War coverage without television

What we’re being told about it is fragmentary, tenuous, highly politicized, highly policed and highly contested, as the coverage of war always is. But when a country going to war takes measures to make sure there are no frontline correspondents, that tells us something. Let’s watch.

An Al Jazeera reporter reports from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on March 31, 2026. So far, Operation Epic Fury has kept the U.S. news media far, far away, writes Christopher Dornan. Screenshot courtesy of Al Jazeera

Opinion

BY CHRISTOPHER DORNAN

April 6, 2026

OTTAWA—Do you remember war in the TV age? CNN reporting live from Baghdad by satellite in 1991, embedded with the enemy, showing us the nighttime bombardment of the city in flashes of black and green. Later, in the Iraq war in 2003, journalists with cameras and satellite p...

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