You may never have heard of William Howard Russell. About 150 years ago Mr. Russell became the first well-known war correspondent when he set off to cover the Crimean War for the Times of London.
Russell might not have had today's video phones and satellite uplinks, but he was quite a reporter. It was supposedly Russell's reporting that inspired Florence Nightingale to take off on her mission to the Crimea. It was Russell who wrote accounts of the charge of the Light Brigade. And Russell was so far ahead of the British government on key issues that they first learned about Russian peace proposals from his dispatches.
The idea of war correspondents caught on fast. One hundred fifty reporters, including Russell himself, covered the battlefields in the American Civil War. Today the corps of embedded journalists numbers over five hundred and hundreds more cover the action without being embedded in a US military unit.
The numbers may have changed dramatically. Technology may have transformed the experience of gathering the war news and telling the stories. But many of the issues that perplexed and challenged reporters of the last century and half continue to bedevil today's high tech reporters.
Governments have always tried to control the news and demonize the people on the other side of the battle lines. During World War I the government set up something called the Committee on Public Information. The chairman was a fellow named George Creel.
Creel's problem was to get Americans to hate the Germans. This was no small task in a country that had very nearly voted German as its official language and one with a large number of people of German descent. That didn't stop Creel.
He used the newspapers because there was no TV or radio then. And mostly he told lies. The most famous was the story of how German soldiers had hacked off the hands of a Belgian baby. American reaction to Creel's work is shown by a classic recruiting poster by James Montgomery Flagg.
On the poster a young man is seen tearing off his coat as if getting ready to fight. At his feet lies a newspaper with the headline, "Huns Kill Women and Children." The caption of the poster reads. "Tell that to the Marines!"
By the time the Second World War rolled around the government had become much more ambitious. Journalists were expected to practice "patriotic self-discipline." What they should and should not do was included in the Code of Wartime Practices.
Radio was the medium that was new to war reporting in World War II. Newspapers had been around in one form or another for centuries, but radio was new.
Person-in-the-Street interviews and song dedications were banned. After all, the Germans and Japanese might use them to send secret signals to their agents in the US. Radio stations were asked to broadcast inaccurate weather reports. After all, accurate weather reports could be key strategic information for the enemy.
In London a young radio journalist prepared radio reports of what the war was like seen from that vantage. "This is London," was the way Edward R. Murrow began his broadcasts while he established a style of broadcast reporting that set the standard for generations of journalists.
Print reporting changed too. Bill Mauldin's cartoons and Ernie Pyle's columns didn't focus on the grand strategies of generals. Instead they told the stories of young combat soldiers in a way that was realistic and affectionate at the same time.
By the time of Viet Nam it was television's turn to be the new medium, with new impact. Television brought graphic images of the war into America's living rooms. It also brought images of protestors and demonstrations. For the first time there was broad, public coverage of debate over how a war was being fought and whether it should be fought at all.
Those were important changes, but there were more changes ahead. In the years since Viet Nam the very idea of what news was, and how television would cover it changed dramatically.
Beginning in 1970 with the acquisition of WJRJ, a small UHF television station in Atlanta, a bright young man named Ted Turner established the first cable television superstation, turning WTBS into a national player. That was just the beginning.
About ten years later Turner came up with the idea for an all-news channel on cable TV. Being Ted Turner, he didn't just come up with the idea, he made it happen. Cable News Network (CNN) was born on June 1, 1980. CNN did more than change the way we watched the news. It changed the definition of what news was.
Before CNN, news was something that happened recently. How recently depended on the transmission technology available. For William Howard Russell it involved ships and sailing schedules. The time gap was weeks.
A hundred years later, film of the Coronation of Elizabeth II was flown across the Atlantic on a special plane with film developing equipment and rushed to television studios by motorcycle courier.
In 1963, when President John Kennedy was assassinated, the delay was down to about an hour. Walter Cronkite announced the president's death with these words "From Dallas, Texas, the flash -- apparently official -- President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time . . . approximately thirty-eight minutes ago."
What Ted Turner and CNN did was reduce the gap to zero. After CNN, news was something that was happening now. Once the gap was closed between event and reporting the next logical step was to let the viewers see the news event for themselves. The changing definition of news made this possible. So did technology.
There was a time when television cameras didn't leave the studio because they were too big and bulky. Over the years the cameras have gotten smaller and more reliable. That's made it possible to get the news out faster and faster and faster until suddenly things were moving so fast that there was no time to develop the story before it showed up on our living room television screens.
In Iraq today compact satellite dishes weigh in at 150 pounds or so. That's less than a quarter of what they used to weigh. That still requires a couple of folks to get the reporting and transmission job done.
You don't even need that with the new video phones. They only require one person.
The Iraq War is defining a new kind of war reporting because new technology makes it possible. Reporting can come from the front lines using computers and video phones and satellite technology. War correspondents can stay in touch with the office with that same technology. And they can stay in touch with the world using the Internet.
Email lets journalists get information from home and from sources. It allows viewers to share their ideas and feelings with news anchors. And it allows folks who can't be tied to the television set to get email updates on their computer or on a mobile device like a cell phone. The aptly named World Wide Web goes even farther.
We've reached a point where the top news Web sites have become a powerful alternative and supplement to television news. Even though the Web has actually become the preferred first choice for folks at work, television news is still the first place most folks go when they have the option. But when the TV journalists start to repeat themselves and their stories, the web is a great place to follow your own interests and deepen your understanding.
For war reporters and just plain folks the World Wide Web offers a wide selection of news reporting from sources around the world. With a few clicks of the mouse you can find sources from all over the world to balance out US-based reporting. The Web can be democratic, too.
A journalist or just about anyone with the opportunity to create their own stories or commentary can do so using a medium with the unlikely name of "blog." That's the shorter, popular version of Weblog, which is a Web site where the owner posts an online journal (or log) and links to other sites of interest.
In some ways blogs are like desktop publishing transferred to the Web. They allow anyone to become an instant pundit. There's no censorship or spin and there's no editorial control either. That means you're likely to get some typos and you may or may not be getting informed opinion or accurate data. What you do get is freshness.
Most bloggers are pretty opinionated. Some bloggers are out there to tell a story that they think needs to be told. Some seem to use their blog as a form of self-expression and therapy. Others want to get discovered and become a recognized war correspondent.
What started with William Howard Russell has become a massive worldwide enterprise, drawing both professionals and amateurs. Some things have not changed. There are still government attempts at control. There is still hardship and deceit. But none of that is really important.
Most important is the need to tell the stories of the men and women who fight and sometimes die. Lean forward and listen with me to the stories.
