Columnist Jeff German: Television bringing war home

Tuesday, March 25, 2003 | 10:48 a.m.

The war in Iraq has brought us the ultimate in reality television.

It is not only addicting, but it is putting our own lives in perspective, whether or not we support the conflict.

Through network satellite coverage and reporters embedded with American troops, we are watching the good and the bad of the war unfold before our very eyes. We are watching death and destruction as it happens.

This is not "Survivor" or "Fear Factor," where contestants can win large sums of cash eating bugs and playing games of agility. This is real drama.

Can you imagine anything more dramatic than witnessing the sky over nighttime Baghdad lighting up with fiery explosions through a network pool camera monitoring the American bombing campaign? Or listening to veteran war correspondent Peter Arnett nervously describe the bombing from a Baghdad hotel room while his cameraman gives us a shakier view of the blasts rocking the city?

The unprecedented live television coverage is allowing us to experience the same emotions as those affected most by the war.

When we hear the wife of a 7th Calvary Army captain racing toward Baghdad tell her husband that she loves him in a CNN telephone hookup, we hear the excitement of talking to him in her voice.

And when we see an interview of the mother of an American solder captured in Iraq, we see the despair in her eyes.

Suddenly, our lives on the couch at home pale when compared to the realities of war that those in the military and their families are facing.

Watching a "Saturday Night Live" rerun on NBC seems trivial when we can follow the Fox News Network's live coverage of a battle between American Marines and members of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard in southern Iraq.

So does watching the NCAA basketball tournament on CBS after we learn from an embedded Time magazine reporter on CNN that an American soldier is responsible for a deadly grenade attack at the camp of the 101st Airborne Division in Kuwait.

And do we really care whether "Chicago" takes home the Oscar for best film, while the cable news networks are giving us fresh details of the Americans taken prisoner in Iraq?

The merits of giving reporters the access to cover this war in real time will be debated long after its conclusion.

But for the moment, it seems to be a good thing -- and likely to change the news-gathering profession forever.

It is basically a new take on the old journalistic principle that it is better to have more information than not enough.

Real-time coverage in Iraq is giving us a better understanding of the ugliness of war and allowing us to step back and look at what's important in our own lives -- things like family and good health.

Who knows? It might even cause us to take greater measures to avoid war in the future.