Monday, March 24, 2003		Feature

Web complements TV in this Gulf war
Caroline Humer

Pamela Bates, a US Army wife, who has launched an Adopt-A-Soldier Website, shows the site on her laptop at her home at Fort Benning, Georgia. Bates started the site in January, shortly before her husband was deployed to Kuwait for war with Iraq. The Website that is part of the MSN group site, has linked supporters with more than 10,000 members of the military.

NEWS junkies who watched the Gulf War unfold on CNN a little over a decade ago will have a new medium to satisfy their cravings during another armed conflict with Iraq.

For the first time since the Internet became a fixture of American life, the stage has been set for a huge international story that could expose the strengths and weaknesses of the Web as a purveyor of breaking news.

The Internet as it is now known didn’t exist in 1991, when Iraq was driven out of Kuwait by allied forces. Now as Washington wars with Baghdad, more than 68 million homes and millions of US businesses have access to the Web.

That will make the medium figure prominently in keeping Americans informed. Unlike the lightning-quick US military action in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, the Iraq conflict is expected to be the kind of news event that will lend itself to specialised coverage on the Web.

"The coverage of the war against terror in Afghanistan was fast, accurate, reliable and comprehensive, but it was relatively one-dimensional. This is the first major conflict to be covered at the beginning of the broadband era," says Mitch Gelman, CNN.com executive producer.

The Internet can provide more detailed coverage than traditional media because it allows sites to post complete documents, first-hand civilian accounts and, due to the growth of high-speed Internet, video on demand.

On the down side, many independent news operations on the Internet have slimmed down or disappeared altogether since the IT bubble burst in 1999. That might hurt the quality of online news coverage of the Gulf war, one expert said.

"There are fewer bodies, but it may also be that they can accomplish more because they have more tools," said David Carlson, Cox/Palm Beach Post professor of New Media Journalism at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Improved technology in recent years has made it easier to publish stories and provide information from a wide variety of sources, Carlson said.

That leaves the established media — newspapers, news wire services such as Associated Press and Reuters, and the major US broadcast networks—to lead the coverage.

With months to prepare, the major networks have laid careful plans on how to use their reporters for television as well as the Internet.

"A lot has changed in the Internet since 1999 and post 9/11. I think you’ve seen a much greater integration of Websites and their corresponding broadcast or print entities in that time," said Refet Kaplan, executive editor of Foxnews.com, which is part of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Entertainment Group.

FoxNews.com, MSNBC.com and CNN.com are adding sections dedicated to that topic, just in case. On its site, www.foxnews.com/waronterror, Fox features stories on Iraq and how the war is affecting the USA.

MSNBC.com, the Website associated with the cable network that is a combined venture of Microsoft and General Electric, takes a similar approach with a "Conflict with Iraq" section at www.msnbc.com/news/attacktfront.asp.

The sites will include everything from streaming video and weapons descriptions to battlefield maps. They are also making plans to push out e-mails to viewers-on-the-go to let them keep up with the latest troop movements.

Websites like Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) are compiling video clips, photos and stories from news agencies like Reuters or the Associated Press, while the government has a cache of its own news clips (www.defenselink.mil/afis/afrts/video /2minute.html.)

Devoted to opposition to the war is the site, www.antiwar.com, for those with different sensibilities.

How large a role the Internet plays in following events as they unfold will depend in part on when the action takes place.

Iraq is nine hours ahead of New York time, so if most of the fighting takes place at night in Iraq, most Americans will be working and perhaps surfing the Internet.

If the action takes place during out of work hours, US news junkies may turn to television or the Internet, and perhaps even a combination of the two.

MSNBC.com is preparing for those with high-speed broadband access at work with plans for streaming video right on its front page.

"A very big, healthy chunk of our audience is at work and beyond the first blush of the war and the advent of hostilities, there will be a lot of people who go on with their lives and will be at work," said Bob Aglow, executive producer for news at MSNBC.com.

CNN, part of the vast AOL Time Warner media conglomerate, dominated the Gulf War coverage with its live television reporting. This time, the cable network is planning to attract viewers with extra Website features rather than streaming video. It offers video, but as a paid service.

The Website www.cnn.com has a section called War on Iraq, with interactive maps, explanations of weapons and a war tracker area devoted to breaking news like troop movements.