LOOKING THROUGH FOG OF TV FOR REALITY OF WAR IN IRAQ.

Byline: David Kronke Television Writer

CNN's Jeff Greenfield fretted Tuesday that the dizzying whiplash as tag-team anchors hop to correspondents around the globe could contribute a rudderless lack of context to the war coverage: ``Quick as the media are with bells and whistles,'' Greenfield worried, ``the pace can paint a distorted figure.''

Others in the media have commented that the constant coverage is numbing viewers.

Reality is, the war moves too fast to get a good bead on. And these are benumbing times - even the images of Sept. 11 no longer shock us as they once did; they've even been incorporated into an upcoming TV movie starring James Woods as Rudy Giuliani.

It's difficult to imagine viewers didn't understand precisely the high stakes involved in the extraordinary Saturday night images of the battle at the Iraqi port Umm Qasr. British reporter David Bowden, sitting in a trench alongside soldiers, calmly described the chaotic action as the possibilities of technology and contemporary live reporting were fully realized. Likewise, in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, CNN correspondent Walter Rodgers offered up a riveting, hallucinatory account via videophone of 7th Cavalry tanks crossing the Euphrates River in a blinding sandstorm, dodging unseen Iraqi snipers from the side of the road. No one could have possibly felt complacency creeping in during these two lengthy, compelling reports.

Still, whipsaw coverage certainly fails to provide context, as revealed in CNN's poll finding the number of Americans satisfied with the war effort plummeting from 71 percent last Friday to 38 percent on Monday. Sunday's fretful coverage of coalition soldiers being killed and captured was to blame, though casualty numbers were miraculously below established standards of conflict.

Rather than dodgy war coverage, as Howard Kurtz suggested to Paula Zahn Wednesday on CNN, the media's bigger sin was toeing the government's line for months leading up to the war by suggesting Saddam Hussein's forces would be easily steamrollered. That there has been actual resistance surprised some journalists; the tone of reporting has become a smidgen more skeptical.

Overall, the networks are doing a sincere job of trying to disseminate information as efficiently, accurately and sensitively as possible. However, they could scale back the whiz-bang computer graphics and spend more time allowing anchors to catch their breath and provide a context for the clutter of images and statistics their embedded reporters offer.

They definitely need to tone down their histrionic promos - CNN touted ``A new enemy: a special coalition led by Saddam's son'' like the villain of a James Bond movie, while MSNBC fatuously hyped former TV wrestler Jesse Ventura as ``one of America's most respected independent voices.''

While indulging in titillation, networks may have erred to the discreet side over the weekend by declining to show images (repeatedly described as ``repulsive'') of Americans who had been captured and killed by Iraqis. Viewers were being spared the ugly truth of war, though Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren and CNN's Kurtz argued reasonably that if we're a country mature and sober enough to send our troops into battle, we should be mature enough to see what can result.

There are, still, moments of slanted coverage.

Fox's Bill O'Reilly rabidly railed against ``those clowns at Al-Jazeera,'' the Arab world's equivalent of Fox News, and screeched that The New York Times' war coverage ``does not reflect the truth.'' Similarly, MSNBC's Chris Matthews wasn't shy about expressing his perspective while interviewing New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman. Interrupting Friedman while he was making a delicate point, Matthews barked, ``Are these people (Arabs) smart enough to see we're right?''

Perhaps the most grating performer of all is CNN's Aaron Brown. His usual program, ``Newsnight,'' is excellent - Brown is the rare TV journalist who aspires to soulfulness - but he works from a finely tuned script there. As he extemporaneously free-associates while anchoring war coverage, flamboyantly parsing his words and feelings as if constructing profound haikus, it looks as though he's auditioning for the position of the Nation's Emoter.

Look, we all hope for the best for our troops, but doing so before the camera doesn't disseminate information, which is, after all, Brown's job. Brown's colleague Wolf Blitzer conveys authority by simply dispensing news without smarm.

By this scorecard, CNN provides the most exhaustively complete coverage, Fox trucks in the most crowd-pleasing perspectives (though Shepard Smith tones it down somewhat, and his demeanor and transitions to field reporters - ``What's up, bro?'' - are unpretentious) and MSNBC lands somewhere in between (Lester Holt anchors coverage solidly but lacks CNN's resources and Fox's pit-bull personalities). By the official polls (Nielsen Media Research), Fox News is averaging the most viewers in prime time, with CNN second and MSNBC third.

For those seeking more sobriety, more impartiality (and less pulchritude) in their coverage, here are some options:

CNNfn frequently airs CNN International's coverage, which thanks to its global perspective is more measured - even its war logo is less incendiary than the domestic networks' - and even scores an occasional scoop (it announced Tuesday that Iraqi TV had been silenced before the American networks had the news).

BBC America occasionally features British coverage but lately has reverted back to normal programming. C-SPAN sometimes offers Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporting, but it seems pretty spotty.

World Link TV strives to present a global perspective - it runs English- language news from Germany - and for those not gung-ho about the war, offers oft-eloquent panel discussions, including one titled ``The Active Opposition.''