March 22, 2003
«Tankcams»
"In the last few day television viewers have been witnessing something never seen before: live pictures of American ground forces in the act of invading a foreign country, in this case racing unopposed across the battlefield of southern Iraq.
The images were often herky-jerky, sometimes blurry, and quite literally gritty, given the shifting desert sands. But the fact that they existed at all represented a milestone in the long and vast efforts to document warfare.
The war, live from the front lines and on the move, was made possible by what pundits instantly dubbed "tankcam."
The extraordinary shots were the product of newly improved videophones and mobile satellite uplinks. Hitched to network-owned Humvees (all-terrain vehicles), and retrofitted satellite trucks that are running, "Mad Max"-style, alongside the columns of American armored vehicles."
These are excerpts from a fascinating article by Paul Fahri published in The Washington Post, where he describes how new technology has always shapped war coverage, from the telegraph during the civil war, to radio and newsreels during WW2 and Vietnam (dubbed the living room war).
CNN as a channel, became a household world for it's coverage of the Gulf War in 1990, and September 11's tragedy may have been the first full-blown crisis in which cellular phones played a central role as well as the Internet, where thousands of people recorded what they saw and experienced, giving more weight to their stories than coverage by any professional media organization.
Such instantaneous coverage as what we are seeing from Irak will come with it's own set of ethical questions. When we see soldiers shot down, in real time, on our screens. How much warfare reality should there be?
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