Chicago Tribune | Will TV's filter shape a war? So, do journalists and journalism professors simply acquiese to this and "adjust?" Better drop the reporting classes and stick in some fiction-writing in its place. Can students who want to be journalists have an impact on a system and media that is so ill-suited to conveying the reality of our lives? E-mail me if you want to talk about this.

"Whatever happens in Iraq, then, after the initial crush of live coverage, we won't be watching war per se but the ready-for-prime-time stories culled from it. There will be heroes and villains, loss and mourning, symbolic events and stirring pictures. Yet as those stories unfold, they won't exactly be "reality" in the unvarnished sense, but something swallowed by TV, chewed up and regurgitated back as entertainment.