Good to read this discussion on the televised history Iraq. Instead of
seeing only this statue/looting/jubilation vision, I keep wishing for the
camera to be turned, for it to go down an alley, visit a house, talk to
those not on the streets. Could we meet just one woman maybe. And I have
kept wanting to see beyond the narrow frame of those embedded journalists.
This may demand great journalistic effort, independence or risk, and risk
for those on camera, but for history (the preserved documents) to be worth
anything we have got to just get past the edge of that incredibly selective
frame. After all history - insofar as it becomes the record of events once
the events themselves have past - is nothing but the selections, the framed.
At present, and for the duration of the invasion it has seemed like nothing
more than a sports coverage and mainly just using action close-ups from
cameras at the side-lines. Historiologically it has astonishing affinities
with sport.

The First Gulf War (Iraq, Iran) got lost in some obscure corner of history,
showing history has to happen on TV. The Second  did not
take place, showing that what is on TV does not take place. The Third, after
going for a year as a self-generating
history of the future, has, thanks to the 'Coalition' and the networks, been
screened as sport.

At least we have the work of good (mainly print I suspect) journalists, and
the stories of the Iraqi people who at present have no voice, but the TV
vision that I have seen does not suggest that a good screen historiography
will inform the future of Iraq or international foreign policy.

And I read from Robert  - not only is the history of the most recent events
already escaping from historical record by the selections of the news
networks, it seems, that even the enduring works and documents surviving
from the past are falling victim to the destructive forces that frame and
select history.

Ross