I'd like to quote Nancy Franklin's entire article about televised war coverage, from this week's New Yorker, but there isn't room, so here's a random snippet: "The cable news networks' ratings have shot up many hundreds of points as a result of the war, and, even with the sand blowing in their eyes and the war not going as well as they and the White House had led us to believe it would, they weren't about to let go of the adrenaline rush that they had helped fuel. (With banners such as "Showdown: Iraq" and "Target: Iraq," they had all but said, "Iraq, Here We Come!," and, when President Bush announced that Saddam Hussein had forty-eight hours to get out of town, MSNBC even put a countdown clock on the screen, which ticked off the minutes till kickoff time.)"