How Times Have Changed...

"Accounts of major battles took three to four days to reach New York because of a haphazard military courier system aptly dubbed the 'pony express.'”(Hotel Warriors chapter 1, page 5)

The gulf war news apparently took awhile to actually be reported, 3 or 4 days is a long time and a lot can happen in that time. The Vietnam War coverage could take days and more often than not weeks, and who knows how long it took coverage of WWII to actually make the news reels. The war was likely over for months before an all of America actually knew about it.

Today I watch the news with a 15 second delay from Iraq to “Good Morning America.” The internet can show me up to date information with nothing more then the click of the mouse.

True we did have coverage of the Gulf War in action, we all remember seeing the camera on the nose of the missile falling towards it target, but we don’t remember the end of that episode. Today we have multiple cameras so we can have the first person view of the bomb and another camera recording the explosion.

Today we seem disconnected to the war; the Gulf war had a face to it, reports covering the war and its battles. Even Vietnam had Americans sympathizing with the Vietnamese people. It seems that when we slow the coverage down we have time to really assess what’s happening and develop a proper opinion.

It seems that war coverage, in order to be effective, should be something that takes time to be brought to the masses. It’s as if we need the build up of anticipation in order to truly see what’s going on.