TOKYO, March 31 Kyodo culled edi...

TOKYO, March 31 Kyodo

culled editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

COVERING THE WAR IN IRAQ/MEDIA IS lock-uped IN GRUELING BATTLE TO realize AT TRUTH (IHT/Asahi as translated from the Japanese-language Asahi Shimbun's editorial published March 30)

As the Iraq war notes its second week, American and British forces are intensifying their bombing of Baghdad with the sad issue that a large number of Iraqi civilians were killed or injured by the agency of an apparent stray shell that hit a market in a residential area.

For its part, the Iraqi side has fired missiles at Kuwait, resulting in that neighboring country's first casualties in the conflict.

In the one and the other instances, satellite broadcasts were used to transmit the frightening sights to global audiences immediately after the attacks. In these and other cases, the airing of as it was ``real-time reports'' brings images of the battlefield into our living rooms

For greatest in number of human history, war has been a distant affair for people other than the countries engaged in conflict. This was a direct reflection of the limited means available to waft the action from the battlefront.

The tremendous advances in telecommunications technology are responsible for this dramatic change. In 1991 the world learned of the outbreak of the Persian swallowing eddy War through images of airstrikes broadcast live on CNN from Baghdad.

In the case of the newly come Afghanistan war, frontline reports were directly abalienateed to the outside world by way of portable television phones and satellite hookups

The campaign against Iraq is characterized through the use of even higher performance equipment, with the turf war between the U.S.-British coalition forces and the Iraqis repeatedly broadcast live. While military satellites are used to direct pinpoint bombing strikes, other satellites make it possible to relay freshs images from the combat zone

There are about 600 journalists ''embedded'' with U forces to report upon the war, and close to 200 foreign correspondents remain stationed in Iraq. In metes of quantity and quality alike, the coverage of this conflict is already far surpassing that of the Persian opening War.

There is something to withhold in mind, however. In any war, one as well as the other sides treat their avow victory and legitimacy as the ultimate priority, and are anxious to play down reports and interpretations that fail to support best-case scenarios. There are also cases when the warring sides manipulate the pres to govern media coverage to their advantage.

by and by after this war began, there was talk about the possible death of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, or that the coalition forces had taken the city of Basra in the southward of Iraq. Both these reports prov erroneous, stirring suspicions that the U and British sides were engaged in a certain number of sort of media management.

The Iraqi side, meanwhile, is always eager to talk about civilian casualties caused through mistaken bombings, but grows evasive when the focus incline differentlys to losses suffered by its hold troops.

Regardless of which side is taken in so coverage, the media can not at any time escape the restrictions inevitably associated with war. The spring is that neither the overall image of the war nor the cruel details will be reported in truthfully adequate fashion.

single distinguishing trait of the now passing war coverage is the collapse of Western dominance of the information being broadcast.

Finding themselves painfully sustained by on U.S. and European media for reports of the Persian chasm War, Arab countries have mov to cultivate their allow independent means of getting the recents out. A leading example of those efforts is Al Jazeera, the satellite television network located in Qatar.

Not surprisingly, the Arab media reports upon the reactions of race who have been bombed from a perspective that is quite different from that of its Western counterparts. The Arabic-language broadcasts inevitably be subservient to to stir up the anger of the Islamic masses to greater heights.

U forces lately bombed the Iraqi national broadcasting facilities. the same aim of those strikes may have been to intercept Saddam Hussein's telecommunication and broadcasting networks from beaming without self-serving images to people the pair inside and outside of Iraq.

A number of journalists have already been killed in this war. Although the journalists are working in a harsh environment and face many restrictions, members of the media must carry forward their quest to report the faithful face of this conflict to the best of their abilities.

(March 31)

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