High-tech war reporting tools get first tour of duty

Modern technology has changed the face of war reporting, with the latest conflict in Iraq providing the first outing for many technologies designed and built in peacetime.

While media coverage of major parts of the last Gulf war was limited to voice and text reports, new technology is expected to make the current conflict a full multimedia experience.

Reporters from the last Iraq conflict struggled just to maintain a phone connection, in many instances. This time around, they'll be competing to provide broadcast-quality video from anywhere there is news.

Enabling those efforts will be systems such as the IPT Suitcase, a briefcase-sized satellite broadcasting system developed by Swedish company Swe-Dish Satellite Systems. The 75-pound system is designed to transmit video and audio via satellite using standard internet protocols at speeds of up to two megabits per second - equivalent to an average DSL connection.

Hampus Delin, marketing director for Swe-Dish, said several major broadcast networks have bought IPT Suitcase systems for deployment in Iraq. "For journalists 'embedded' in the coalition forces, it's a perfect choice," he said. "The small size also allows the news network to dispatch several smaller teams to cover multiple angles of the story."

Networks have embraced compact broadcast systems like this - NBC and parent company General Electric developed their own, for example - as the next step after satellite telephones, Delin said.

"In some ways, this is a satellite telephone on steroids," he said. "It's offering full broadcast quality in a package that is fully manageable by a crew of one reporter and one cameraman."

Satellite phones are expected to still be deployed in full force, however, and British company TVZ will be turning some of them into full-fledged broadcast systems with its Laptop News Gathering (LNG) System.

The system's main component is software that can turn digital video into highly compressed files suitable for transmission over a satellite phone. Journalists download video to their laptop, run it through the LNG software and then connect the laptop to a satellite phone to transmit files.

The BBC and ABC News were among the first customers for LNG when it was released three months ago, said Ken Herron, TVZ's company director, and they'll have 30 copies in the field as part of their Iraq coverage. The networks realised some time ago that there would be intense competition to get high-quality images out of Iraq.

Herron said: "Technology moves forward so quickly, as do journalists' expectations. What TV correspondents expect now is lightweight equipment that will enable them to transmit excellent-quality reports, wherever they are."

Heavy demand for war-related news is also likely to encourage news operations to experiment with new internet tools for delivering information.

The war has already proved a boon for weblogs, or "blogs", basic text pages that serve as a way for writers to correspond directly with their audiences. Many mainstream news outlets have begun posting blogs from reporters, and more are likely to give it a try as news-hungry readers look for new perspectives on the Iraq conflict, said Paul Grabowicz, director of the New Media Program at the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He hopes new outlets will show some discretion before jumping into the blog pool.

"You need to think about: Why are you doing this, what's the point?" Grabowicz said. "There are valuable things you can do with blogs to engage readers. They can also be a junkyard, a way to unload everything that didn't make it into the main story."

The war could also be a boon for rich site summary (RSS), an emerging tool for web sites that frequently update content to spread fresh information to readers. Sites that haven't established RSS feeds are unlikely to tackle such a complex project during the war, Grabowicz said, but they'll be paying attention to sites already using the technology.

"This is not the time when people are not going to be engaging in technical work like an establishing an RSS feed," he said. "But there's going to be intense scrutiny of how people get their news about the war. If RSS looks useful, it'll become more of a priority for news organisations."