Oregonian - March 28, 2003
CNN anchor takes flak for war coverage Peter Ames Carlin
Somewhere on the other side of the planet, missiles are launched. A city explodes. Soldiers dodge bullets and try to kill their enemy.
And chances are, you're watching it happen live.
This is war in the era of Real Time. A struggle fought partly by pocket cams and mini-satellite transponders, beamed through the unblinking eye of 24-hour cable news.
It has fueled some bracing, even astonishing, news reports. But the new technology, along with a commercial industry that requires networks and cable news outfits to turn big news stories into ceaseless marathon coverage, has also revealed the fault lines in modern TV news, and to an extent, society as a whole.
As the anchor of CNN's "NewsNight" and a fixture on the network's breaking-news team, Aaron Brown has been front and center in the network's war coverage for much of the last week.
Unsurprisingly, he's borne much of the criticism launched at CNN, and the American media in general: that it is more interested in dramatic pictures than intelligent analysis; that it is turning the war into a reality TV show; that it has been co-opted by the administration and the military.
Or, conversely, that its portrayal of war's victims and protesters compromises national unity and saps the will of American soldiers.
"It's the most schizophrenic experience I've ever had," Brown said recently. "We're in a time when society is pretty coarse. People say awful things on both sides."
The New York-based anchor called from CNN's corporate headquarters in Atlanta, where he has temporarily relocated in order to work more closely with the channel's management. Brown is accustomed to receiving angry calls and e-mail from viewers, but he seems particularly stung by the vitriol from the antiwar movement.
"I wish I could totally walk away from the criticism, but I don't. I think there is some truth in it. Just not nearly as much as the people who have called me a warmonger would have me believe."
And while polls show that most Americans support President Bush's war strategy, a significant minority disagree. Some of them, including the protesters in Los Angeles who chanted "Shut down Aaron Brown!" last week, believe the media has all but ignored their dissent.
Brown thinks they may be right.
"Yeah, I think we were a little late to come to (the antiwar movement). There were some reasons why. It didn't seem to have a center we could focus on. The Democrats in Congress rolled over on the issue. Then (the movement) seemed to coalesce, and once it did we started to cover it."
Which, of course, only inspires wrath from the other side of the aisle.
"It makes some people crazy, but I try to remind them: If this isn't the beauty of democracy, I don't know what is," Brown says.
Brown, who grew up in Minnesota and spent the early part of his career anchoring for Seattle's KING and KIRO stations, is not the least controversial of the major anchors. Cerebral and a bit self-conscious, he can be a quirky on-air presence, quick to filter issues through his feelings, or comment on his own questions even as he's asking them.
When something upsets him, like the representative from Al-Jazeera who tried to defend the Qatar-based news network's use of video showing dead and captured U.S. soldiers, Brown will go ballistic. When he speaks to parents who have lost children in the war, he gets teary-eyed.
But if Brown leads with his emotions, he doesn't hesitate to let his guests do the same. Particularly the parents of soldiers who have been killed in action.
"One said he thought Bush was a liar. Another guy said, 'I wish the protesters would just shut up.' In both cases I said: 'This is a guy who just lost his child. If you can't cut that guy slack in that moment, shame on you.' People need to set their politics aside sometimes and simply understand that these are human beings under stress."
With so many emotions flowing so close to the surface, it's all the more difficult for Brown -- and every other network news anchor -- to mold all the strands of information into a comprehensible, accurate report. He's especially haunted by the thought of those live cameras beaming images home from the front.
"I've said this on the air: 'Let me remind you, this isn't 'Survivor: Iraq.' At any second something truly horrific could happen. That's what I worry about. That we're live in something that we think is OK, and then something horrific happens. Hopefully, it won't happen. But I feel it's inevitable that it will."
And this time around, we'll all have to see it with our own eyes. Peter Ames Carlin: 503-221-8562; petercarlin at news.oregonian.com