A War Between Neighbors, Seen From Their Back Yard

Fox anchor Shepard Smith and correspondent Jennifer Griffin broadcast live in the midst of a Hezbollah rocket attack in the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona. (Associated Press)

Brian Williams was talking to a Detroit native fighting in the Israeli military as the soldier was launching a round of shells into southern Lebanon.

"One of these shells," the NBC anchor told him, "today or tomorrow, going by the law of averages, is going to kill a 6-year-old boy somewhere." Darone Speelman replied that any child's death was incredibly painful but that his family, and Israel, were at risk.

The 13-day battle between Israel and both Hamas and Hezbollah may be the most up-close-and-personal ever transmitted by television. Unlike Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, where conditions were either too dangerous or tightly controlled by the U.S. military, the Mideast conflict of 2006 allows journalists to roam freely, not just watching rocket attacks but interviewing victims' families, neighbors, refugees and just about anyone else. It is Vietnam on satellite steroids.

But the very technology that enables reporters to show footage of a Lebanese father soon after his young son has been killed by a bomb blast carries not just an emotional punch but the power to distort the overall picture.

The deployment of top anchors -- Williams, ABC's Charles Gibson, CNN's Anderson Cooper, Fox's Shepard Smith -- has given the conflict a huge boost in visibility. So has the work of many correspondents who are veterans of the region, including NBC's Richard Engel, ABC's Dan Harris and CBS's Lara Logan, who is co-anchoring from Israel.

Since Israel has inflicted far more damage on Lebanon than it has sustained, a heavy focus on the more than 300 civilian victims in that war-ravaged country could help tilt public opinion against the Jewish state. But that would overlook two key facts: that Israel retaliated only after Hezbollah crossed a U.N.-sanctioned border to kill and capture several Israeli soldiers, and that Hezbollah fighters hide -- and hide their weapons -- among civilians to make counterattacks more difficult.

A Hezbollah leader last week gave Engel a tour of a Beirut neighborhood, including a supermarket basement where residents were taking shelter. Engel made sure to tell viewers: "Hezbollah shares responsibility for making these people homeless, but it's now feeding them."

CNN's Nic Robertson got a similar tour of bomb damage from Hezbollah officials who "wanted to show us that their civilians are being caught up in this conflict," he reported. Robertson concluded that what he was shown "looked like civilian buildings" but acknowledged that he did not go inside them. Hezbollah showed CBS's Elizabeth Palmer the ruins around its former stronghold in Beirut, "but no one was allowed to stay too long," she said, noting that the guerrilla group is "determined that outsiders will only see what it wants them to see."

On the other side of the border, sympathy for Israelis was inevitable when Harris interviewed the parents of soldier Ehud Goldwasser, who was kidnapped by Hezbollah, or Logan talked to a Haifa woman who rushed her four children to a shelter after a missile from Lebanon hit the apartment building across the street. Israel showed its concern in the image war in recent days by bombing not just Hezbollah's TV station but two Lebanese stations unrelated to the group, which often fed footage of bomb devastation to Western news outlets. Israel is also censoring real-time reports of bomb damage locations to avoid helping Hezbollah with its targeting.

Despite the potential for each side to score propaganda points by spotlighting its most vulnerable victims, the heavy television coverage has succeeded in conveying the horror of the war and the terror of ordinary families who find themselves in harm's way. This kind of reporting is extremely difficult in Iraq, where interviewing ordinary citizens is fraught with danger because of the daily toll exacted by suicide bombers, roadside explosive devices and some terrorists who are deliberately trying to kill Westerners in general and journalists in particular.

Still, anyone who saw NBC's Engel, CNN's Cooper and Fox's Smith duck or react as bombs exploded nearby, or watched CBS's Logan near a raging fire moments after a rocket struck an Israeli village, instantly grasps the risks that reporters are taking in Israel and Lebanon. Two Lebanese, one a photojournalist and the other an employee of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp., were killed over the weekend by Israeli air strikes.

Partisans of Israel strongly object to coverage that they believe depicts Arabs opposing Israel in a favorable light. Still many Western journalists may have a natural sympathy for Israel, especially given the years of terrorist attacks against the country and the refusal of Hamas and Hezbollah to recognize its right to exist. Critics say this has dampened debate in the American press over whether Israel's response to the initial attacks has been disproportionate.