Originally Posted by
_Agrajag_
The astounding, and somewhat discomforting, element of this war is the massive amount of near-real time, high resolution, photographic and video coverage, not from journalists and media outlets in the main, but from what are often called "citizen journalists". I salute them for what they are doing. Hopefully their actions may help to persuade the youngsters that glorify war in video games that war is always bloody, tragic and a needless and brutal waste of life. If they also get the message that it is the human ego that creates wars like this, and that being egotistical is not a positive character attribute, then so much the better.
Sadly I'm cynical enough to doubt that many will take heed of any of the above.
This might seem an odd way to look at it, but I have a theory as to why we see so many clips filmed on phones, one is the plethora of mobile phones these days, but the other and my theory is people see death and destruction on TV and the web all the time and they become sanitised to seeing it.
Therefore when they see it in real life, by watching it happen through their phone, that puts the screen between the real events in front of them and isolates them in effect, as it would with a TV screen.
It in a way forms a mental barrier and shuts them off from the realities of the horrors they are witnessing in front of their eyes..