VITAMEDIAS
Protesters blast news media coverage of events in Iraq: Protesting what they called the broadcast media's uncritical coverage of the Iraq war, thousands of anti-war protesters streamed through the streets of Hollywood on Saturday, on their way to CNN's Los Angeles high-rise. [...]
"We feel that CNN and all the major broadcasters act as the information ministry for the government," said James Lafferty, a lead organizer and executive director of the National Lawyers Guild.
Critics Say Coverage Helped Lead to War: Critics of the war against Iraq are not reserving their anger exclusively for President Bush. Some also blame the news media, asserting that they failed to challenge the administration aggressively enough as it made a shaky case for war.
Live TV War Cover Pulls in Viewers Worldwide: Round-the-clock live television images of the war in Iraq are mesmerizing viewers across the world, but not all are happy with what they see.
U.S. and British broadcasters such as CNN, Sky and the BBC are pumping out coverage of the U.S.-led invasion, and even media in countries not involved in the conflict have cranked up their programming to feed a surging public appetite for news.
Many viewers are gripped by what one London radio station has called "war porno" -- live television feeds of desert firefights or spectacular fireballs on the Baghdad skyline.
"The 24-hour multi-channel coverage of operations in Iraq is even more surreal than coverage of the Gulf War in 1991," columnist Darrel Bristow-Bovey wrote in South Africa's Sunday Independent newspaper.
"What's worse, with 10 years of reality TV conditioning...it becomes increasingly difficult not to treat the coverage as another species of entertainment, an unfolding saga with twists and turns and unexpected surprises." [ver Viewers Turn to Entertainment on Second Night of War]
Papers can filter the facts, friction: For the democracies, modern war is a test not only of men and women but of media.
No conflict in human history has been reported with as much immediacy and from as many angles as the one now underway. So, three days into this second Gulf War, how are the U.S. news media doing?
Magazine war coverage: Time is the enemy: the challenge to monthly magazines is much greater. Most are closing their June issues now, editing stories that came in before the war began and that probably will hit newsstands long after this leg of the conflict is over.