Given the role propaganda played in the rise of the Islamic State, perhaps it’s only fitting that the business end of the fight against the terror legion in Iraq is being streamed live.

But the decision several major news networks have made to broadcast the advance on Mosul, where ISIS is making its last stand , is not sitting well with some.

Commentators and punters alike have accused the likes of Al Jazeera and Channel 4 (among others) of exploiting the conflict for "entertainment", and expressed revulsion at the audience's use of emojis to react to the real-time horror onscreen.

"With all the emojis flashing across the screen gives the war as entertainment angle a real dystopian vibe," one troubled soul commented.

Then there's the risk of beaming out the kind of violence most editors would opt to omit from their bulletins, like the CNN video above of the demise in smithereens of a lone ISIS warrior firing his last rounds from a spider-hole at a platoon of Peshmerga troops.

Outgunned, the combatant detonates his suicide vest, showering his enemies with hunks of flesh.

Channel 4 says the newsworthiness of the Mosul offensive – "one of the most significant stories of our time" – more than trumps lessened editorial control.

"Given the nature of conflict, we are cautious and vigilant that the material is appropriate at all times and have measures in place to stop the stream when necessary," the network's digital editor Jon Laurence told The Guardian .

"The benefit for us is the immediacy," a spokeswoman added.

Indeed – though with Al Jazeera's feed racking up some 892,000 views, there's not a commercial news operation on the face of the earth that would consider immediacy the only benefit…

But the broadcast of confronting battlefield images is not a new phenomenon, and the benefits of doing so are, historically, unimpeachable. The steady, gritty network coverage that turned the Vietnam War into "The Living Room War" is widely credited with turning the tide of public opinion against that conflict.

By contrast, the practice of "embedding" reporters in the Gulf wars (that have led, one way or another, to this showdown in Mosul) has been heavily criticised.

"There have been numerous cases of reporters’ having their access terminated following controversial reporting," jailed US Army private Chelsea Manning wrote of the scheme in a 2014 op-ed for The New York Times .

"Less well known is that journalists whom military contractors rate as likely to produce 'favorable' coverage, based on their past reporting, also get preference."

Selective skullduggery and sudden cuts in transmission aside, live streaming surely eliminates some of the latent bias that so concerned Manning and others. The issue some have taken with emojis dotting the live coverage of the Mosul offensive seems by those lights rather shallow.

Especially given the gravity of what has been billed as "the mother of all battles". Believed to be among the 3500 militants inside Mosul are ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and one of his top lieutenants, the explosives expert Fawzi Ali Nouimeh.

Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, says it could takes months to rout the fighters, who are intermingled with civilians trapped inside the northern city.

"We would have loved to have a political plan along with a military plan, how to manage Mosul, how to administer Mosul, because Mosul has a variety of religions, with ethnicities," he told CNN, conceding that restoring order will likely take years.

"We are looking for a good solution for Mosul," he said.