NEWS ANALYSIS : War Reporting Suffers From Shortage of Facts : Media: Little solid information is available on Iraqi aircraft, missile strength in the wake of air strikes.

For all the talk over the years about “the power of the press,” never have the limitations and frustrations of being a reporter, especially an on-the-air television reporter, been more disquietingly clear than during the first 48 hours of the war in the Persian Gulf.

Time and again during those early, chaotic hours, it was obvious that, as CBS anchor Dan Rather conceded, “There’s much more that we don’t know than we do know.”

The cliche says that “knowledge is power,” and the power of the press, such as it is, derives largely from the knowledge the press gathers and disseminates. In the gulf, partly because of military censorship, there has been little information available.

But the media, especially Cable News Network and all-news radio, have been covering the war more or less constantly, and journalism, like nature, abhors a vacuum; when you have time to fill and little to fill it with, there’s a tendency to do two things--repeat endlessly what you do know and speculate on what you don’t know.

Thus, on all-news radio in particular, one heard the same event described as “new” information more than a dozen times. Worse, in the inevitable rush to be first with every bulletin, at least two networks reported Thursday night--wrongly--that an Iraqi missile landing in Tel Aviv was armed with chemical weaponry.

Viewers were hungry for information, though--any information--and journalists were determined to provide it. One can only imagine the frustration the reporters felt over their inability to find out and tell their viewers (and readers) what was really happening.

Wednesday night, with tens of millions of viewers tuned in to the opening of hostilities, the only facts that the various network reporters and anchors could relay with any certainty was that the United States and its allies had launched a massive air strike on Iraq and that the Iraqi response had been surprisingly light.

How much damage was done? No one knew. Why had Iraq not responded more forcefully? No one knew.

Early Friday morning and again this morning, Iraqi missiles struck Israel. Damage was mild, casualties few and there was no immediate Israeli retaliation. But why had the attack been so slight? No one knew. Why hadn’t Hussein used his chemical and biological weapons? No one knew. If Israel does retaliate, how would its planes and American planes avoid mistakenly shooting at each other? No one seemed to know. And what could Israel accomplish that more than 2,000 U.S. and allied air sorties had not accomplished? No one knew.

This is not to fault the reporters on the scene or elsewhere. For the most part, they did the best they could with limited access. In the early hours, CNN, in particular, did an impressive job. Journalists weren’t the only people who didn’t know the answers to the most important questions of the day. The Pentagon and the White House didn’t seem to know much either. In fact, for the first day, the government seemed as dependent on CNN as were viewers at home. But the absence of confirmed information didn’t inhibit the spread of questionable information.

Iraq’s “elite Republican Guard” had been virtually destroyed. Or had it? Iraq’s chemical warfare facilities had been “almost completely destroyed.” Or had they? The Iraqi air force has been caught on the ground and bombed to smithereens. Or had it?

On-the-air reporters spoke often of allied air raids being “80% effective.” But what did that mean? Were 80% of the bombs that were flown to Iraq dropped there or were 80% of the targets hit or were 80% of the targets destroyed--and how did anyone know? Although early reports made it sound as if U.S. and allied forces had devastated, if not utterly destroyed the Iraqi air force, Pentagon officials said Friday that they could confirm destruction of about 10 Iraqi airplanes.

The Iraqi air force is said to have 700 airplanes; destroying less than 2% of the enemy’s aircraft is far from devastating. But many Iraqi warplanes were hidden in concrete bunkers. Did U.S. bombs falling on those shelters destroy those planes as well? No one knew.

Despite early optimistic reports, it didn’t seem likely that allied forces had just flashed through the night skies over Baghdad, raining destruction down on the nation’s capital and surrounding territory, dodging the best that Hussein had to offer.

Had Hussein been so certain that the United States lacked the will to wage war that the attack caught him by surprise? Or, realizing that his own air force was too weak to battle the allied onslaught, had he concealed or moved or held back his own forces for a later counterattack? Or had the United States greatly exaggerated Hussein’s arsenal in the first place in an effort to make him seem a mortal danger that had to be removed? No one knew.

Hussein had promised to destroy Israel. But he sent fewer than a dozen missiles on the first attack Thursday night. None--apparently--was equipped with the kinds of chemical or biological weapons that he had previously used to kill thousands of Kurds in his own country. Only a handful of Israelis were injured by the first missile attack, none seriously.

Did Hussein, for all his bluster, not have chemical or biological payloads that could be delivered on Scud missiles? Or had his missile-launching capacity been so severely damaged by the early attacks that he could muster no stronger attack? Or was he just trying to husband his military resources, to use the least possible armaments and still lure Israel into the war, in hopes of getting Arab countries to abandon the United States? Was he just firing preliminary missiles, trying to find the range for later, more destructive attacks? And just how many missiles and mobile launchers did he have?

No one knew.

Reporters were becoming so desperate for hard information that when Lt. Gen. Tom Kelly briefed them at the Pentagon on Friday and said he didn’t know if the Iraqis had any American prisoners of war, one reporter said, “So you would discount the reports from Iraq. . . . “

Kelly had to interrupt to point out that he had not said he “discounted” reports that the Iraqis had captured American fliers, only that he didn’t know if that had happened.

He didn’t know. No one knew. That was the theme of the first 48 hours of the war in the gulf.