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Article: The video phone war: The new technology enabled television photographers to provide viewers with a closer look at the early days of the fighting in Afghanistan. That look, however, wasn't crystal clear.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- American Journalism Review
- Article date:
- November 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 University of Maryland. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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If Vietnam was America's first "television war," then the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan will go down in the annals of history as our first "videophone war." During the first week of the conflict, the closest views of the fighting were provided in live reports by correspondents using videophones--literally, cameras plugged into satellite phones.
It's true that reporters traveling with rebels in the remote mountains of northern Afghanistan never seemed to transmit much more than a jerky talking head or a dark and grainy night picture punctuated with the occasional explosion of green.
But despite sometimes inferior-quality pictures, the videophone ...