"Nearly every military-related film to reach theaters this year has been a box-office disappointment, leaving some in Hollywood to question how much the 24-hour news coverage of the Iraq invasion has dimmed the public appetite for images of combat," and "some critics suggest that moviegoers are staying away because they have plenty of real-time war action already on cable and network news programs. 'When television came on with 24-hour news channels, it changed what we needed,' said Jeanine Basinger, chairman of film studies at Wesleyan University and author of The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre. 'During World War II you needed movies to help people see and understand events they were hearing about.' Now, she said, 'we are kind of inured; we have seen a lot of blood and combat.' "

"With the most televised war in history winding down, executives at TV news organizations are noticing one startling detail in how Americans are watching the coverage: viewers are increasingly tuning out the broadcast networks' evening newscasts. ... The overall decline in the evening news programs' ratings, coming at the same time as the three cable news networks achieved gains of more than 300 percent, could be a watershed moment in how Americans get their news on television. ... Andrew Heyward, the president of CBS News, said the Bush administration's new policy of placing reporters with the military units engaged in the fighting, was the most significant factor driving the decline. It introduced a new element of live, often visceral, coverage that had a profound impact on viewers, he said."

While the giant US media networks are covering the US's invasion of Iraq, they are also heavily lobbying to get rid of restriction on the number of TV and radio stations they can own in one market.The Guardian reports media critics are alarmed by what they see as a "serious conflict of interest" concerning how the broadcast industry covers the Bush administration. "It is likely that decisions about how to cover the war on Iraq - especially on television - may be tempered by a concern not alienate the White House," said Jeffrey Chester, Center for Digital Democracy executive director, in a recent article. "These media giants stand to make untold billions if the FCC safeguards are eliminated or weakened." The Guardian writes, "Mr Chester accused the US media of adopting a 'narrow-minded commercial mindset' , reflected by their failure to 'effectively analyse and criticise the Iraq war policy' ahead of an impending ruling by the FCC on the media ownership regime."