The new FX/Steven Bochco Iraq war miniseries, "Over There," qualifies as cable news for a single, compelling reason: it imparts actual information--a scoop, really-- about the Iraq war. This breaking news happened in the last ten minutes of tonight's premiere episode. Here it is: soldiers suffer terribly, unbelievably, make-you-bleed-from-your-ears-just-to-hear-their-screams, lose-your-mind-just-to-hear-them-suffer, when they're wounded badly. Cable news doesn't report that, across the board, and to some extent it makes all news coverage of war sanitized. But the aftermath of war--the human toll--is never really "after." The damage is always in the present, and therefore always qualifies as news. Cable news finds itself in a quandary: it must report horrible realities, but only in context. "Over There" is truth incarnated as art; cable news coverage of war is truth incarnated as understanding.
So, cable news can be accused of omitting certain horrors of war, but in reality, it's just hewing to necessary journalistic convention. Cable news viewers need to know that it's at least a semi-safe bet that they or their children won't be accidentally traumatized by the gory details of a modern "Saving Private Ryan" when tuning in at 11am or 7pm. Still, it's a remarkable irony that a fictional, late-night drama is more free to convey a hard understanding of war than the reporters who risk their lives to witness incidents like the amputation at the end of "Over There" tonight, only to edit themselves in the end.
