IT is the fastest-paced media coverage of any war we have ever seen.

Within seconds, images of bombings, killings and captured troops are flashed across our TV screens - and photographs appear within minutes ready for newspapers to use.

But some fear that the mass of images from hundreds of news sources will make us react to the war like an arcade game.

UK defence secretary Geoff Hoon told a press conference yesterday: "There are real risks involved - this is not just some computer game played out before our eyes."

Ruth Furlong, head of media and visual culture at the University of Wales College, Newport (UWCN), said: "I followed the whole build-up to war but the coverage since it began has become too much. It reminds me of reality television, almost pornographic in its detail.

"I find it hard to concentrate with split screens showing three different pictures and then text informing us of 'breaking news', it's like a gameshow."

Mrs Furlong also criticises the language being used which she said can be misleading. "What are we to understand by terms such as 'smart bombs' and 'friendly fire', most people would rather hear it straight when people have been killed by accident."

The head of rsearch and enterprise for the school of art, media and design at UWCN, Dave Smith, said: "The presentation of the war as a superior arcade game is a big problem. In terms of the information and pictures that are fed to us, we have to understand that despite its live appearance, the news is very well managed and mediated by the military."

Media student Sarah Lewis, 25, from Caldicot, added: "I have heard the television presentation of the war likened to a computer game by some people but we have to be kept up to date and involved.

"The technology that brings the pictures straight to our screens enables that."

Our picture shows members of the household cavalry with their scimitar tanks.