NP? the War Channel

[pynchonoid]

<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/04/02/MN263954.DTL>

The words of Paul Saffo linger. "Beware the
military-entertainment complex." 

Saffo is a well-respected "technology forecaster" who
runs the Institute for the Future, an independent,
nonprofit research firm in Menlo Park. Last week, he
made a prediction, with absolutely no sense of irony:
"It's just a matter of time before we have the War
Channel." 

Saffo believes there's no turning back now from the
Pentagon's policy of embedding journalists. He
believes there's a natural group of journalists who
are "war groupies" willing to go anywhere to cover
war. Now, if you toss in international reporters who
are either getting their proverbial feet wet in Iraq
and foreign correspondents who are learning how to use
new technology more smoothly, you've got a group ripe
to be cherry-picked by someone like . . . Rupert
Murdoch, maybe? 

The more you think about it, the more a War Channel
makes sense. As Saffo said, "If we can have a Weather
Channel, why not a War Channel?" [...] 

...and that would be just the ticket for the War that
Never Ends.  Saffo's an old aquaintance and colleague,
he wrote the foreward for a book I co-wrote and edited
some years back; his predictions have often been
correct.

-Doug



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