The Gulf War

The first Persian Gulf War in 1991 was a watershed event for CNN that catapulted the network past the "big three" American networks for the first time in its history, largely due to an unprecedented, historical scoop: CNN was the only news outlet with the ability to communicate outside Iraq during the initial hours of the American bombing campaign. Clandestine live reports from the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad by reporters Bernard Shaw, John Holliman, and Peter Arnett are some of the most nail-biting, suspenseful reports in television news history.
Much of the vivid suspense results, ironically, from the reporters' inability to offer a video feed, which forced CNN to present their degraded, telephone-quality audio over live green-tinted night-vision shots of a Baghdad sky streaked with tracers and explosions. These images evoked Edward R. Murrow's radio reports of the London Blitzkrieg during World War II, resulting in some of the most indelible journalistic images of the late 20th Century. Their impact was widespread and profound.
The Gulf War experience brought CNN some much sought-after legitimacy and made household names of previously obscure (and infamously low-paid) reporters. Many of these reporters now comprise CNN's "old guard." Bernard Shaw became CNN's chief anchor until his retirement in 2001. Others include then-Pentagon correspondent Wolf Blitzer (now host of The Situation Room and Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer) and international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Amanpour's presence in Iraq was caricatured by actress Nora Dunn as the ruthless reporter "Adriana Cruz" in the film Three Kings (1999, dir: David O. Russell). Time Warner later produced a television movie, Live from Baghdad, about the network's coverage of the first Gulf War, which aired on HBO.