Media monitor attacks Iraq 'show'

Media monitor attacks Iraq 'show'

Viewers feel closer to the battle

A European media watchdog has said television coverage of the Iraq war is turning the battlefield into "a show".

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe's representative on freedom of the media, Freimut Duve, said frontline footage hid the "truth of brutality and killing".

"The problem is that this new chapter of TV war reportage pushes aside reality..." he told the BBC World Service's World Today programme.

"We think we are close to [reality], but we are further than ever."

Mr Duve is preparing to report on his concerns to the Permanent Council of the 55-member OSCE.

Snapshot

It is incumbent on broadcasters to add background and context

BBC Director of News, Richard Sambrook

He says the media needs to do more to provide an overall view of the war, including its potentially dangerous consequences elsewhere in the region.

He has also argued that correspondents attached to specific military units are being "steered" and censored by the army.

However, he has welcomed the additional security that the journalists have acquired from being in the presence of coalition forces.

The BBC's director of news, Richard Sambrook, said journalists had always reported from the frontline, and that their reports had never provided more than a snapshot of the situation.

"It is incumbent on broadcasters to add background and context," he said.

Fog of war

Journalists cannot always instantly separate appearance from reality

He added that to describe television reportage from the frontline as a show undermined the "brave and serious" work done by correspondents.

Mr Sambrook said that the combination of 24-hour news channels and new technology allowing live broadcasting from the battlefront, meant that viewers were more exposed to rumour, speculation and the "fog of war".

Mr Duve said he hoped that after the war was over media specialists would sit down and examine whether the coverage from Iraq had informed the public on "what war is all about".