] The first gulf war of 1991, which kicked off the
] cable-news mini-series form, pioneered this sort
] of hype, but the coverage of the current war has
] taken it to a new level. "The characters are the
] same: the president is a Bush, and the other guy
] is Hussein," Erik Sorenson, president of MSNBC,
] told USA Today. "But the technology — the
] military's and the media's — has exploded." He
] likened the change to "the difference between
] Atari and PlayStation," and added that "this may
] be one time where the sequel is more compelling
] than the original."

] Though some television teams with the troops
] provided us with remarkable scenes of the war,
] giving us unprecedented glimpses of fighting as it
] unfurled in real time, such images were rarely
] situated by producers in any meaningful context.
] Glimpses of firefights, shot in the green Kryptonite
] glow of night vision, ran on the cable networks
] like outtakes from one of those car chases that
] routinely run on local television in California,
] and many cable channels kept split-screen shots of
] Baghdad on for the better part of the day,
] determined not to miss the dropping of a single
] photogenic bomb.

More on Iraq media coverage.

Shock, Awe and Razzmatazz in the Sequel