There is a story running over at CNN.com about a researcher building a robot reporter that would be used to rove around battles and feed live audio/video back to the station. Read on for why this is a bad idea.

First off, how many mothers, fathers, daughters, and family members of servicemen are going to want to watch their loved ones dying LIVE ON THE TV? I have two family members whom are enlisted and I can vouch for my family when I say I DON’T want to watch them die in real time.

Second – do we WANT to see the destruction that our sophisticated military wreaks on the enemy? I personlly live in blissful ignorance about how much distruction actually happens. The Daisy Cutters which desimate everything within a 600 yard radius sounds devestating on paper, much less watching it live on a video screen.

Lastly, is the military going to allow this? Nevermind the fact that this is potentially an intelligence nightmare. This could turn into the largest PR fiasco the military has ever seen.

The thing that scares me the most is that this could possibly become POPULAR. That’s right – America’s well known appetite for destruction (ie. WWF, boxing, Ultimate Fighting Championship, etc.) combined with it’s large appetite for “real” TV (ie. Real World, Survivor, etc.) could prove to boost support for this type of reporting.

Personally, I think time would be better spent finding ways to PREVENT the use of our military than building sophisticated robots to view our weapons in action.