ALL WAR, MOST OF THE TIME, FOR NATION'S TV NETWORKS.

Byline: David Kronke Television Writer

Operation Iraqi Freedom began less as a war and more as a tease. An attack of biblical proportions was promised with the ``shock and awe campaign,'' but small, sporadic bombings hit Baghdad the first couple of days before the relentless blasts erupted across Iraq on Friday. Ground troops met with little shock or awe as they tooled through the deserts.

The surprise attacks drew sputtering, disoriented responses from Iraq's military, suggesting the initial attack's aim to ``decapitate'' the country's leadership succeeded. But it also, understandably, threw the TV news organizations off their game. Expecting a long, loud conflagration to begin on Thursday morning (already Thursday night in Iraq), news organizations were surprised by the hastily ordered Wednesday attack, then forced to prattle in a mostly aimless fashion for hours and hours while the skies over Baghdad went eerily silent again.

Scant reporter presence

When violence erupted with a vengeance in Baghdad as the shock-and-awe campaign began in earnest on Friday, American reporters had already been forced out of the city (CNN's Nic Robertson and Rym Brahimi were expelled Friday), leaving news organizations to rely on Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV for its most compelling images. While American news organizations focused on the heroism of the military, BBC coverage (seen on BBC America) assumed a decidedly different posture. Nicholas Witchell watched the attack with what he called ``a heavy heart,'' worrying about the fate of ``thousands of ordinary Iraqi citizens. It will be a difficult day tomorrow when we see the damage.''

While the networks repeatedly aired footage of the explosions rocking Baghdad Friday (and Fox News paused to cheer Wall Street's rally as part of the war effort), reports only occasionally mentioned the allied soldiers killed in combat. Footage of the grisly, close-range battle that claimed soldiers' lives wasn't available, so such blanket coverage of the spectacular bombing runs of Operation Iraqi Freedom had the curious effect of making the unseen fact of American casualties seem elusive - unreal in the face of what otherwise seemed a wildly successful campaign.

When the networks weren't showing the footage of Friday's bombings, they often reverted to digital special effects replicating the attacks - war as a video game.

Lighthearted chatting

But late Thursday (Friday morning in Iraq), with no real news seeming, apparently, to be good news, anchors were virtually jovial. ABC's Peter Jennings was swapping travel stories with a military general: ``What's that like? I haven't been there in a while,'' he asked about a small Middle Eastern village. CNN's Aaron Brown was positively punchy - he was almost giddy at the images of tanks traversing the desert - ``You don't have to be a journalist to appreciate this,'' he said. Referring to a videophone image of a bush near an idled tank, he joked, 'That's the one piece of brush in the desert - we found it.'' He suggested a book on Saddam Hussein was ``not beach reading.'' CNN's morning anchor - Paula Zahn - in contrast has been very professional, asking smart questions and intent on getting the news out.

NBC anchor Tom Brokaw was the first on the air at 6:32 p.m. PST Wednesday as the first volley hit a bunker reportedly containing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, announcing, ``War planes could be in the air.'' In fact, they were just missiles. ABC was caught most off-guard - Jennings didn't make it on camera until just before President Bush spoke at 7:15 p.m. Until Jennings arrived, ABC's coverage was filled with such awkward pauses that Jennings' surrogate was laughing. (ABC was caught flat-footed Thursday morning as well, yammering with a former Congressman over policy, while CNN was reporting that more explosions had hit near Baghdad.)

The Brokaw report

By then, some of the networks had all but declared victory for the United States' coalition - a faster call than Florida in 2000's presidential election, even. ``We don't want to destroy the infrastructure of Baghdad, because in a few days, we're gonna own that country,'' Brokaw declared before Bush even uttered a word. ``We have Baghdad pretty well wired,'' CBS' Dan Rather boasted, speaking on behalf of America's intelligence community. ``This may convince (Saddam) he cannot survive an American onslaught.''

Later, Rather got a little self-serving when he observed, ``Saddam Hussein, anyone who's ever been around him knows the essence of this man is survival.'' And how many Americans have been around him? Oh, that's right - Dan Rather, who's interviewed the Iraqi dictator twice.

Even Fox News Channel, whose correspondents you might expect to be reporting while wearing cheerleader outfits, was more circumspect during initial reporting and got news out quickly: Rita Cosby announced early that America was in fact aware of where Saddam had been hours before the first attack. Shepherd Smith, quoting Reuters, announced that Americans had taken over Iraqi state radio 45 minutes before CNN's Christiane Amanpour had the same news.

When the action slowed

But when there was down time - and in the first 48 hours, there was plenty - Fox reverted to its usual jingoism, particularly Cosby. (Perhaps such cheerleading gives you access to better sources within the administration.) Oliver North spent the wee hours of Thursday morning demonstrating his prowess at putting on his gas mask (``It's not a matter of bravado,'' insisted North; only Oliver North would have to convince viewers that he wasn't posturing.)

And Fox reporter David Lee Miller, reporting from the media center in Qatar, was positively breathless as he informed us that he could give us no information! I was out of the room at one point on Thursday and heard a particularly urgent voice - thinking bombing had continued anew, I returned to the room, only to see Miller again, reporting that many of his media colleagues were sleeping and the news blackout was continuing!

Contrast Miller with CNN's Nic Robertson, who was calm as he reported the blasts from Baghdad. Iraqi officials removed Robertson and other American correspondents from the city before the shock-and-awe attack began. Robertson was clearly more poised than ABC correspondent Richard Engel, who told Peter Jennings, ``I'm not sure what I'm particularly looking at,'' just after the initial attack on Baghdad. Jennings had to prompt him, then was forced to leave Baghdad for other reportage with the dismissive quip, ``While we're letting Richard check his compass ...''

Just because nothing was going on didn't mean there was no potential for drama. Fox News kept a graphic reading ``TERROR ALERT: HIGH'' on its screen throughout coverage. And CNN exploited the pixilated images emanating from videophones for all the drama they wrought. CNN's Walter Rodgers, embedded with a military unit, didn't have much to say. (``There's absolutely no action that we can see at all'' he reported.) But given the eerie industrial scraping noises on the soundtrack and the phosphorescent-green, wobbly images, it was plenty compelling. Likewise, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, reporting from a sandbagged bunker in his gas mask, didn't have any fresh information, but the image bespoke danger.

Videophone's dramatic images

You get the feeling that even if videophone technology got cleaner and crisper, news organizations wouldn't use the improved equipment - the primitive visuals are effective in conveying the sense of implicit menace.

Networks' coverage in the first couple of days was fairly calculated and pragmatic. Wednesday night, Fox and NBC continued coverage through the night - Fox and NBC (with MSNBC) each have an entire news network's resources to draw from, while ABC and CBS reverted to regular programming. (KTLA Channel 5 stayed with CNN) Thursday night, ABC and Fox stayed with news coverage, while CBS and NBC returned to regular programming - CBS and NBC traditionally enjoy blockbuster ratings on Thursdays, while ABC and Fox probably did better with news coverage than they usually do with their wan Thursday programming.

NBC and MSNBC landed freelance reporter Peter Arnett, who was in Baghdad for CNN when the first Gulf War began and returned to shoot documentaries for National Geographic, for his insights from the besieged city. Brokaw also seemed to get the broadest range of interview subjects - he did speak to anti-war advocates, though he challenged them with questions more pointed than those for the military interviewees. Rami Khouri, editor of a Lebanese newspaper, succinctly described for Brokaw the no-win nature of war - he wasn't for the battle, but on the other hand, he noted, ``Most people in this region are sick and tired of this kind of regime. ... There's a problem with Arab autocrats and there's a problem with Western imperial armies.''

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Photo:

CNN's coverage of the war in Iraq on Friday included this image of Iraqis surrendering to a British Royal Marine.

Associated Press