Live from Baghdad

the long version

"On August 23, 1990, CNN executive producer Robert Wiener landed at Saddam International Airport. In tow were correspondent Jim Clancy, a camera crew, and enough equipment to fill seven taxis.". "Wiener's job was to orchestrate the network's coverage from the Iraqi capital - a herculean task that involved everything from negotiating with difficult Iraqi officials to gathering news to lifting spirits (including those that came in bottles). All in a day's work for CNN's executive producer in Baghdad. But, in fact, nothing in Wiener's extraordinary career - not even stints in Vietnam or in Romania during the revolution - could prepare him for what journalists came to call "the Iraqi Mind-Fuck."". "Live from Baghdad is the fast-paced story of Wiener's adventures in Iraq during the period of tense international maneuvering that would culminate in open war. By turns suspenseful, irreverent, and inspiring, it is also a no-holds-barred inside look at how the media covered a simmering crisis.". "Every day of Wiener's five-month stay conforms that this assignment was his toughest. Baghdad's surprisingly modern facilities did little to mask the mentality of a Third World dictatorship ruled by a cult of personality. The country's besiegement, compounded by the cutthroat competition of aggressive Western news media, created daily pressures so intense that news crews at "ground zero" frequently resorted to late-night bashes where cross-dressing was not uncommon.". "Within hours of the war erupting, virtually every journalist still in Baghdad prepared to leave. But CNN decided to remain. And when the Iraqi capital came under attack, correspondents Peter Arnett, Bernard Shaw, and John Holliman reported the news live to the world." "They pulled it off - a journalistic first: live coverage of the war, in real time, from behind enemy lines."--BOOK JACKET.