Editorial: War on YouTube
The media has been covering wars since its inception. Early journalists, which we would now refer to as embedded reporters, lived with the troops and wrote about battles they experienced first hand. As technology advanced, so did the reports — first on radio, then in movie newsreels and finally on television.
In the early 1990s, when cable television news pioneer CNN started reporting live from Desert Storm, war coverage reached a new frontier, bringing the sights and sounds of war home to watch live in our living rooms.
But even then the television viewers, radio listeners and newspaper and magazine readers were only able to experience so much. News organizations aren’t given all-access passes by the armed forces to go everywhere, especially during battle, and the governments (United States and others involved) have tried kept a tight wrap on what can be shown and reported on.
Even more, not all of the information delivered to news organizations could be aired. There are FCC regulations and ethical concerns to consider when covering war, in fact one of the three forms of speech that is not protected by the First Amendment is giving out military secrets during wartime, so many news organizations have chosen to air on the side of caution.
Plus, words can only describe so much. After hearing phrases like “the horrors of war” and "enduring freedom" over and over, they tend to lose their meaning both in delivery and interpretation.
That has changed. Several months ago, video clips of the war in Iraq shot by US soldiers (like the one below) started showing up on YouTube, as did videos from the insurgents. They are reports from the frontline, sans the reporter, that are both fascinating and hard to watch.
Without the commentary from trained news professionals, lowered sound of fighting compressed to allow for voiceovers, graphics and maps and quick edits to maximize points of coverage, the raw footage is horrifying. Soldiers scream as they fire their guns, bullets and smoke flying around them as curse words are echoed every couple of seconds.
After watching less than a minute of it, you start to feel sick. For someone who has never been in that position, it’s hard to imagine what these people must be going through.
And while it is hard to watch, this is an amazing development for the media.
The Internet basically has no regulations on content, especially when it comes to broadcasting. You can swear, shoot, blow up things and so on, and there are (basically) no federal regulations against it (so long as you prove you are 18—even at YouTube). For news organizations, this could be huge.
We can’t show you everything on TV or in print, and you can’t hear what war and other sensative situations really sound like. We just can’t do it. But we could on the Internet.
According to the US Census data from 2003, 54 percent of homes have Internet access, and it appears that number is rising by 2 percent a year. At this rate, nearly 68 percent of homes will have Internet access by 2010, possibly more.
While this doesn’t compare to the 98.2 percent of homes that have a television set (according to the FCC), it’s still a sizable amount of people that have access to these images and accounts at their fingertips.
And as interest in these actual accounts rises, which it will, the news organizations of the world will be able to give you more of them — undistorted, untwisted, unedited, leaving the interpretation of facts up to you.
It’s the media in its purest form, and it can be yours for the asking.
For now, it’s just an awesome experience that these little voices are being heard all over the world, whether it’s a soldier in Iraq fighting to stay alive, or a college student with a webcam trying to make sense out of their life.
While the images are sometimes unsettling, they are at least being seen.
In the early 1990s, when cable television news pioneer CNN started reporting live from Desert Storm, war coverage reached a new frontier, bringing the sights and sounds of war home to watch live in our living rooms.
But even then the television viewers, radio listeners and newspaper and magazine readers were only able to experience so much. News organizations aren’t given all-access passes by the armed forces to go everywhere, especially during battle, and the governments (United States and others involved) have tried kept a tight wrap on what can be shown and reported on.
Even more, not all of the information delivered to news organizations could be aired. There are FCC regulations and ethical concerns to consider when covering war, in fact one of the three forms of speech that is not protected by the First Amendment is giving out military secrets during wartime, so many news organizations have chosen to air on the side of caution.
Plus, words can only describe so much. After hearing phrases like “the horrors of war” and "enduring freedom" over and over, they tend to lose their meaning both in delivery and interpretation.
That has changed. Several months ago, video clips of the war in Iraq shot by US soldiers (like the one below) started showing up on YouTube, as did videos from the insurgents. They are reports from the frontline, sans the reporter, that are both fascinating and hard to watch.
Without the commentary from trained news professionals, lowered sound of fighting compressed to allow for voiceovers, graphics and maps and quick edits to maximize points of coverage, the raw footage is horrifying. Soldiers scream as they fire their guns, bullets and smoke flying around them as curse words are echoed every couple of seconds.
After watching less than a minute of it, you start to feel sick. For someone who has never been in that position, it’s hard to imagine what these people must be going through.
And while it is hard to watch, this is an amazing development for the media.
The Internet basically has no regulations on content, especially when it comes to broadcasting. You can swear, shoot, blow up things and so on, and there are (basically) no federal regulations against it (so long as you prove you are 18—even at YouTube). For news organizations, this could be huge.
We can’t show you everything on TV or in print, and you can’t hear what war and other sensative situations really sound like. We just can’t do it. But we could on the Internet.
According to the US Census data from 2003, 54 percent of homes have Internet access, and it appears that number is rising by 2 percent a year. At this rate, nearly 68 percent of homes will have Internet access by 2010, possibly more.
While this doesn’t compare to the 98.2 percent of homes that have a television set (according to the FCC), it’s still a sizable amount of people that have access to these images and accounts at their fingertips.
And as interest in these actual accounts rises, which it will, the news organizations of the world will be able to give you more of them — undistorted, untwisted, unedited, leaving the interpretation of facts up to you.
It’s the media in its purest form, and it can be yours for the asking.
For now, it’s just an awesome experience that these little voices are being heard all over the world, whether it’s a soldier in Iraq fighting to stay alive, or a college student with a webcam trying to make sense out of their life.
While the images are sometimes unsettling, they are at least being seen.
posted by Eric LaRose at
10:25 AM
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