Missiles, Blackouts and Mixed Signals: How TV Networks Are Covering Trump’s Iran War
Clarissa Ward’s five-year-old son wonders when she’ll come home.
“I have been doing this long enough, and I’m humble enough to be able to say that I really just don’t know,” Ward, CNN’s chief international correspondent, told TheWrap from Ebril, Iraq, where she’s stationed with four network colleagues. “I just try to take it one day at a time.”
Ward is among a host of journalists dispatched to the Middle East since the United States and Israel launched a wave of attacks against Iran that have killed the country’s supreme leader, dozens of its top military and political officials, more than 1,000 civilians and kickstarted a regional war with no end in sight.
The nearly weeklong conflict has presented one of the most difficult reporting environments in recent memory. There are few Western journalists in Iran, and an internet blackout has choked off communication with locals. There’s no discernible front line and a widening theater of war, as Iran has targeted U.S. and Israeli assets in at least a half-dozen countries. Meanwhile, journalists have had to sort through mixed messages coming out of the White House and misinformation on social media, including AI-generated videos.
Some correspondents, like CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen, have managed to enter Iran, but most CNN journalists are appearing from Qatar, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel. CBS News got “Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil and chief correspondent Matt Gutman on some of the last flights to the region to report from Tel Aviv, where Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst is also stationed.
Despite reporting obstacles and personal ones – sleep deprivation, taking shelter amid missile and drone strikes — correspondents from CNN, CBS News and Fox News spoke of the importance of covering this escalating conflict.
“Whenever that next missile barrage passes, we go back up above ground, and then we go to the scene, and we report live on Fox from the scene as they are digging through the rubble, looking for survivors,” Yingst told TheWrap. “It’s an intense moment, but also it’s an important moment in our coverage, because we need to bring this story to an audience around the world.”
Fox News viewers witnessed Yingst having to flee for safety on-air in Tel Aviv as security warned of incoming ballistic missiles bound for Israel’s second-largest city. Yingst brought viewers along while taking shelter; minutes after getting an all-clear from security, he and his team drove out to the strike site as first responders put out the fire from the impact.
“Ballistic missile fire is a different, different beast,” Yingst added. “We have to do everything we can to stay safe, because safety is the number one priority for our team.”
CBS News’ chief national correspondent Matt Gutman said this is “the broadest, widest conflict that I’ve ever covered in 25 years of journalism.”
“We have not seen anything like this,” Gutman continued. “Certainly, there have been deadlier campaigns. Gaza was certainly one of them. But this is so big.”
Life during wartime
CNN correspondent Jeremy Diamond woke up around 8:15 a.m. local time at his Tel Aviv home last Saturday to air raid sirens, signaling a state of emergency as the U.S. and Israeli operation began. Iran responded in turn, firing a barrage of ballistic missiles into Israel that struck a residential building in Tel Aviv — a short walk from his home — and sent the city into lockdown.
Despite the conditions, Diamond and his team have ventured to the sites of Iranian missile strikes, which have killed at least 11 people between the Tel Aviv strike and one on a makeshift synagogue in Beit Shamesh that caved in a bomb shelter. All the while, air raid sirens continue to go off, forcing those in the country — citizens and journalists alike — to seek the nearest bomb shelter.
Diamond acknowledged that his team was “lucky” to work under Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system, but he said the system wasn’t “foolproof.” “I’ve been to the scene of multiple ballistic missile attacks at this point, not only during this conflict, but during the previous ones, to understand how deadly it can be if you’re at the wrong place at the wrong time, so we’re obviously taking precautions.”
Viewers have witnessed firsthand how reporters tackle their job as rockets fly above. CNN’s Erin Burnett, who’s one of several CNN personalities in Tel Aviv, continued a live interview as she and her team took shelter.
“It’s clear that the Israeli anti-missile systems are working very well, and that Iran’s capacity to fire and land missiles and penetrate the Arrow system in Israel’s air defenses have significantly weakened,” Gutman said. “But there’s always that looming concern that you might just get really unlucky.”
A full night’s sleep isn’t an option, reporters told TheWrap, as they work in power naps and down coffee to keep going. The goal is to be able to cover fast-moving developments and capture the stakes for U.S. viewers thousands of miles away, as the conflict has led to the deaths of at least six American service members and put others stationed in the Middle East under threat.
Gutman acknowledged that “many of these names — the Ayatollah, his son, the places — are very foreign” to a U.S. audience. “It takes a certain amount of skill and institutional knowledge to be able to make things digestible to people,” he added, “because this stuff really is very complicated, and there are so many moving parts.”
Quest for information
Getting critical information has proved challenging given that U.S. and Israeli governments are understandably tight-lipped about ongoing military operations, and Iran’s internet blackout has made connecting with sources in the country nearly impossible.
While reporters hesitated to get into specifics about sourcing, they noted having sought information from government officials within the U.S. and Israel and citizens on the ground throughout the Middle East. They’ve watched verified videos that have emerged during the pockets of connectivity within Iran and spoken to people who’ve managed to connect with their families in Iran, however briefly.
From those conversations, CNN’s Ward said, initial excitement about the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has given way to “really deep anxiety about where this is going and where it ends, and whether there’s going to be chaos or a vacuum or a civil war.”
“Obviously in war, the worst thing is the fear of being killed, God forbid, or injured, or your home destroyed, or losing a loved one,” she said. “But then there is also just a deep trauma of being in an incredibly chaotic and dangerous situation where your brain cannot fathom how it ends, or how the best way is to kind of get through it.”
Ward has used her time in Iraq to signal what life is like for those living in one of Iran’s border countries, where Iran has fired ballistic missiles toward Kurdish militia groups and U.S. bases. On her Sunday drive from the Ebril airport after completing her 24-hour journey to Iraq from London, she spotted a blazing fire within the airport’s perimeter. From the backseat of the car, she captured footage of the blaze while breaking down the geopolitical state.
Even in the “tense” environment, Ward said people within Iraq “are going about their daily lives.” “Today, we were like, ‘Let’s walk outside and go to the convenience store and buy some cookies,’” she said. “Just having half an hour of just stretching your legs and being outside and just feeling like a semi-normal person for half an hour, it goes a long way.”
“People want this to end, but people go to the office, and you can go and buy a coffee,” Ward added. “I think things could get much worse at the rate that they’re going, but obviously the place that you would feel much more acutely concerned about safety would be if you were in Iran.”
Getting into Iran
Few Western journalists have managed to report in Iran, where one needs the government’s permission to enter and operate. Pleitgen became the first correspondent from a U.S. network to enter the country and on Thursday took viewers along for the ride to Tehran.
In an email to TheWrap, Pleitgen said they “have a rigorous security planning process and are in constant contact with our team” as he travel in Iran.
“Personal safety is obviously a challenge with the ongoing air campaign, particularly when very heavy munitions are being used in dense urban areas,” he said. “We also try to keep clear of military and police installations when in country.”
“As well as looking for signs of instability on the ground, my producer and photojournalist Claudia Otto and I are always on high alert for airstrikes, which happen frequently and without warning, making them especially hard to predict,” Pleitgen added. “We try to keep track of where airstrikes have been hitting and then be sure to avoid those areas.”
Pleitgen said “it is still possible to have internet through a VPN, even though it can be spotty at times.”
“PBS NewsHour” special correspondent Reza Sayeh, who’s based within Iran, reported live from Tehran earlier this week on the Iranian government’s response and the fallout from strikes on government buildings and residential areas. On air, he described “unnerving” and “frightening” conditions as the assault on the country unfolded. Sayeh left Tehran during the initial strikes out of safety concerns for his family, but he has since returned to report.
Though President Donald Trump has suggested the military campaign could last around four weeks, recent history — most notably in Iraq — should warn against putting a firm date on when a large-scale conflict will be resolved.
Yingst said he isn’t thinking about when the war will end, but remains focused on covering what’s happening to people now in harm’s way. “It’s based on my human-first approach to journalism, to tell the stories of people, and it’s based on a desire to get it right,” he said.
Ward, too, acknowledged not having “a crystal ball,” and therefore the ability “to assess how much longer this could go on, how much worse it could get.”
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