PERSPECTIVE ON WAR REPORTING : Military vs. Media: Both Can Win : Each side needs to step back and reassess. Journalists must get it right; the Pentagon must revise its rules.

As if a shooting war weren’t enough in the Persian Gulf, an information war is now brewing between a press corps voraciously gulping up every tidbit of news and a government hellbent on managing it. Both sides would be wise to step back and take a second look at themselves.

In the first hours after American pilots swept over Iraqi targets, government leaders reveled in the laudatory press coverage and went out of their way to praise the work of CNN. But as the news grew more somber last week, showing that the war could grind on for months, the government turned nasty, the White House lashing out at CNN for false reporting from Baghdad and Vice President Dan Quayle attacking the attention given to anti-war protesters.

What’s worrying the politicians is that the war will demand more public patience than they expected and that negative, nit-picking journalists will gradually erode national support. If Vietnam was lost in the living rooms, not on the battlefield--an erroneous but enduring myth--then why not the gulf? On Capitol Hill last week, several hawkish senators were privately fuming that the United States would never have persevered in World War II if the press corps had breathlessly treated every casualty and every enemy attack as a fresh cause for alarm.

Their comments recalled a Richard Nixon line about the press: “I don’t mind a microscope, but oh, boy--when they use a proctoscope, that’s going too far.” The press should be neither intimidated nor defensive. Much of its reporting on the gulf has been of high quality; military analysts such as Tony Cordesman on ABC have been excellent, and coverage of the early nights gripped the world. Europeans reportedly view CNN with awe, their own TV unable to complete with its electronic proficiency.

Yet there are also good journalistic reasons why the press should take stock of its coverage. In too many instances, details of the moment have been allowed to obscure or distort the larger picture in the gulf. By most military standards, the first week of the war was a huge success: With only a minimal loss of life, the allies wiped out nearly all of Iraq’s capacity to threaten its neighbors with wars in the future. Fewer Americans died in the gulf that week than on the streets of Washington. While the Iraqi Scuds are indeed frightening, their damage so far has been surprisingly small.

But that is not the story line that is coming across. Instead, most of television is still consumed with up-to-the-minute reports of air-raid sirens, Scud attacks, Iraqi surprises and “60 Minutes”-style warnings of what terrible things Saddam Hussein is threatening. Balance and perspective are sacrificed on the altar of drama and anxiety. Fortunately, the print press has been more complete, but surely television has an equal responsibility to its audience.

As television returns to more normal coverage, it can not only provide a better overview, but also insist on higher accuracy. During the early moments of fighting, when television correspondents were hotly competing for scoops, it was not surprising that false reports hit the air. That excuse no longer exists. For television, as for print, UPI correspondent Helen Thomas has long had the best maxim: “Get it first, but first get it right.”

Even as the press changes, however, a far greater change is needed in the government. Rather than attacking the media for creating an illusion that the war would be short and bloodless, politicians ought to take another look at the video releases from the Pentagon. It shouldn’t take a Roger Ailes to realize that picture-perfect air strikes on Iraqi targets would immediately overwhelm all words of caution from a military briefer. If more tapes are coming, the public would be better served with shots of the misfires, too--along with videos from the human damage when the B-52s bomb the Republican Guards.

The Pentagon should also re-examine its briefing system. Military planners apparently decided that by providing a blizzard of briefings, they could make up in quantity what they lack in quality. But the early briefings were often bare-bones in content and contradictory in mood, sowing confusion. Again, to serve the public, a better approach would be a single briefing a day, using satellites to tie in reporters in the gulf and in the Pentagon and providing in-depth, authoritative information. The briefing this past week by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell was a model of what is needed.

But the biggest change of all should come in Pentagon rules restricting access by reporters to military personnel and in requiring Pentagon review before pool reports and tapes are filed from the field. The press is naturally chafing, angry that not only their professional judgment but their patriotism is effectively being questioned. In every war of the past, journalists have shown they won’t give away secrets to the enemy.

The Pentagon cannot make this a “good news” war, editing out what it doesn’t want the public to see or hear; if there is bad news or terrible bloodshed, that will eventually come out, just as the press learned six months after the fact how many civilians were killed in the Panama invasion.

The Pentagon is setting itself up for a fall by trying to overmanage the news. The United States and its allies now seem headed toward a difficult ground war against Iraq that could sacrifice hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives. So far, the public has not been fully prepared. As U.S. troops move forward, the press should give us a better picture of how far they have come already--and the government should let us see the ordeal they now face.