Washington ? At the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner this year, there was the usual jollification. Tourists lined the hotel corridors to gape at the incoming statesmen. Drinks were free at the parties and receptions. The food was good, the wines were plentiful, and so were the visiting celebrities: Julie Andrews, Kelsey Grammer, Bo Derek, Dr. Ruth. There were fewer provocative guests this time — no Fawn Hall, no Paula Jones, not a single Dixie Chick — and the dress was sober, few gravity-defying gowns or rhinestones in lieu of black tie.

The reason, of course, was obvious: The United States was still, strictly speaking, at war, and American casualties were invoked throughout the evening. I had learned that President Bush would make one joke at the beginning of his remarks, and devote the balance of his speech to Michael Kelly and David Bloom, two American journalists who died in Iraq. But the joke wasn’t made, and the tributes to Kelly and Bloom were appropriately solemn. It has become a tradition for diners to be entertained by a reigning comedian — Jay Leno, Drew Carey, etc. — with mixed results; but this year the chuckles were replaced by Ray Charles. I admit that I am not one of those who regard Ray Charles as a national treasure, but his gravelly blues were undoubtedly appropriate.

You cannot assemble any number of journalists, however, without the element of self-congratulation crowding in. The only thing worse than show-business toadying is the mutual-admiration society of the press. And the dinner this year was not just the usual celebration of power and renown in the nation’s capital but a hearty and supremely unselfconscious slap on the back. We heard a lot about the power of the written word, the stunning immediacy of television coverage, the courage and resourcefulness of “embedded” journalists in the front lines.

All of this is unquestionably true, but to what end? Everybody seems persuaded that the Pentagon’s decision to allow journalists unfettered access to the battlefield, and to welcome individual reporters into units, was a great success. Certainly, it yielded startling results: Television viewers were acquainted with tactical details in “real time,” and newspaper readers were drowned in cogent detail. For the most part, the Pentagon was happy with the journalists, and the journalists were happy with the Pentagon. And best of all, the good guys won the war, in timely fashion.

Suppose, however, things had not gone so well. The utility of embedded journalists was proved this time because, by and large, the news was good from the Pentagon’s point of view. Yet even in the midst of the coalition’s victory there were discordant notes. When the war wasn’t won immediately — that is to say, within 48 hours of the initial attack on Saddam Hussein’s supposed safe house — talk about quagmire and Vietnam surfaced. Moreover, while many embedded reporters identified closely with their units, other versions of our brave servicemen and women emerged. The Pentagon could not have been happy when a New York Times reporter quoted a sergeant to the effect that he had shot an Iraqi woman because “the chick got in the way.”

The first casualty in this war was not truth but clarity. Because cable television demands 24 hours a day of imagery and verbiage, perhaps the fastest assault on a capital city in history seemed to falter routinely and face unexpectedly stiff resistance. Viewers were trained to expect that any setback, no matter how trivial, had the makings of catastrophe and that battles are decided in the course of the daily news cycle.

The fate of single units was inevitably magnified. The significance of one casualty or one rescue of one prisoner or one antiwar parade or one Iraqi statement was distorted beyond sense or recognition, and the wisdom of long-term strategy was debated minute by minute. If the U.S. invasion of North Africa, or the island-hopping campaign in the Pacific, had been similarly treated during World War II, how long would Americans have endured?

The fundamental question is, what is news? A great deal of what passed for news during the Iraq war was not news but entertainment: profiles of individuals, vignettes of soldiers’ lives, minor engagements, statistical guesswork, seat-of-the-pants analysis, descriptions of technical hardware and ordnance. It could be argued that this is all part of the story of war, but the kaleidoscopic image is only partial and unfocused. Information, yes, but not especially informative.

You could also argue that the real news is just beginning. At the moment when the cameras and correspondents are returning, and the front page is a medley of SARS and Richard Gephardt, the future of Iraq — the point, after all, of any war of liberation — is slowly, and with infinite complexity, unfolding.

Philip Terzian is the associate editor of the Providence Journal.