VITAMEDIAS
Mass media mania born of last decade: "When the Gulf War started, CNN realized it was on to something that could be very effective, which was to broadcast a war continuously. It had never been done before, and they had to find techniques with which to do it."
Those techniques were largely derived from the miniseries, something that was at the time relatively new to television and had little or nothing to do with news.
"When it came CNN's turn to dramatize the Gulf War, they very much turned to the sort of artistic devices that were used by these miniseries that have been manufactured by Hollywood. Gulf War became the first war to have a logo. It had titles: 'War in the Gulf.' It had theme music. And of course it had stars. And those stars had to be created on the spot, whether they were real life historical figures like Norman Schwarzkopf or a correspondent like Peter Arnett, who no one had really heard of in the American viewing public, but became a superstar as a result of 'War in the Gulf.'" [Frank Rich, Associate Editor for The New York Times]