The last time I turned ours on at home was for the shuttle crash, and even then I only watched for 10 minutes every hour or so. The incremental benefit of another minute's worth of "news" was very small--nobody was going to know anything new for another hour or so, so why not do something useful and check back in an hour?
No, I didn't even turn on the war news. I knew what to expect: reporters with exotic backgrounds, stock footage, the most dramatic footage they could tease out of the can, and breathless magnification of each burst of gunfire into hopeless failure or overwhelming victory. I want to know what's going on overall. Embedded reporters are nice for human interest, but don't tell me much about what's really going on--even with their particular unit. This is partly because reporters as a class seem to be trained for dramatic writing rather than careful observation, and also because really critical details are probably kept secret.
Last week I took a couple of daughters down to visit grandparents. They have cable, and had the TV on a lot. So, I finally got to see the Emerald City of Oz. And the same footage of artillary on at least 4 different networks. And lots of sameness. And far less information in an hour than I could pick up in 15 minutes on the web. And commercials (and commercials and commercials and ...).
The BBC is bitterly anti-US and anti-UK in this campaign (the headline for British forces destroying 14 probing Iraqi tanks had the word victory in quotes!), and relying on it as your sole source of information is stupid. However, relying on American TV is likewise stupid. You'll see endless footage of the rescue of Jessi and statues falling. You'll miss a lot of the problems, and get no context whatever. Whatever your source, you have to weight the reporting by the bias of the agency that reports it--and sometimes discount what's said. When a US general said we had full control of the Bagdad airport, I discounted that to mean "enough troops to mop up and gain full control," and I was right. When ArabNews writes of thousands of Iraqi children murdered, I discount that to a handful of accidental deaths, and I suspect that I'm again right. (I complain about US reporters, but I find I have to completely disregard most Arabic news sources. One is stupid but honest, and the other knowledgeable and lies.)
Plainly there's a lot in this campaign that's been hidden behind the scenes. Some people agreed to stay out of the fight, others helped in one way or another--and they won't want these things known. I probably won't live long enough to hear the whole story. Knowing that I won't know enough, can you understand why I don't care very much about the TV coverage? I know how hard it is and how long it can be to get the full story and get it right. That's my job.
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