Big Brother Iraq

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 23 MARCH 2003

‘AS I SPEAK to you, every part of my body is entirely sealed!” said Emma in the northern Kuwaiti desert. I couldn’t be sure it was true – Sky News’ coverage of the war in the Gulf, while impressively thorough, couldn’t take us that far into the heart of the campaign.

Emma was a frightening sight – in her head-to-toe charcoal-lined camouflage protective suit and her weirdly anachronistic gas mask, she resembled some sort of paramilitary Womble. Throughout the day, whenever we crossed to the troops in northern Kuwait, Emma was either struggling into her protective gear or wriggling from it, the cold and fearful sound of the gas-alert siren or – almost indistinguishable – the all-clear in the background. On one occasion we crossed over to find that Emma had taken refuge in the bunker. The camera, fixed on its tripod, impassively showed distant men running, shouting, affixing their gas masks, kicking up small clouds of desert sand. For a terrible, terrible moment before sanity reasserted itself I leant closer to the screen, hoping something exciting might be about to happen. For that dreadful moment I forgot I was watching a war. It was as though I were watching Big Brother Iraq.

The 24-hour multi-channel coverage of operations in Iraq is even more surreal than coverage of the Gulf War in 1991. The various international news channels this time were better prepared, with journalists on the front lines, on aircraft carriers, attached to infantry units and tank divisions. The news-gathering and news-transmission operations are as carefully planned and executed as the military procedures themselves. What’s worse, with 10 years of Reality TV conditioning the way we experience real life and television – and real life on television – it becomes increasingly difficult not to treat the coverage as another species of entertainment, an unfolding saga with twists and turns and unexpected surprises.

Since Thursday morning the war has been playing itself out in our living rooms like an elaborate drama series, complete with theme music and credits and titles and celebrity guests and constant scrolling updates on the story so far. Strangely, having reporters there on the ground, speaking into the microphone with one hand blocking an ear against the noise of a Cobra helicopter gunship passing overhead, saying things like “There has been a fire-fight on the outskirts of Basra, just a few kilometres from here”, somehow does not make the war more real. It makes it seem like any other Reality show. We have seen so much on television pretending to be real, these last years, that nothing on television feels real any more.

Once again, Sky News has edged out the competition at CNN and BBC World in the battle of the broadcasters. While the others lapse occasionally into logos and channel idents and – CNN’s speciality – inserts explaining just how they have managed to set up their cameras and where the broadcasting unit is located, Sky’s coverage – or “intelligence”, I suppose you would say – has all the depth and variety you expect from modern war coverage. Plus, there is the quirky pleasure of hearing the Sky reporters refer to the “Dee-Em-Zed”, instead of the Americans’ “Dee-Em-Zee”.

I made some slight attempt to watch the local channels, but I was defeated. When I crossed over to e.tv, some local worthy was explaining to Debra Patta how the working classes of South Africa were going to bring the Bush regime to its knees by “boycotting American movies and American oil”. Over on SABC3, we were talking to Rene Horne, live in Baghdad. “It’s very tense here,” said Rene Horne, half a day after the first missiles started landing in Baghdad. “Almost like a war zone.”

When the war first started I was jumping from one channel to the next – like the multi-camera views in the Big Brother house – but now I seldom budge from Sky. Oh yes, when men in distant parts are killing each other, I demand nothing but the best.