TV REVIEW: 'It's comin'. It's comin' soon," promised the Fox News presenter on Tuesday. Be patient. Calm yourselves. Pull the fridge closer to the sofa. Turn the lights off. Put the placard in the attic. Both the shock and the awe will be along shortly.
Build-up to war, news channels, all week
News bulletins, Fox News, all week
Newsnight, BBC2, Wednesday
Time after time during the week, newsreaders asked their reporters in the field about the state of the troops. They must be ready? Are they getting itchy feet? They must want to put all that training to the test? It was emotional displacement, of course. What each of the people at CNN, Fox, Sky, BBC, ITV and ITN meant, was that they were ready. There's going to be a war, so let's get on with it. Their cameras were in position, their reporters at the front line. Now they were like sprinters, raised in the blocks, waiting for the guns.
Most of their reporters had settled in nicely with their units. "Embedded" is the phrase coined by the military. Never trust a phrase coined by the military. Reports across the news channels quickly took on a mesmerising similarity. There would be pictures of exercising troops. "The time for practice is over," the reporter would intone. "The next time these soldiers fire their guns, it will be at the enemy." There would be an interview with an officer. "We're professionals ready to do a job, we're just waiting for the political go-ahead," he would say. Then there would be an interview with a soldier. "We're professionals ready to do a job, we're just waiting for the go-ahead from our commanders," he would say. There would be a comment about the dust and the fear of chemical attack, and it would be polished off with a piece to camera, as vehicles rumbled past behind. "There is no doubt," the reporter would tell us, "that these men are professionals ready to do a job, and are just waiting for the go-ahead."
The embedding went on. CNN began advertising the fact next to its journalists' bylines, as a boast rather than a warning. Tokens of complicity became commonplace with depressing swiftness. Reporter after reporter referred to a "clean war", without any pause to ponder that oxymoron. They marvelled at the technology, the "pretty fancy gizmos", as Fox News so cutely labelled weapons capable of sucking all the air from your body or frying all your nerve endings. On Wednesday, Sky News's Emma Hurd reported on the soldiers taking their anti-nerve agent pills without making any reference to Gulf War Syndrome. The time for context was over. War is all that matters now. We'll be drinking arak in Baghdad by Easter.
ITN's James Mates was first in the flak jacket, donning it as early as Monday as he watched an anti-mine device drop from the sky and explode in the distance. He allowed the shock to run through his shoulders before removing his helmet and turning to camera - a brave act given that any flak from the distant explosion would have only begun its journey towards him. He held the helmet at his side, and delivered his lines, like Lt. Col. Kilgore with an NUJ card. Wednesday's sandstorm threatened to extend the tedium, but at least it gave the reporters a new backdrop of whipping camouflage nets and a dusty gloom. It gave them new props too, with reporters addressing the camera while wearing protective goggles and scarves. By the end of the week, they were rushing to report with their gas masks on, replaying footage of the moment they had to don them. "Mmmm mm mmm," we heard them report. "Now back to the studio."
Props are becoming important in this conflict. There is no point in being a war reporter, if you look like you've just stepped out of the salon. Stubble grew dark, hair tatty. Emma Hurd unpacked her best khakis. There is no Kate Adie yet, with fatigues and a name badge, but it can't be far away.
Only Col. Oliver North has gone that far, but then his skin must be khaki-coloured by now. North is a military analyst for Fox News, and in case you were to mistake him for any other Col. Oliver North, he has made sure never to take the uniform off. He doesn't quite pour into it as he once did, but he still stands so rigid that you find yourself with a view of the undercarriage of his chin. Every morning he appears fuzzily by videophone, interviewing some grunt who is so proud to be standing beside Col. Oliver North, the only thing you see is his chin. North then files his report in the style of a staff sergeant. "The message to Saddam Hussein: call your travel agent!" North yelled at us on Tuesday morning.
Pretty soon, Saddam will be "D.E.A.D." And in case you didn't get the message, he spelled it out some more. "D.E.A.D. Dead!" Col. Oliver North, as is the duty of every good American, detests the French. He didn't think much of their offer to help in case of chemical attack. "My guess is that the French are going to have to eat foie gras somewhere else other than Baghdad!" North is an analyst in only the loosest sense of the word, but then Fox News can only loosely be termed a news channel. That it so often insists that it is "fair and balanced" is the only warning sign you need, but plenty more are given. It has a fluttering Stars and Stripes in the corner of the screen and its reporters wear flag pins on their lapels. Its newsreaders editorialise constantly. They mocked the impending capitulation of Iraqi forces, soldiers who in the last Gulf War, we were reminded, surrendered even to an Italian camera crew. Not even the Italians, was the insinuation, would surrender to an Italian camera crew.
When the French are mentioned it is always accompanied by the universal facial tic for disgust. As one presenter, E.D. Donahey, said when her co-host mentioned France, "Make me ill to my stomach this morning. Eugh!" There was a phone-in on the "Fickle French" after the report came through of their offer of involvement. "In what," snorted Donahey, "Cooking?" Fox News bulletins are delivered over the constant swoosh of graphics. No word is allowed appear on screen without a sound similar to a vault locking. No programme can be advertised without the soundtrack of pumping heavy metal. Everybody shouts, as if they have been slightly deafened by the noise. The news is delivered as if it is a sports commentary, and it is riddled with the sort of wild-west lingo that is the trademark of the Bush era. The ultimatum meant that Saddam had "48 hours to get out of Dodge". As a news channel, it has only a passing regard for news. The diplomatic efforts at the UN were described as "this whole thing with the Security Council". Its attitude is that of Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb like a buckaroo at the end of Dr. Strangelove.
Across the news channels, Wednesday was a long day. There was the promise of war, but not yet the action. However, while those journalists embedded in their units speculated, Newsnight's Richard Watson just went out and established some facts. There were rumours of troops moving into the demilitarised zone between Iraq and Kuwait, but most relied on military handlers with neither confirmation nor denial. Watson - not "embedded" in any unit - hopped into a truck and roamed the border until he found what he was looking for. In the formerly de-militarised zone he came across a six-mile column of US and British hardware disappearing into the sandstorm. In the desert he came across lines of transport helicopters, water tankers being filled, temporary bridges folded up on the back of trucks.
Watson had found the story somewhere other than in a military press release.
It was a strange thing, this view of events from a different perspective, away from the press centres and the restrictions; footage in which gangs of journalists aren't to be seen wandering around in the background. It was a reminder that before this war had even started, we were already getting too used to seeing the war from only one angle.