During the Vietnam war, ABC news reporter Stephen Bell and his camera crew were in Cambodia when they stumbled upon 97 Vietnamese who had died in a makeshift concentration camp built by the Cambodians.
"As we shot those bodies, I'm telling the camera man to shoot it more graphically," Bell, now a professor of telecommunications, said. "I hoped that the images put on air would pressure Cambodia to stop. I wanted everybody in America to vomit over their dinner."
Bell said his motives for shooting the images -- the most graphic were not broadcast -- was to show harsh reality to stop more atrocities from happening.
"There are times when those images are important to the democratic process," Bell said.
Bell was part of a panel Monday night which centered on media coverage of the war in Iraq. The event was the second installation in a three-part series of discussions that focus on the war in Iraq.
Besides Bell, the panel also featured Robert Pritchard, assistant professor of journalism, Philip Bremen, instructor of telecommunications, and Cyrus Reed, assistant provost of international education.
The discussion began with a short presentation by each panelist, which included video clips.
With advancing technology and increased access to news sources, Bell said, more people than ever can see what is taking place on the front lines of battle.
"What we get is the most vivid, comprehensive and unedited reporting in the world," Bell said. "And that is good and bad."
One student in the audience said having more media coverage of war is bad because moral boundaries are crossed.
"Of course it's going to be violent. It's war," freshman Michael Cloud said. "With minimal coverage, war is glorified."
Cloud said showing possibly violent images shows people the horrors, thus, reality, of war.
Bremen said to not show what is happening in the war would deny the truth of what is occurring.
"Violence is being done on behalf of our society, and if we can't deal with seeing it, we should think about why we're doing it," Bremen said.
In-depth media coverage has grown ever since World War II, Pritchard said. In recent decades, the concept of "embedding" reporters in the trenches with soldiers grew in popularity, he said.
"But the risk of reporters in the thick of things is they unwittingly divulge intelligence information," Pritchard said. "Someone takes a risk to look good."
Media coverage of the current war in Iraq has grown into something never done before, Bell said.
"What we are living and watching is extraordinary," Bell said. "We have never fought wars like this. (In the process) we have lost our ability to be a gatekeeper of information.
"Major and minor events are constantly bombarding us, and the government is scared to death of what this coverage will do to public opinion. The media also has no idea what it will do."
Reed said at the beginning of the war, he was displeased with the media's coverage.
"Not only was it boring, it was misleading," Reed said. "(It appeared) they weren't running into opposition."
Pritchard said he felt the same way.
"We were rolling hours of footage of vehicles rolling through the desert and rolling through the desert," Pritchard said. "but once the novelty of the war has worn off, reporting will become much better."
Public perception of coverage of the war, however, is based upon the viewer, Bell said.
"What you put on television is not controlled by the person who creates it, but by the person who receives it," Bell said. "Our views are a product of our attitudes."
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