<p>CNN scores a reporting coup as TV dramatically captures the
first major war in the era of instant worldwide communication
</p>
<p>By RICHARD ZOGLIN--With reporting by Joseph J. Kane/Atlanta,
Scott MacLeod/Amman and David E. Thigpen/New York
</p>
<p> It was a war that television had spent five months preparing
to cover, and the start of hostilities was almost bizarrely
well timed: smack in the middle of the networks' evening
newscasts. ABC anchorman Peter Jennings had just finished a
live phone conversation with correspondent Gary Shepard in
Baghdad, who said that all was quiet in the Iraqi capital. A
couple of minutes later, however, Shepard was back on the air,
reporting that bright flashes and tracer fire were lighting up
the sky west of the city. "An attack is under way," he said. So
was the TV drama.
</p>
<p> For the ensuing hours and days, TV held the nation riveted.
Not, for the most part, with pictures; those were meager, slow
in coming and tightly restricted by tough Pentagon rules
limiting press coverage of the conflict. Not with the sort of
gripping combat footage that had brought the Vietnam War so
painfully into America's living rooms. Not (at least, not yet)
with heart-wrenching scenes of body bags and grieving families.
Mostly, TV conveyed the story in the simple words of reporters:
ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, describing
the sights and sounds and feelings of war.
</p>
<p> Those words and images had an instant, indelible impact.
Across the nation, in homes and offices and bars, people
stopped in their tracks, gathered around the TV set and held
their collective breath. Like the Kennedy assassination or the
space-shuttle disaster, the outbreak of war in the gulf was one
of those historic events destined to be remembered forever in
the terms by which television defined it.
</p>
<p> The undisputed star of the initial coverage was CNN, the
24-hour-news channel, which affirmed its credibility and
worldwide clout with new authority. Though ABC, NBC and CNN
managed to air telephone reports with their correspondents in
Baghdad during the initial shelling (CBS, unluckily, could not
get its phone line working), ABC and NBC lost contact after a
few minutes. Only CNN was able to keep its line open and
broadcast continuously throughout the attack. Three reporters
on the ninth floor of the Al Rasheed Hotel--anchorman
Bernard Shaw, veteran combat correspondent Peter Arnett and
reporter John Holliman--provided an exceptional, and perhaps
unprecedented, live account of the start of war from inside an
enemy capital.
</p>
<p> Their reports were a low-tech throwback to Edward R.
Murrow's famous radio broadcasts from London during the blitz.
As viewers watched a still screen, disembodied voices described
what was happening in graphic, excited, sometimes overwrought
language. Holliman: "We just heard--whoa! Holy cow! That was
a large airburst that we saw." Arnett: "We're crouched behind
a window in here...The antiaircraft is erupting again."
Shaw: "This feels like we're in the center of hell." The
dramatic scene was punctuated by interludes of awkward comedy,
as the reporters scurried around the room on hands and knees
and exchanged nervous banter. "It occurs to me that I didn't get
dinner tonight," said Shaw at one point. "There's tuna fish,
Bernie," replied Holliman, "plenty of tuna fish."
</p>
<p> CNN finally lost contact with its Baghdad team 16 hours
later, when Iraqi military officials shut down its phone line
for what they said were security reasons. Shaw, Holliman and
most other U.S. TV reporters left Baghdad the next day. (Arnett
remained behind, even after Iraqi officials ordered all Western
journalists to leave the city "temporarily.") ABC's Shepard,
hitching a ride with a CBS producer, reached Amman, Jordan, on
Friday afternoon after being stalled for four hours near an air
base in western Iraq that was being shelled by U.S. warplanes.
</p>
<p>former Vietnam correspondent. "But this is the first time I
have ever reported from behind enemy lines."
</p>
<p> Meanwhile, the TV show back home was in full swing. Once the
air raids had begun, all three broadcast networks jettisoned
their regular programming and aired continuous coverage for the
next 42 hours. Even cable channels like MTV and ESPN, that
rarely pay attention to news of the real world, interrupted
regular fare to carry President Bush's speech on Wednesday
night. The audience was mammoth. According to Nielsen
estimates, more than 61 million TV households were tuned in to
Bush's speech, the biggest audience for a single event in TV
history.
</p>
<p> With acres of airtime to fill, the networks probed every
nook and cranny of the unfolding story. Military experts
assessed the capabilities of U.S. and Iraqi weapons;
correspondents roamed the halls of the Pentagon looking for
scraps of news; foreign diplomats trooped into the network
studios to give their perspective on the crisis; reporters
looked for fresh angles everywhere, from Wall Street to
California protest marches. The networks' star anchors--Jennings on ABC, Dan Rather on CBS and Tom Brokaw on NBC--spent long hours in front of the camera, trying to manage a
bombardment of information that was often sketchy, sometimes
