment and wishing you a safe return home when all this dies down.

I was a former A1C, USAF, in case you're wondering.

Me neither, i'm sorry this war does not obligate me to stand behind this guy. People need to practice distinguishing between pride for the country, and disagreement with a TEMPORARILY elected leader. He's our president, not our king people. And if I remember right, the last King George we had didn't turn out so well...

I understand what you're saying about scaring the children, but I have to respectfully disagree. I remember being young and in 2nd grade when Desert Storm was going on. I'm glad that I did watch Wolf Blitzer with my parents. I saw a part of history. But it's not just about seeing history. I think parents do need to teach their kids about all that is going on in the world. I'm not saying like toddlers or 4 year olds. It's good for the children to see what violence does and how negative it is. I might sound stupid cuz I don't think I'm wording correctly what I'm thinking.

I personally would watch it. Not like 24 hours a day tho. With that stuff that happened 9/11, I watched that like crazy. It's not that I had a fascination with it, I cried and was sad everytime I saw it. But it is history. I learned more about the world from watching the news than in a college history class.