Around the time the U.S. was ignoring the U.N. for the final time and tony blair was constantly on the news with another impassioned pleas to the people that following “our closet friends and allies” into war was a good idea, i began to sense a change in the way news channels were presenting the information.
The war news graphics were being rolled out, the retired generals were being dusted off and live cameras that showed ordinary street scenes started to pop up.
Other news stories were being edged out in favor of another graphic of a big Abraham's tank or more analysts poring over the same news.
It was around this time i found myself watching the news like it was live coverage of some major sports event that was waiting to happen, like watching the intro to a real time strategy game.
I found myself glued to the same reports waiting for the next scrap of news that had been thrown to the news pool by the media savvy military. I decided that as soon as cnn (the channel that i had chosen) devoted their entire channel to the war i would start recording, hooking up an old powermac to the cable box, record is what i did.
The tv was tuned into cnn constantly and the repeating pattern of the news reports,coupled with the constant news graphics numbed my head and distanced me from the true horror that was going on.
Day after day, the war rolled on, and day after day the mac recorded a frame every few seconds.
The piece is a slice of cnn from march 19th to the 17th of april 2003.
From the start of the "shock and awe" to the point cnn decided to change the logo to
"Iraq after saddam" and other news started to punctuate the war reporting.
(it was far from the end of violence though)
For me, its much less of an anti war statement, but more of a study of the cyclic and desensitizing nature of 24 hr news channels.
